Changing drives from RAID to single IDE?

YesMaestro wrote on 9/27/2006, 11:34 AM
Is it possible to remove 2 drives that are in a RAID and change them to single IDEs to put in another computer? I am currently having a problem while rendering out mpg2 files from the timeline. The whole system crashes and the screen goes black and I have to reboot it. This has been happening since yesterday. I don't really have the time right now to figure out the problem as I am on a deadline. It happens in both 6&7.

Paul

Comments

ScottW wrote on 9/27/2006, 12:37 PM
Before I'd do that, because breaking a raid can be difficult, I'd suggest going on a dust-bunny patrol on your mother board. Take some canned/compressed air, blow the dust off the fan, cooling fins, memory and motherboard in general. Also blow the dust out of the power supply.

MPEG-2 rendering is very processor intensive and if you have a marginal heat situation with your CPU (or some other component), it's during an MPEG-2 render that you're going to be more likely to see issues.

Before I'd break a raid-0, I'd get a third drive and copy everything from the raid set to the new drive. If you are breaking a raid-1, then I've had good luck with R-Studio; break the array, format one (only one) of the drives, and then use R-Studio to "recover" the files from the second drive to the first drive.

--Scott
DavidSinger wrote on 9/27/2006, 7:30 PM
Rendering m2t from timeline?
It's probably not your hard drive.

When I overdo it the screen goes blue, but the solution I've found that works is as follows:

(a) make sure the project file setting is the hdv that matches the files you are using. Extra unnecessary work is involved to down-convert on the fly for preview display otherwise.
(b) render out to AVI NTSC widescreen (great footage still looks great on current widescreen devices, even up to 8ft x 4.5ft wall projection screens through 720p HD projectors - I'm speaking from some experience here because we have such a theater at our disposal)
(c) go from 48 to 44.1 in sound.
(d) go from 5.1 to stereo.
(e) go from "best" to "good".

Each step will reduce the processing load and memory requirement, thus increase the opportunity to gain a complete render. Take it from a guy who's managed to get 40tracks and 100+ source files out to a very nice DVD for widescreen. Using V6d, by the way.
YesMaestro wrote on 9/28/2006, 7:19 AM
Cleaning out the system was the first thing I did. It wasn't terrible dusty, but the problem still occurs. I have 5 fans in the case so I know it's cooling fine. After and hour or so while rendering, the whole system decides to reboot and it gets stuck on the Bios screen and just sits there.

David, I'm rendering out mpg2s to "good" from DV with minimal effects, color correction and color curves and no more than 2 tracks of video.

Paul
JJKizak wrote on 9/28/2006, 7:37 AM
One of the easiest things to do is pull out each card/memory and re-install them and the same with the processor and use new gook on it. If that doesn't work something is failing and it won't do any good to mess with the drives. It's kind of like re-arranging identical chairs around the dinner table, begets nothing.

JJK
ScottW wrote on 9/28/2006, 7:42 AM
It still seems unlikely to me that this is a raid related issue. 5 fans doesn't mean that the CPU isn't overheating - Does your motherboard have any on-board tempurature monitoring for things like the CPU? While not usually very accurate, it can be used to give you an idea of what's going on if you are having a heat related issue (for example, if your heat sink isn't closely coupled with your CPU any longer).

I'm just going to urge caution if you decide to break your raid array - the safest way to do this will be to copy everything off the array onto some other drive before breaking the array.

--Scott