OT: Hard-drive set-up?

MyST wrote on 5/23/2004, 5:55 AM
With talk of RAID going around, I'm starting to wonder about the "old standard" of having separate drives for system, media, and projects.
I looked around a bit this morning and it seems raid is faster, but if one drive fails, all data is lost. Is this accurate? Is the extra speed really worth it if you factor that in?

A set-up consisting of an 80gig SATA system drive along with a 120gig SATA media/projects drive would be plenty fast, would it not? Also, as mentioned to me by Ted from Sony tech support, the advantage to separate drives is if my system drive becomes corrupt (do to a virus for example), is that my media/projects drive should be OK since the virus will affect the system files only. I won't have to re-install all my media if this happens.
Would the RAID speed advantage be better used by gamers?
I can't afford to lose all data if one of two drive fails. Especially if I've got customers' projects underway.

Input?

Thanks

Mario

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/23/2004, 6:08 AM
On the other hand, if you're not using RAID and one of your drives dies, everything on that drive is lost. I'm not sure why folks get so much more concerned about this with RAID.

When i've used RAID it's been for mirroring rather than striping. This keeps duplicate data on a second drive so that if one of them dies then all the data is still safe. There's no gain in speed or space this way, but it is a lot safer.
rebel44 wrote on 5/23/2004, 7:32 AM
Actually, the most what you my need for OS could be 20G, Partition the firs drive for space for OS and for othe "junk". The second drive dedicate to capture .Windows will place file on second hd"WUTEMP" what are recovery files unless you will turn it off-what it is good idea.Keep recovery on systen HD.If I am not mistaken the RAID like to have two indetical hd size.Advantage of serial versus pararell it is the transfer rate.If you really want to have file protected-I would use firewire hd, but they are expensive at this time.
Just keep windows off the second drive (swap,recovery) and you will be fine.
Have a fun
TVCmike wrote on 5/23/2004, 6:57 PM
Here's the deal - unless you're dealing with losslessly compressed or uncompressed footage, you generally don't need the speed that RAID 0 offers. DV is almost magical in the sense that very low bandwidth yet very high quality. It's only 3.6MB/s per DV stream. Most modern 7200rpm hard drives can sustain 25MB/s write speeds and about 35MB/s read speeds. That means you can do almost 9 DV streams in real time. 99.9% of people aren't dealing with uncompressed video, so RAID on the capture/work drive isn't an issue.

What WILL be a significant performance boost, however, is getting a 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptor for your system drive. One of the biggest performance bottlenecks is the speed of the system drive, from boot-up to application loading. Getting a 73GB 10,000rpm WD Raptor will be a great investment for your system.

So, in summary, for the system drive get the Raptor, and for a work drive get any single SATA or PATA drive that meets your project size requirements, preferrably something over 100GB in size.
MyST wrote on 5/23/2004, 7:24 PM
OK, how about this set-up then?

The 36gig version of the Raptor for Windows and apps (Vegas, SF, Acid, Cinema 4D, DVD-A, etc) and a 120gig SATA drive partitioned 1/3 for media (Acid loops, Vegas loops, etc) and 2/3 for projects (Acid, Vegas, C4D, Worldbuilder, etc). Keep in mind that I'll also be able to backup projects on DVD-RWs.

Mario
TVCmike wrote on 5/23/2004, 11:01 PM
That's a pretty good setup. The 73GB Raptor is a bit faster than the 36GB, but both are much faster than your average hard drive. Be aware that, if you're sensitive to noise, that these drives make a bit more noise than your average drive.

As for your work drive, I'd seriously consider getting something a bit larger. I know one of my clients wanted to capture a 6-hour tape, but he only had a 100GB HD (93GB real space). The problem there was that 6hoursx13GB/hour = 78GB for his DV footage, which really didn't leave him much working room for the rest of his project. It can get cramped pretty quickly. You should really consider investing in as big a work drive as you possibly can, probably in the range of 200GB. You'll thank me later, trust me.

Western Digital and Seagate are my favorite brands, and you don't even have to go SATA if you don't want to. It makes virtually no difference in real-world performance at this point unless you buy a SATA drive and SATA controller with Native Command Queuing (and - trust me - you won't find one).