Installation/Hard Drive Question(s)

dalydose wrote on 1/14/2003, 5:45 PM

I've asked bits of this question before, but now I'm ready to do it and I want to know what y'all think.

My 'main' hard drive is a 120GB 5400 rpm drive that has WinXP and the rest of my software and data on it. I just scavenged from another PC of mine a 100GB 7200 hard drive which better meets the specs of VV3. The 'main' (5400rpm) is the Master and the scavenged (7200rpm) is the slave. My questions are as follows:

1. Is there *ANY* truth to the thought that it's better to have your fastest hard drive as the Master? I've heard people say it, but I've never heard a convincing explanation. I would prefer *not* to have to move everything, but if there truly is an advantage, I would consider it.

2. What installation strategy should I use with VV3? I've considered the following:

a-leaving VV3 program on 'main'(5400rpm) drive and using scavenged (7200rpm) for media. This is thinking that the benefit of 7200rpm would apply to grabbing/recording data to the drive vs. using the program

b-Putting both VV3 and media onto the 7200rpm drive. I just wonder if having each drive do seperate tasks would be more efficient and maximize performance.

c-Putting both VV3 and media onto the 7200rpm drive, but partitioning that drive and seperating them that way. This method would put both programs on the same physical hard drive, but I can still routinely format the media area. (BONUS QUESTION: How often should the media drive be reformatted.

3. File Format - Since I have XP, I have a choice of File System formats. I've heard that FAT is faster, but NTFS is more reliable. Is there a general preference out there?

Thanks, in advance for tackling my questions. :)

Jeff Daly

Comments

VideoDentist wrote on 1/14/2003, 10:48 PM

NTSF allows large file transfers over 4GB where FAT doesn't. (From experience) Thats one advantage of choosing NTSF when formating the drive.

harryset wrote on 1/14/2003, 10:54 PM

IMHO. . . I'd install VV on the fast drive, use it to store media and burn. Definately keep your operating system and your editing stuff separated. NTFS has been really good for me. If I wasn't doing editing, I'd use the fast drive for my operating system.

snicholshms wrote on 1/14/2003, 10:58 PM

Lots of good questions that are critical to enjoying or struggling with and NLE.
I agree with Marquat. Small system drive (60GB 7200) for your apps. Install all your SoFo apps Vegas, SoundForge, ACID on this drive.

Your second drive should be 100 or 120GB 7200rpm for your video media. Inside Vegas there are folders for capturing and pre-rendering that are installed automatically on your system drive. Put these on the video media drive. Also, you might get a removable HD tray or two from Case Outlet. There website is http://www.caseoutlet.com/Mobile_Rack/Single-default.htm#IDE. Then check out www.vipower.com (they make the HD trays) and look for the square in the lower left hand side "SwapManager Software Free Try!". This will allow you to hot swap hard drives without shutting down your PC. If you are serious about video, then you may eventually need the space you get with having several hard drives.

Use NTFS format on all drives. If you want to partition, you might have one on your system drive for any WAV/MP3 files. I started that way but now I have one removable HD for just music media...over 22GB! But music files don't fragment as much as video files. So this will be OK to start. Which leads to...

I always defrag when the drive is over 15% fragmented. That can be after any large rendering of a project.

Have fun,

Steve

DataMeister wrote on 1/14/2003, 11:13 PM

Hi,

I have no statistical proof for what I'm about to say. This is just a logical conclusion that I'm drawing from my 15 years of general computer fanatacism.

I would say that leaving the drives the way you have it should be fine. The biggest advantage to having the OS on a 7200 rpm drive would be to have a faster virtual memory space. Vegas however probably won't use a lot of physical RAM unless you are doing big slide shows or something. Even then it may limit it's RAM usage. I'm not sure. But generaly Vegas pulls it's data straight of the hard drive and if you are using a couple of data streams at once (ie. Layered video) then that is going to double the amount of data coming off your drive. So using the 7200 rpm drive as a data drive may give the best performance for video.

The difference between slave and master doesn't seem to affect the data transfer on the two drives that I have. Unfortunately I can't say for sure whether or not the Master drive gets priority over the slave if data is requested by the cpu. However I could see how that would be a likely design since most of the time the Master drive is the boot drive.

Hope some of this helps.

JBJones

fmc wrote on 1/15/2003, 12:29 AM

Take a look at striping identical drives. More efficient way of handling video. There are drawbacks with striping.

Jerry

dalydose wrote on 1/15/2003, 9:56 AM

Jerry (aka fmc) - At the risk of exposing my ignorance I have to admit that I have NO idea what 'striping identical drives' means or how to do it or even investigate it.

Thanks all for your suggestions! I will look again at the one's that don't require any additional purposes for now. Heck, I've been doing it all on one 5400rpm drive up until now so this is a step up for me. :) Considering the 'no mo money' scenario what is the next best step? From what I've read I'm gathering it is:
1. Leave my system (Windows and other programs) on the 5400rpm drive
2. Leave VV3 (program) installed on 5400rpm drive as well
3. Use 7200rpm drive EXCLUSIVELY for VV3 media
4. Do frequent defrags

Also, if anyone has any indepth answers to my original questions, it would help me a great deal. The more I learn...the more I want to know!! :D

THANKS!

Jeff

BillyBoy wrote on 1/15/2003, 10:34 AM

Going back to the original question. Can you/should you mix a 5400 and 7200 drive?
While you can, you probably don't want to. It depends on how you set them up. It isn't called a "master" "slave" relatioinship for nothing.

If you have a slower drive as master and a faster drive as slave, fair chance the slave will run no faster then the master. It isn't the RPM difference, that won't change, it is the throughput of the drive which is in part determined by how your computer's BIOS reacts to the drive. Also different brands of drives just don't get along well with others either. So generally it isn't that good an idea to mix a IBM with a Maxtor or a Western Digital... at least not on the same IDE channel. Mileage varies, since there are so many models of hard drives on the market.

That brings us to the important part; DMA mode. A older drive will likely be set by your BIOS to run a mode 2 or 3 maybe 4. A newer driver probably supports DMA 5 or 6. If you connect such a newer drive as a "slave" to a slower master, the slave may not be capable of running anywhere as fast as it is rated and you could end up with both drives being no faster that that old master.

This all applies to IDE channels. You can get away with mixing if the drives are on seperate channels or if on a seperate controller card.

If you're not sure what the computer jargon of IDE, DMA, Ultra DMA, LBA, EID mean...
check out http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=53