Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 5/13/2008, 8:43 AM
This comes up every two months. Kelly (Chienworks) will tell you it doesn't matter, and I will tell you that it does. He's probably more correct for most work. The issue is nothing more or less than the fundamental fact that you cannot read and write from the same hard drive at the same time. Therefore, if you have a 13 GB, one hour DV file and you need to do nothing but cuts, then when you "render" it to a new file, if you render to the same drive as the original media, it will take twice as long as if you render to a physically separate drive.

However, as you start to do more to the video (add fX, etc.), the rendering time goes up, but the overhead of reading/writing stays the same. Thus, the difference as a percentage of the overall render goes down.

I realize that this is answering a slightly different question than you asked.

The answer to whether to keep the video on the OS/Programs drive is simple: it makes backup very difficult. The ideal thing to do is to keep your C: drive small (use a partition program) and keep only the O/S and programs on that drive. Use an image backup program to create an image of that drive. The C: drive on most of my computers has about 6 GByte of actual data. It takes about seven minutes to backup, and the backup fits on a single DVD. Thus, I backup frequently. If something goes wrong, I put in a new disk drive, run the restore, and ten minutes later I am back and running.

By contrast, if I put the media files on the same drive, those files will be hundreds of gigabytes. An image backup (which is the only kind that will let me instantly restore the entire O/S and program structure) will take hours and will require dozens of DVDs or an external drive. The restore will also take hours.

Thus, partitioning the initial drive into C: and some other drive letter, and allocating about 10 GBytes to C: and the rest to D: is absolutely, positively the ONLY way to go. It makes a HUGE difference in the sustainability of your computer. I don't think I've ever seen anyone disagree with this method of setting up a computer.
reberclark wrote on 5/13/2008, 9:08 AM
John, Thank you for your invaluable info. Sorry to bring up such an oft-discussed topic. Maybe Kelly could provide his perspective now?

Thanks again!
Larry Clifford wrote on 5/13/2008, 9:38 AM
Look here for some ideas: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=588222
reberclark wrote on 5/13/2008, 10:10 AM
Big Red, Very informative thread! Thanks for the link.
rmack350 wrote on 5/13/2008, 10:19 AM
In addition to making backups more orderly by keeping your data on a separate partition, if you capture media to your boot drive you run the risk of filling it, and once you do that you've put yourself in a bit of a spot.

If you capture to a separate drive, or even simply to a separate partition, you protect the boot partition from being filled. Most standard windows setups have a dynamic page file that grows and shrinks. If you fill the partition, the page file can't grow.

Rob Mack