One harddrive sufficient?

david-ruby wrote on 6/22/2007, 9:45 AM
I just bought an HP is as fast a processor as I could get from them.
It comes with a 500 gig drive as well. Iam wondring if it is possible intead of trying o install another drive could I just use this drive.
It also of course has RAID software but no documentation on how to use any or all. LOL
Makes sense. ; )
Any thoughts?
My big problem is I am on a wireless network and it is too slow to transfer files or share between our NEW PC and Notebook. I am trying to find a simple solution to this. I need the wireless to supply the internet which it does. I have 4 usb storage drives I use for video on a hub that is connected to a switcher. You can switch the hub to be seen by 2 computers by a simple push of a button. Nice indeed.
BUT if one computer needs to render someting? It has all the drives so the laptop cannot do any work till the other is done.Bummer.
Is thee a simplier way to achieve this mess?
Ideas all welcome.
Thank you to everyone.

Sincerely,
David

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 6/22/2007, 10:00 AM
5 years ago i built a system from scratch
in that time i replaced the mobo, CPU, PSU and GFX card to suit my needs. Its STILL the same box it was though

throughout that time i started off with 2 hdd.. 80gb system and a 120gb media drive. Back then it cost a fortune

i now have 8 hard drives in this machine.
I work on 3 jobs at a time

I do not use raid

i have copious amounts of stock footage and music and keeping these seperate to my main media drives speeds up rendering.

DV i get 2x realtime output, HD a lil under realtime
this is using filter chains and MB2

this is all from a single core HT 3.0 extreme with 1gb ram
the reason why its so efficient is that unlike raid, each drive carries its own media.
Drive A has my video footaeg
Drive B my audio (although its rendered sepeartely, masters are always on tape)
drive C has my stock footage or lower thirds, overlays etc
Drive d is my project drive which is mirrored to drive e
drive f is my porn drive where i stash my naughty shit and all my games and anythign else which has nothign to do with work
And then i have a couple of other drives which house raw footage...

and so onand so on
Raids are good, but remmebr theres still only one head ,and if ALL your material is on one drive, and it fails, then ur screwed

OK so whats my point..
use the laptop for drafts, or smaller jobs
dont jump drives from machine to machien coz then it gets mssy with half jobs here and there..
in time when ur doign 3 longform edits a week and u can hardly keep up, good reliable workflow and "conveyer belt" like mentality does wonders.

I do drafts on the lappy while i babysit my son or when im watchign tv, i then move theproject and media to teh main system
I dont bother with the network, coz it jstu cant keep up
a sharing hub would be good, but if i were u id be VERY careful especially as whatever u do to each drive, the MBR is rewritten, in turn windows may puke.
Ive lost 3hdd's due to failed MBrs and even the likes of getdataback (recovery program) couldnt salvage some key work
david-ruby wrote on 6/22/2007, 11:13 AM
Thank you for the excellent reply.
My question is this. How do you hookup 8 drives to one machine? Usb? How do you work on one while rendering on another? Is that possible? Curios indeed here.
This new HP has no room to install anything inside plus the cabling for the drive is a small red wire. Not like our big blue ended cables with the tiny strands of cable meshed.
Open ears. ; )
David
Chienworks wrote on 6/22/2007, 11:18 AM
Why would you think you couldn't work on one while rendering on another? Computers are great at multi-tasking.

The small red wire is probably SATA, which is the new drive connection method that replaces IDE/EIDE.
JackW wrote on 6/22/2007, 11:20 AM
Hi David:

Connect your external hard drives using firewire and a firewire hub -- one firewire cable from the computer to the hub, multiple cables coming into the hub from your hard drives. You can also use the hub to input from a DV deck, camera, etc.

It's a good idea to have your operating system and program files on one drive -- typically the C: drive -- and your data files on the other drives. Also, make sure your drives are formated as NTFS rather than Win32.

Jack
david-ruby wrote on 6/22/2007, 11:29 AM
Hello. Sorry. Old dog here still went by the while machine rendered? Leave it alone.No heavy tasking. I love the render speed I get from the duo core intel though, but I will compromise the speed of the render if I fire up another instance of Vegas. That's a gimme.
I see what you mean though.
Thank you for eduction here guys. : )
I mean that.

David
J_Mac wrote on 6/22/2007, 1:37 PM
Use a Cat 5 crossover cable to hook up your laptop to your PC. Much faster transfers. John
david-ruby wrote on 6/22/2007, 2:52 PM
Is Cat 5 faster than usb hubs or firewire hubs?
Better for video over lines?
David
david-ruby wrote on 6/22/2007, 3:01 PM
Jack. Does fire wired hubs work if the harddrives are usb cabled?
The external drives are not firewire.
Thanx
David
JackW wrote on 6/22/2007, 10:19 PM
No. You'd need a USB hub. I have three printers connected to one of our computers via a USB hub and they work quite well. However, I've had trouble with dropped frames when using USB rather than firewire to acquire video, and I believe others on the forum have reported this too.

There's been a lot of chatter about firewire vs. USB, so you might do a search of the forum archives.

Jack
david-ruby wrote on 6/23/2007, 8:28 AM
Thank you Jack.
Anyone using a cat 5 cable connected from one machine to another?I tied this but cannot seem to get them to acknowldge each other.One a Vista another XP.
I just need to get my rendered veg over to the other computer to use in DVD Arch since my Vista won't use DVD Arch.
What a mess.

David
Chienworks wrote on 6/23/2007, 8:42 AM
Generally if you want to connect two computers with Cat-5 you have to either use a switch/hub inbetween or use a crossover cable. While the crossover cable is the cheapest and easiest solution, you may not find one in any stores anywhere as they're not very common. You can get a cheap switch at most any office or electronics store for probably under $30. Of course, to use the switch you'll need two Cat-5 cables, one from each PC to the switch.

There is also an advantage to using a switch instead of a crossover cable in that you can continue adding more computers to the network. Crossover cables only join 2 computers to each other and that's the limit.