Designated Hard Drive

GeoffCampbell wrote on 1/11/2003, 2:31 PM
I am going to purchace a second hard drive as a designated HD for my DV editing. I have been told that "Raid Arrays" of smaller hard drives (20GB to 30GB) are better than a single large capacity HD (120GB or higher.

I know that SCSI HDs are best at 10,000rpm to 15,000rpm, vs a standard IDE 7200rpm drive. However, I have learned that there are new 7200rpm IDE drives that have an 8mb cache buffer, as opposed to the standard 2mb cache buffer.

Here are my questions: 1: Is a single large capacity HD (120GB) OK to use?
2: Which is better, a SCSI HD at 10,000rpm/2mb cache,
or a standard 7200rpm drive with an 8mb cache?

Any suggestions would be much, and greatly, appreciated.

Thanks,
I_Need_Help
(Tony)

Comments

harryset wrote on 1/11/2003, 4:20 PM
With the new technology over the last few years, there isn't much differance in the eide and scsi drives. If you go raid you will need to have identical drive sizes.
BillyBoy wrote on 1/11/2003, 4:26 PM
"...I have been told that "Raid Arrays" of smaller hard drives (20GB to 30GB) are better than a single large capacity HD (120GB or higher." Really by who? Raid arrays per say are a pain in the butt. They are just a group of drives that are made to run as a large "virtual" drive. Windows can/does get a bellyache sometimes doing it.

I know that SCSI HDs are best at 10,000rpm to 15,000rpm, vs a standard IDE 7200rpm drive."

Nope, not anymore. Newer IDE drives are as good as SCSI drives and considering the price difference don't really make a lot of sense to pay two to three times as much for a drive that has half or less capacity.

The cache size doesn't really matter much either from a video editing standpoint which I'll assume is what you mainly used it for. All a large buffer does is allow faster transfers, not a issue for rendering and the speed difference isn't a factor either for 'capture' or 'print to tape' I would suggest you buy a 160-200GB IDE ultra 100/133 drive.



JJKizak wrote on 1/11/2003, 4:53 PM
Stay away from the raid-small drive setup as XP and Win2k do not like
them very much. They will work fine for a while then the OS will
regurgitate with blue screens saying the "hives" files are corrupted.
That means re-install the OS. Not sure about the SCSI internal but the
SCSI external work fine.

James J. Kizak
FuTz wrote on 1/11/2003, 5:33 PM
I got /read similar comments about RAID.
I'd go, too, with a 7200 rpm drive. 80Go are getting cheap now as 200Go are making their way on the market. ATA 100+ of course...
And one note: I think you better put the program itself (Vegas) on disk #1 with OS and then put your *video files* on drive #2. You'll probalby gain in speed.
miranda wrote on 1/11/2003, 5:50 PM
I have been using scsi drives on my systems for years primarily because of the performance difference between the two format, however the newer IDE drives have definately closed the performance gap. I just recently purchased a couple of WD 120 gig drives and I am very impressed with their performance. As for raid systems they definately have some benefits in terms of fault tolerance especially with raid 5. You must however factor in the cost of a hardware based raid card which are quite a bit more expensive than a standard non-raid scsi card. Stay away from software based raid solutions, these typically are very slow as they use the computer's CPU and memory to stripe across the raid array.
riredale wrote on 1/11/2003, 7:35 PM
With the radical recent increases in data densities, even 5400rpm drives work fine. Far cry from 5 years ago, where it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the 4MB/sec data stream...
riredale wrote on 1/11/2003, 7:36 PM
With the radical recent increases in data densities, even 5400rpm drives work fine. Far cry from 5 years ago, where it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the 4MB/sec data stream...

Even laptop drives can do DV well these days, and they run at, what, 4500rpm?
musicvid10 wrote on 1/11/2003, 9:29 PM
I'll just echo what's been said about RAID -- for video capture they are a PITA and notorious for dropped frames.

Get the biggest 7200 rpm drive you can (I see them for <$1/G at retailers this week) and put it on the EIDE controller as the primary slave. The 8MB cache is just a little added insurance against drops. Put your CD/RW/DVD drives on the secondary IDE. Then, as time goes on get 1-4 more big drives, and use them on the RAID controller for storage and backup only. You'll be happy you did.
Mikee wrote on 1/11/2003, 10:35 PM
Check here for PCWorlds "Top 10 Hard Drives", November 2002.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,105158,00.asp
frak wrote on 1/12/2003, 5:14 AM

I use a 120GB drive dedicated to my video editing without problem.

The raid 0/1 setup is going to be faster then a single drive (assuming you
aren't using it for redundency), since you are basically spliting a file in
two -- part goes to one drive, other part to the other drive. So your effective
throughput is doubled.

Is it worth it? depends.. my 120GB maxtor w/8MB cache has no problem keeping up
with my editing or capturing so it's up to you.

FuTz wrote on 1/12/2003, 10:00 AM
frak is rrright. But don't forget one thing (you probably know but...): with RAID 1+0, when you hook up two 120Go drives, you get 120Go of storage, NOT 240Go... And it is strongly recommended you get identical drives for this setup. Same brand, model, etc... not just two somewhat 120Go drives made by two different companies (or from the same company but coming from a different line of products).
I'm not sure you'll really see a big difference concerning speed (anyone's really been comparing here?)with RAID, but you'll definetly have a backup for your files.