Thanks for the reply. Have you used this VERY Hitachi drive? I have used hundreds of other Hitachi drives myself (both SCSI and IDE). I'd like to hear from people about their experiences with this PARTICULAR Hitachi drive, before I buy some for my Vegas machine. On the subject of 2M VS 8M buffers, I am likewise quite familiar with the theoretical advantages of the 8M. What I want to know is - has any VEGAS 5 user found that the 8M buffer makes a substantial difference with Vegas? In the same context, does SATA make an appreciable difference? This will be running on an Asus P4C800 Deluxe MB, 1G RAM, separate drives for OS and media, etc.

While we're on the subject of building a Vegas machine, can anyone refresh my memory about where to find info on optimizing Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro for media apps in general or Vegas in particular? I will be using this machine exclusively for running Vegas (and maybe some other Sony/SF apps). I will probably use XP (if just to get HT), but really don't like it (especially Microsoft's activation scheme), so may just go with Win2K. I'd also love to talk with someone who has personal experience running Windows Server 2003 as the OS for Vegas.

I don't have any experience with that PARTICULAR drive. I've got about a dozen Hitachi 7K250 250 drives (HDS722525VLAT80) and they work just fine. Plenty fast, quiet and reliable. I've got some ATA100 and some SATA drives, the actual transfer rates of the drives don't even bang up against the ATA100 interface speed, so the 160 meg/sec speed of the SATA interface doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. It may when the physical speed of the drives exceed the capabilities of the ATA100 interface, but not yet.

As far as 8M vs. 2M in Vegas, I guess that would require doing a project using a 2M drive and then doing it again with an 8M drive. In all the test I have seen, an 8M drive always beats a 2M drive, so why would you even be considering a 2M drive?

Regarding optimizing WinXP for video editing, www.videoguys.com has some very good tweaks articles.

John

info on optimizing Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro for media apps in general...

Others will have more, I'm sure, but one of my favourite sites is Videoguys' Windows XP Tips & Tricks for NLE.

...or Vegas in particular?
I grabbed the following from the Support section some time ago. HTH.
I'm using XP Pro and I'm very happy with it.
BTW, stay away from SP2 until ALL the bugs are sorted out - which means SP3 or 4, I guess :-(

Mike


Press Ctrl+Alt+Del at the same time and you will see a list of the programs currently running (some users will have to hit the "Task Manager" button). Move over to the Processes Tab and click the "Image Name" heading at the top left of this window to view these items by alphabetical order by user/system. Once all these items are arranged, look under the User Name column for items that are listed as belonging to your User Account. You would
only need to leave the following running:

explorer.exe
taskmgr.exe

Under the User Name "SYSTEM"

System Idle Process
System
smss.exe
csrss.exe
winlogon.exe
services.exe
lsass.exe
svchost.exe
spoolsv.exe
MsPMSPSv.exe

Thanks again. The reason I'm considering 2M buffer drives is that I can get twice as many for the same price.

Thanks. As a veteran computer VAR, programmer, consultant, dealer, hacker, etc. of over 20 years, I am keenly aware of the issues regarding upgrading to things like XP Pro's SP2. Have you any Vegas-specific reasons to be avoiding it? I doubt anything in SP2 would cause me any trouble on the Vegas computer (not that I'm going to install it anyway).

I can see no way that a 8MB buffer is going to help with video, that amount of buffer is only a few seconds of video. Normal office apps then yes it'll make a difference.
I like the idea of SATA simply becuase the cabling is so much easier!

Bob.

Wouldn't 8 megs help with the throughput of apps running at the same time as your video?

Wouldn't 8mb cache help sustain a data rate, so that u can get away without defragmenting too often?

even better, be able to render to and from the same drive with less stress on the physical transfer?

I'd really appreciate it if only those who have actually tried both 2M and 8M drives would weigh in on this topic. Whether or not an 8M buffer corresponds to a significant amount of video time isn't the point. The issue is whether or not there would ever be a delay in the data stream (due to head movement, thermal recal, etc.) long enough to affect the minimum sustained data rate enough to affect Vegas. We could all go on and on about the theoretical issues here, but as I have been studying these same issues for a decade or so, I don't really need such input. I'm just hoping someone has already figured out whether or not Vegas is gonna care, so I won't have to do the test.

Regardless of the drive's buffer size, most 7200 rpm drives are capable of a sustained transfer rate of at least 30 megabytes per second, even at the end of the drive where it is slowest. DV requires a data rate of about 3.8 megabytes/sec, so pretty much any modern drive will work fine. I edit video on my laptop all the time and it has a 60 gig 5400 rpm internal drive with a 2 meg buffer. Thermal recalibration is pretty much a thing of the past.

The bottom line is VEGAS doesn't seem to care.

John

Thanks for your perspective. I'll buy some 2M buffer drives, and give 'em a try. They are so much less $ that I can buy almost twice as many, making imaging backups practically free.

I doubt anything in SP2 would cause me any trouble on the Vegas computer (not that I'm going to install it anyway).

All I can tell you is that numerous folks on this (and other) Vegas forums have had problems after installing SP2 and had to do a rollback/system restore to cure the problems. According to jeditdv , on a new system with SP2 preinstalled, there should be no problems.

Mike

Your drive has to do a LOT of different things, not just the "streaming intensive" capture and print to tape operations. In virtually any situation I can think of, the 8 MByte drives will significantly and noticeably outperform their 2 MByte counterparts. I have upgraded -- due to drive failure -- several computers in the past year, and in each case replaced the cheap drive that came with the computer with a similar drive (in terms of rotational speed), but one that had a larger buffer. BIG difference. There are lots of specifications that affect drive performance: rotational speed; interface; access speed; and buffer size. If you put those words into Google, I am sure you would find some articles that include actual tests that might sort it out for you.

My recommendation is that if you are going to use these computers primarily to do background rendering and to backup files, then the 2 MByte buffer might be sufficient. However, if a live human being is sitting in front of them, you are going to have noticeable differences in delays when loading applications, and doing any operation that requires constant access to the disk.

If you have several identical computers, and you can buy one 2 MByte and one 8 MByte drive, why not install them and do your own test?

I must not have pointed out that I intend to use these drives strictly for media storage, not for the OS or apps (which will be on another drive). So therefore, there will be no difference when it comes to loading apps, etc. The only thing that matters to me as far as these drives are concerned, is whether or not they'll work reliably for media digitizing, storage and playback under Vegas. They either will or they won't. There will be NO difference in the perceived performance of the system overall.

Well I'll keep that in mind. This really isn't an issue for me, but thanks for your concern anyway.