Hard Drive Stradegy for video editing

[Deeger]

I have 2 X 120GB Western Digital ATA 133 and just picked up a pair of
Seagate 160 GB SATA Drives. This is on a P4 2.6 with 2 GB DDR corsair memory
on an Asus p4g8x motherboard. I have an All-in-Wonder 8500 video card.

This board has the ability to RAID the SATA Drives and I have been
experimenting. I like the snappiness provided by the RAID striping but have
yet to try video encoding, which I've always found excruciatingly slow.
I've heard that keeping the read and write drives separate is a must for
fast encoding. I am wondering if the bandwidth increase provided by raid
would offset the benefit of keeping the drives separate. Furthermore, Should
the OS be separate from both source and output video. Technically I could do
such if I introduce the ATA 133 drive into the mix.

I'm thinking of several strategies:

1 - Raid the SATA Drives: making 1 big virtual drive with 2 partition a
10-15 GB for the OS (separated for ghosting purposes) and the leftover for
input output.
2 - Keep SATA separate. Drive #1 Has both OS (XP home) partitions and then a
partition for source video and capture. Drive #2 for output
3 - Introduce an ATA into the mix to keep all three aspects separate.

What do you think? As you can see I'm looking for speed, but quality is
paramount.

Thanks for any help in advance, Donald

 

[Rod Speed]

I have 2 X 120GB Western Digital ATA 133 and just picked
up a pair of Seagate 160 GB SATA Drives. This is on a P4 2.6
with 2 GB DDR corsair memory on an Asus p4g8x motherboard.
I have an All-in-Wonder 8500 video card.

This board has the ability to RAID the SATA Drives and I have been
experimenting. I like the snappiness provided by the RAID striping but
have yet to try video encoding, which I've always found excruciatingly slow.

You may find that that hasnt got much to do with the drive config tho.

I've heard that keeping the read and write
drives separate is a must for fast encoding.

That can be over stated with modern hard drives.

I am wondering if the bandwidth increase provided by raid
would offset the benefit of keeping the drives separate.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt. Depends on the circumstances.
The short story is that RAID isnt usually needed with modern hard drives.

Furthermore, Should the OS be separate
from both source and output video.

Even thats arguable. If you have enough physical ram for the
application, and the app uses it properly, and you dont do much
else when video editing, it may not make much noticeable difference.

Technically I could do such if I introduce the ATA 133 drive into the mix.

And it may well be quite adequate for the OS performance wise.

I'm thinking of several strategies:

1 - Raid the SATA Drives: making 1 big virtual drive
with 2 partition a 10-15 GB for the OS (separated for
ghosting purposes) and the leftover for input output.

Thats not a very good approach, because the heads have
to move between the OS and IO partitions quite a lot.

The only real advantage is that the IO partition
isnt likely to get as fragmented as with them
both in one partition with large IO files.

2 - Keep SATA separate. Drive #1 Has both OS (XP home) partitions
and then a partition for source video and capture. Drive #2 for output

Might produce a noticeable improvement in performance, or it might
not. You'd really have to try it with what you are using for video editing.

3 - Introduce an ATA into the mix to keep all three aspects separate.

That might produce the best result. Again, you'd really have to try it.

What do you think?

I dont bother trying that anymore, it makes my head hurt.

 

[Deeger]

Thanks for the suggestions and observation. Keeping the drives seprate now
but will experiment.