Gearing up for XP & Vegas 3...HD. dilemma! HELP!!

jmpatrick wrote on 9/1/2001, 10:13 AM
Hello fellow Vegans! I'm about to add some upgrades to my system and I need some advice. I'm going to be running dual P3 1GHz CPU's, 726 Megs of RAM, and Windows XP using NTFS. It's time to beef up the Hard Drives. My motherboard supports Ultra ATA100 RAID modes 0 & 1. Currently, I have 1 ATA100 drive, and also 1 Ultra160 SCSI drive connected to a Adaptec SCSI controller. I'm intrigued by the RAID capabilities of my M.B. (Abit VP6). Should I get 4 Ultra ATA100 EIDE drives and RAID them directly from the M.B. (and ditch the SCSI chain), or should I switch to a SCSI RAID controller (more expensive), and add a couple of Ultra160 SCSI drives. For what I would pay for the SCSI RAID and 2 mid-sized SCSI drives, I could pick up 4 larger ATA100 EIDE drives and RAID them with a LOT more storage space. I'm doing a lot of Audio-only Vegas stuff now...25-35 tracks of 24/96 audio with plug in's. Obviously, things are bogging a bit (although I haven't loaded XP with its NTFS yet). When Vegas 3 hits, I plan to add a Firewire card and start Video editing. The video sources will primarily be Mini DV, S-VHS, and 8mm through a A/D converter into the Firewire card.

So which way do I go? I want performance, and I don't have a lot of intensive experience with the ATA100 stuff. Can it handle the multiple video streams without dropped frames? Will I be sorry I didn't stick with SCSI? What about A/V optimized drives...are they necessary/beneficial? I've been looking at Seagate and Western Digital drives. Fibre Channel?? My gosh, I feel a migrane creepin' in.

Any thoughts out there?

jp

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 9/1/2001, 1:58 PM
You're opening a whole can of worms that many people will probably argue back and forth upon. I too was a long time SCSI believer in performance. After a few tests on my own system of SCSI vs. IDE, I am now an IDE believer and would build my next DAW with IDE drives. I believe the only real advantage that SCSI has over IDE is the amount of devices you can chain on a SCSI bus. With cheaper larger IDE drives that shouldn't be too much of an advantage. So the only advantage that I have with my SCSI card now is the ability to make a CDR burner tower with many SCSI CDR burners. My 7200 rpm ATA66 EIDE drive with DMA enabled can and simultaneously record 45 tracks. I imagine an ATA100 can do much better. I have no desire to playback more than 45 simultaneous tracks. My personal recommendation is to save the cash and go with the EIDE ATA100 drives, and buy a cheaper SCSI card if you want to add a CDR burning tower.
Chienworks wrote on 9/2/2001, 7:55 PM
Definately go for the IDE solution. You can get twice the drive space for
the same money, and you won't notice the performance difference. I
have two 40GB IDE drives RAIDed together and the performance is
terrific.

Keep in mind that you probably won't ever record more than a few
simultaneous streams even if you have hundreds in your project. An
ATA/100 bus should even be able to handle several Firewire video
streams simultaneously, but i can't even imagine recording more than
one video stream at a time having any really practical purpose unless
you're in live production, and then you're probably not going to be using
a "home" PC or Vegas to process your video.

As far as playing back, the only time you're REALLY playing back
multiple streams is when you are previewing your project, and who cares
about a dropped frame now and then? When you are wanting to see
your entire project picture & frame perfect, you will have rendered it to a
final output file and playing it back then will consist of just one video
and one or two audio channels. My old 300MHz with an ATA/33 drive can
handle that! The rendering process itself doesn't run in real time, and
can take as much time as it needs to process all the streams without
dropping any information.

A/V capable drives were all the rage a few years ago when cutting edge
IDE technology was barely reaching the specs of today's bottom of the
line drives. My 7200 RPM ATA/100 drive is much faster than the old A/V
drives. So don't worry about that.

One last comment ... let me recommend Western Digital. I've used
nearly 100 of their drives in various systems both at home and at work
and have never had the slightest problem with any of them. We've had
a couple of them running 24/7 for 8 years in a server and they still pass
scandisk without a single error.
jmpatrick wrote on 9/2/2001, 8:55 PM
Great advice...thanks!

I think I will go the IDE route. Next question: do I need to RAID in pairs (2, 4, 6, etc.) or can I run 3 drives. My M.B. board has 4 IDE connectors: IDE1, IDE2, IDE 3 & IDE4. I figure I'll put the system drive on IDE1, and the CDRW on IDE2. That leaves 3 and 4 for the RAID. Can I run 2 drives off of IDE3 and 1 off of IDE4 (all 3 RAIDed), or do I need to run 2 drives on IDE and 2 on IDE4 to work?

Thanks!

jp
stakeoutstudios wrote on 9/5/2001, 7:40 AM
you can choose, however many drives (1-4) for the raid setup, but you won't get much performance boost with more than two drives.

I'd get two IBM deskstars (60GXP, 40GB) cos they're lightning fast for audio. and stripe them together using raid 0. they're 7200RPM ATA 100 drives.

they're cheap too!

read more about hard drives & the like at www.storagereview.com

it'll help loads.

cya,
Jason