Hello,
my new PC Pentium IV 2800 MHz has 3 HDs and Asus P4CE 800 Deluxe motherboard.
1) "C" HD for OS Win XP Pro and the software for editing (80 gb)
2) "D" HD for putting in it music (storage) (80 gb)
3) "E" HD for avi files for editing. It is the biggest HD (120 gb)
I don't like Raid 0, what raid do you suggest me, please?
The raid has to be in "D" HD? Is it better?
I don't know at all about PC technique, I will report your advice
to my technician. What driver I have to download precisely, please?
thanks
Fogar:
Your usual question is "my computer is too slow". I assume that
is why you are thinking of using a RAID for storage ?
Things that will make the computer faster:
1) Dual channel memory. Insert two matching DIMMs on your motherboard,
in the slots indicated in the manual. This will increase the
memory bandwidth, and video editing will be moving a lot of
data around. Low latency memory will help a little bit, but if
you don't have money to waste, is not absolutely essential.
2) "Clock rate is king". Increasing the clock rate fed to the
processor and memory, will make the machine faster. Check
with your technician about all of the technical issues with
overclocking.
3) Smooth dataflow using a separate source disk and
destination disk, while editing. Eliminate unnecessary
disk seek operations, by using a separate disk for
the "read" data and a separate disk for the "write" data.
That encourages "streaming" of the data.
For (3), say you buy another 120GB drive, which we will call "F".
If the "E" drive is plugged to the IDE cable of the Southbridge
while the new "F" drive is plugged to the IDE cable of the
Promise 20378, then when the disks are accessed while editing,
there is no conflict between reading source data and writing
out the editted data. The work flow looks like this:
Video edit
Disk "E" --- read-data ------------------ write-data ---> Disk "F"
hardware assist
When disk "E" and disk "F" are separate from one another, the
disk head on each disk can read linearly without having to do
repeated "seek" operations.
The thing is, for many video editing applications now, the
video data is always compressed in one form or another. The
data rate for real time playback is low enough, that a RAID
is not needed for it.
If you do decide to set up a RAID stripe, then one tiny error
and the contents of the two disks are lost. It is much harder
to do data recovery on a broken RAID array, than on a single disk.
If you decide to set up a RAID mirror, that protects the data
a bit, by using a redundant disk. But, if the power fails in
the middle of a write operation, the data on both disks is
affected at the same time. You still need to back up your
data to external storage media, even if you are using a RAID
mirror, so there is little benefit for desktop applications.
Also, as a computer user, you have to be more knowledgeable
about what to do when the RAID breaks. There is more to know
about the hardware than when using simple disks.
I think if you buy one extra disk, a 120GB disk "F", and
connect it to a separate IDE cable, that will give you as
much benefit as setting up a RAID.
Setting up a RAID would make sense, if the data rate required
was more than a single disk could sustain (say >40MB/sec), and
I doubt you edit video that way, as a 120GB disk would not
hold a lot of uncompressed video data. (The movie would be
very short, if the video was completely uncompressed.)
HTH,
Paul
