2nd Hard Drive for Capture

boomhower wrote on 12/20/2004, 1:46 PM
I'm going to add a second HD to my desktop for capture only but after doing some reading I've come across some issues I want to clarify prior to yanking the cover off.

I have a couple of Removable HD Drawers (StarTech type) and I plan to use one of these on my desktop with a good 7200 drive. I read that some people have had problems with dropped frames because the second drive was not DMA enabled (PIO 0 instead). How difficult is it to add a second drive and have it behave properly?

My system is:

Intel Pentium 4 Processor at 2.60GHz with HT Technology
512MB DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Intel 80532, 2.6G, 512, 800FSB

I also read that Intel has a utility that can help set the drives up as master etc but it depends on your chipset.

Any ideas and suggestions are appreciated.

Comments

cervama wrote on 12/20/2004, 1:52 PM
I haven't had any dropped frames or problems with my setup. I'm no genius when it comes to all that, but I recomend DMA. While you're at it why not get 1gig of ram, it's pretty cheap these days.
boomhower wrote on 12/20/2004, 3:08 PM
I'll probably upgrade the mem later....I also have a 9100 laptop that I use and so far both have operated well with Vegas. I've only noticed hiccups when I boost the preview up to Best/Full etc.

How difficult is it to get the DMA setting on the drive? The impression I gathered was this was the difficulty people were having after installing the drive. I know my way around a computer but I've never installed a 2nd drive so this is new ground for me.
boomhower wrote on 12/20/2004, 3:42 PM
The alternative is adding an external hd if for some reason the internal is too much hassle (which I don't think it should be).......but I'd rather have the internal on the desktop and the external on the laptop.

Just spitballin' here....
rextilleon wrote on 12/20/2004, 6:37 PM
Its very easy to get the DMA setting--there are a million threads on it and it takes about 15 seconds.
riredale wrote on 12/20/2004, 7:32 PM
Vegas doesn't need much ram to run fine. I have 512MB installed, and note on RAMpage that about half of that is currently in use with all the background programs (and, of course, IE as I'm typing this) in use. Just now, I loaded Vegas, brought up a significant veg file, and rendered to a new avi. All told, Vegas sucked up 63MB additional ram--leaving about 185MB totally unused out of 512MB. Any additional ram would be just sitting idle.

So I have to conclude that huge amounts of ram are useful in only unusual situations.