I got my SSD from Newegg. Their prices and choices are often much better than Best Buy. Here's the one I got (with link):

Corsair F120

This is a 120GB SSD drive and a good value for the price, but if you don't want to spend that much here's a similar model that's 40GB:

Corsair F40

To put size in perspective: I've been able to capture as many as two and a half dozen high-res/60fps iPi video clips from four cameras, each running several minutes in length in under 20GB. (This was with the SATA; I haven't fully tested my six camera + SSD setup yet, just simple bandwidth tests. Hope to do full tests this weekend if I'm not busy at work.)

Hope this helps.

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Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

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Yeah, I like Newegg. That's where I ordered the USB stuff. But it's very quick to make a run to the store if I want to use it immediately. I guess it depends on the situation.

So I got my USB 3.0 stuff from Newegg today. I have it all hooked up and tested throughput with all 4 cameras. Interesting results...

With all 4 cameras hooked up to the USB 3.0 card via a 3.0 hub, I still have dropped frame issues. Out of curiosity I decided to plug two of the cameras into my USB 2.0 ports and 2 into the new 3.0 ports. This works without dropped frames at 640x480 60 fps (actually 58-59 fps). Apparently USB 3.0 by itself isn't the solution. Maybe because the camera's aren't USB 3.0? I have a feeling that an additional USB 2.0 controller would have been sufficient, but it's worth the extra few bucks to get 3.0 anyway.

Next I decided to test my SATA drive's capability to capture the data at these settings. I first tried it with some compression to make the file transfer speed lower. No problem. I reduced the compression all the way, still no problem. I turned compression off completely, still no problem. Uncompressed data throughput is 68.9 MB and my SATA drive handles it just fine. Ok, there was one little hitch. The first time I try recording video in a session, the throughput craps out. But after that it works fine. It's almost like it needs to prepare the drive the first time, then it's good to go for a while. The I/O buffer does eventually run out gradually, but I'm not sure what would cause that.

I seem to notice that videos recorded without compression seem to play back smoother. I don't know if it is actually recorded smoother or just playing back smoother since there is no decompression to do. I'm assuming the latter, and that when the video is analyed for tracking it won't make a difference since it looks at each frame one at a time instead of doing it in realtime.

My conclusion is that I will use 640x480 60fps with the "best quality" compression enabled. Motion blur on fast movements is minimal, so I expect pretty good results.