Is it possible to make a single project using two HDs ?

sirbellog wrote on 5/26/2002, 12:48 PM
I'd like to know : is it possible to use captured video which is stored on several hard drives (at least, 2..), for a SINGLE project (from edit to print to tape, of course) ?
That's because I have 2 medium sized fast hds in my PC.
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PS :
complementary -and more generic- question (you'll guess I'm not a pro, with that !) : if I make 2 partitions on a hard drive, does fragmentation affect only the partition where I make changes, or the whole drive ? And can I defragment just one partition, or do I have to do it on the whole drive ?

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/26/2002, 12:51 PM
Don't know about partitions, but I use 2 20gig harddrives for capture. It works fine, just leave some disk space overhead on each for temp files and such.

Dave T2
FadeToBlack wrote on 5/26/2002, 1:22 PM
sirbellog wrote on 5/26/2002, 1:27 PM
Good news !
So thanks to both of you, I'll use two hds, and will make 2 partitions on the bigger one, so I can have some specific room for video on one partition , and for other stuff on the other one !
Chienworks wrote on 5/26/2002, 5:01 PM
I have 3 drives, 20GB, 40GB, 40GB. My projects often have files strewn all over all of them. Vegas doesn't care. You drag the file to the timeline from wherever and it uses it. Rendering can also split the file over multiple drives if there isn't enough space on the first drive to hold the output file.

To answer your other question, fragmenting is local to it's partition. Of course, it's possible that something may cause fragmentation on other partitions too.
imaginACTION wrote on 5/26/2002, 5:47 PM
Don't forget the most critical issue is keeping your captured video and audio on a physically separate HD from the one your system operates from. Imagine two HDs with two partitions on each. Drive 1: C & D Drive 2: E & F. Normally Windows will be on C. Don't capture video to D, but rather to the separate HD, either E or F. This makes life far easier for the hardworking heads on Drive 2 without being interrupted by system-specific HD activity on Drive 1.
FadeToBlack wrote on 5/26/2002, 9:48 PM
Stiffler wrote on 5/27/2002, 3:21 AM
Crap, I'm jumping again... where I shouldn't...but here I go...

You have your OS on one drive, then the other drive is for storage, right?

They say you should have a separate drive just for video editing (storage).

So, my question is, do you have to partition the storage drive? I don't think you need to partition the storage drive.

$0.02 :)

PeterWright wrote on 5/27/2002, 3:39 AM
My drat's worth:

I have never had a partitioned drive, including C. Where possible, I capture on one of my other EIDE drives, but if space is short, I sometimes capture onto C, into the same partition as the OS, and if kept defragmented it will usually capture at 12 Mb/sec, three times the data rate needed for DV.

Also, spreading files for a project around different hard drives should make it easier for the computer - all HD reading heads can be working simultaneously, instead of one set of heads doing all the rushing around.
Caruso wrote on 5/27/2002, 5:50 AM
Chien:
How do you get VV to split a rendering session to more than one drive/partition/etc when space gets short? I didn't know you could do that. I believe my session would crash if I specified a location where space wasn't sufficient.

Thanks in advance for your additional clarification.

Caruso
Chienworks wrote on 5/27/2002, 9:21 AM
Caruso: hmmm. Now that you mention it, i'm not sure. It could be that i'm running Windows 98SE and Vegas is splitting the output up into 4GB files. It seems to automatically roll over to the next drive. Maybe it's following the disk management preferences i've set up for Video Capture.
Chienworks wrote on 5/27/2002, 9:26 AM
It is never necessary to split a hard drive into multiple partitions unless the drive is physically larger than the maximum space allowed by the BIOS and operating system. There are some who believe that partitioning allows for some performance gains and for easier maintenace of the file systems. There are others who believe that modern computers are fast enough that these points are moot, and find all the extra partitions to be an annoyance factor. I won't tell you which group i'm in, but if you read through my other posts on the topics it should be pretty obvious ;) It's really up to individual preference.
SonyEPM wrote on 5/28/2002, 8:28 AM
"How do you get VV to split a rendering session to more than one drive/partition/etc when space gets short? "

This can't be done automatically. You could render two separate files manually- DV is ~ 228Mb/minute.