OT: RAID needed with Cineform or m2t?

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/21/2009, 7:29 PM
I finally resolved one of the issues with Cineform today and now I'm needing some input.

Will using an eSata external RAID 0 array improve performance of playback on the timeline utilizing CIneform AVI's with VP9? Or am I better off just sticking with a single eSata 7200rpm drive? I've become very happy with the WD Black Line HD's but want to know if I'm wasting my money on going with a raid setup.

Also - how well does external USB work when editing on a laptop - using the external drive as the source material drive?

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt
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Desktop: OS: Win7 x64 | CPU: Q6600 | Mobo: Intel DG33TL | 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel RAM | Boot/Apps Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Audio Drive: Seagate 160GB 7200RPM | Video Drive: WD 640 7200RPM Black Series | Vid Card: nVidia GT7200LE

Laptop: Dell Latitude D620 | C2D 2.0Ghz | 4GB G.Skill RAM | OS: Win7 x64 | Primary HD: WD 320GB 7200RPM | Video HD: WD 250GB 7200RPM

Comments

jabloomf1230 wrote on 12/21/2009, 8:04 PM
A RAID setup is good for copying big files to and from your PC over a gigabit network. It is also a necessity for capturing uncompressed 1080i over HDMI, like you might do with an Intensity Pro. But, the limiting factor usually, with previewing and rendering is both the speed of the CPU and the number of cores. 2 Xeons/8 cores at 3.3 GHz ---> best (at least these days), quad core next (your desktop unit), then dual and single. At some point it might also help to have RAID, if you have 8 cores, but I doubt that's what you are looking at.

An external USB drive might become the limiting speed factor on a laptop, but since the vast majority of laptops are only slow single and dual core (your laptop), I doubt that it would matter, unless the laptop only has USB 1.x.
farss wrote on 12/22/2009, 1:54 AM
The question is how many tracks?

Typically each track is coming from a different part of the disk, add a track and you double the amount of data per frame and you make the heads move around more. So now it's not just the data going through the connection, you've also got commands to move the heads etc.

From what I read RAID 0 is fast to read and slow to write, keep that in mind. Also the striping calcs are more CPU load unless using hardware controllers.
From my experience every little bit helps, how much is hard to estimate until you try it in your scenarios

Bob.