Have you got an ABIT motherboard? If yes, check this adress:

http://www.sudhian.com/faqs/

This really is a "jackpot site" for those like me who made the mistake of buying the KT7-RAID early version. So much things to update and tweak... you'll find LOTS of info there.

HI Guys, thanks for the info.
Im running an Asus Board with upto date bios etc. I've downloded the latest drivers from their website fr the RAID ide controller, its a PCI card and ive set everything up in the RAID bios, the drives(as one drive) are recognised in My Computer and i can read and write to them, there both Maxtor 80 gg 7200rpm drives that ive been using on there own and capturing to without any dropped frames at all, so its defaintyl not the drives, im just stumped as to what it can be!
regards
Simon

Who makes the card? If is an off-brand, who makes the controller chip (promise, highpoint, etc.)?

Did you check that website I posted. They have a whole section on Raid issues.
Here is another:

http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

John

As John said, but also check for any issues with the chipset your m/board uses. Via chipsets from time to time have had their issues streaming a lot of data over the pci bus.

mike

Hi John
Ill be honest i totally missed the website you recoomended, ill go give it a look now.
The card i have is this:

http://www.ivmm.com/eio/products_ap1680.html

i cant seem to see the chipset on the actual card,

regards
Simon

simonwin,
Many people have set up RAID drives to capture video, and have totally given up because of just the thing you mention -- dropped frames.

I have tried two setups, all with latest drivers, bios, and configs, on Promise and Highpoint controllers, and wasn't able to overcome the problem.

My suggestion is get a big, fast drive on your EIDE Primary Slave, use it for capture, then transfer the files to the Raid drives for storage and archiving. This setup is working very well for me.

I'm sure there are people successfully using Raid for video capture, it just may that it's not worth the bother for some, including me.

Take a look at this recent thread for more thoughts on the subject:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=147976&Page=0

thanks for the link Musicvid, heres what im planning:

Primary master- 40Gig 7200 for OS and Vegas
Prmiary slave- 120Gig 7200rpm, for capture

Secondry master- Pioneer DVD-R drive
Secondry slave - 60Gig drive for general storage

Raid 0- 2 x 80Gig 7200,( 150 as one drive) for storage of pre captured DV files.

My only worry now is that theres twice as much chance of losing my stored DV data as the files are striped across both drives, so if one fails i lose data on both,lol
guess i need another 2 80gigs to back up my backups:>)
thanks again for all the info guys, its appreciated
regards
Simon

I'm surprised to hear the problems with the RAID setups. The machine I built 6 months ago was planned around 4 40GB Maxtors on a Highpoint 4 channel controller (1 drive to a channel). It has worked flawlessly as my video drive in RAID 0. Sisoft Sandra reports 50MB/sec with over 90 in burst. In contrast to the previous single Maxtor drive on a slower machine, I have *never* had a missed frame reported by VV3.0.

Two questions: have you tested the drives for throughput? Sisoft is free. I would try that. Second, you didn't mention which OS you use, but is it possible you're using hardware RAID and software RAID simultaneously?

As far as safety is concerned, I *should* use 0+1 with my 4 drives but I guess I like to live on the edge. Someday I'll get another big ol' drive (that will make 6 in this chassis), and use it to drive image the entire RAID array.

David

simonwin,
I would suggest one tiny change. If you don't create an array, the Raid controller will act as a standard IDE. That way you won't lose both drives' data if one goes like in a striped system. Unless you need the speed or redundancy, the non-array may actually be more stable.

DRM,
My problem was not with disk transfer speed, which was way up there (40's I think) but rather with bus traffic, at least that is my suspicion. Even keeping the HPT and capture on their own dedicated interrupts didn't eliminate the drops completely. I'm sure some hardware combinations can pull it off, mine didn't.

Hi David
Thanks for the reply, i'm using windows XP, but im a bit confused now by you saying software and hardware RAID setup.

All ive done is instlall the card and its drivers disc, NOT the raid monitoring utility that comes on the other disc with the card, im pressuming this is what you mean??
After inserting the card, i get a thing comes up on startup asking me to set the drives up to raid 0 or raid 1 and a couple of ther things. I set them up to raid 0. Then when windows boots up i formatted the two discs(that showed as one) with partition magic, then re boot and it shows as one big drive.
regards
Simon

"If you don't create an array, the Raid controller will act as a standard IDE. That way you won't lose both drives' data if one goes like in a striped system. Unless you need the speed or redundancy, the non-array may actually be more stable."
Thats excellent, i wasnt aware that was even possible, here the funny thing, that what i actually wanted to do when i bought that card, but saw all this RAID 1 and RAID 0 thing and pressumed they had to be set to one of these!!
Im gonna try both ways again and see what results i get with Sisoft and if its worth using them as RAID 0 for the speed or as seperate drives
many thanks
regards
Simon

I think what Dvaid was talking about is using the OS to treat 2 drives as a RAID setup without going to the bother of installing RAID card. Check Tom's Hardware for info, tests etc. on how this is done. The way XP tries to be helpful, suppose it's worth a look in case while setting up your RAID...

mike