I'd keep them all the same, 7200rpm. This ways I would be keeping my "control" for any issues the same? I have a very simple set up and I have used this approach to date and it works.
if they're all 7200 yet have different performance, I'd have the fastest drive as the one that has most of the content I'm pulling from when I render. Then I'd render to the mid or slowest one. Reading needs to pull from multiple streams, writing is only one stream. On big jobs, I always render to a different drive. That help at all?
I'd put the OS on the fastest - Can't stand slow booting / application loading. I've tried different combinations of single drives and RAID arrays with each on OS / Read From source / Write to Rendering with projects that take a couple hours to render as well as short fast ones. The only places noticable speed differences show up is in:
1. OS Boot Up and application loading
2. On a write constrained operation (some rendering like AVI or WMV, I forget which one). Since I edit AVCHD the write speed is not a constraint and the drive is not a factor in overall speed of Vegas.
Really depends on what you are working with which way I would go with the fastest drive.
I'd use the raptor for the OS, Black for the source material, and segate for the write to drive - however a suggestion for future upgrade is to RAID 1 the source so you don't risk losing your data if a disk fails. The caviar black is a great drive - I have 5 of them: 1-TB and 4-640s in RAID10.
Thanks, I am in agreement with you. I was just trying to see what others with more experience would recommend. The WD black is not too expensive.
I plan to back up all my original mts files onto bluray anyways and only copy what I need to the source drive. But raid 1 with 2 WD black is not a bad idea.