Let me first start off by telling you my hard disk drive setup. I have 4 Hard drives as folloes: 1.)Maxtor 6L200S0 200gb 16mb cahce SATA- Partioned into 50GB for WinXp and Esential programs and 150gb for other non essential programs 2.)Maxtor 6Y200MO 200gb SATA- I use this to record video, Edit,Encode etc. 3.)Maxtor 6L080L4 80Gb IDE- This drive is old so I use it for music and data backup using Drive image 7.0 4.)Maxtor 6Y120P0 120Gb IDE- This drive is used soley for games( granted I am not a big game player) I am running a X2 4400+ and 2gb of Corsair dual channel value ram on an Asus A8v deluxe motherboard. My question is I am looking for suggestions on any way to optimize my setup. I have been thinking of buying another Maxtor 6L200S0 200gb sata hard drive and running a RAID 0 configuration. I am not sure if to bother since I have looked at the advantages of RAID 0 and everyone seems mixed on using it or not. Also if I did decide to do this would I set up the Raid for my Video only or for Windows and my programs? I am confused as 400Gb drive for windows and programs seems excesive and 400GB for video seems ok, but not needed. Would I benefit from RAID 0? I am best off with the setup I have? Or is there any other recommendations? I have looked at other options of RAID my motherboard offers , but since I have a backup drive with images Raid 1 is a waste. I am just confused as I have no idea what setup to go with and I set this system together very quickly. Some say Raid 0 is great and others say don't bother. Also some benchmarks look great and others look like only a few seconds difference. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
My PC's currently mildly wrecked (another story) but the best RAID setup in my opinion is how I did it: I have a separate 40GB IDE drive for Windows, but a partition on a RAID disk would probably be better. I then have two 250GB drives in RAID (totalling 465GB post format) with 6 partitions: M:/ Mp3 S:/ Software V:/ Video X:/ Games Y:/ Documents Z:/ Miscellaneous. That setup seems to work very well. I used Acronis DiskDirector to make the partitions. The values you wish to choose for your partitions is up to you, of course.
Why partition a raid 0 array into multiple little virtual drives, you've got folders and you could just name the folders VIDEO, etc? The overhead of those "virtual" drives would have to slow the raid 0 array down. If a Raid 0 array is set up with each drive on its own channel, like all SATA drives have to be, then you will see an increase in performance on large files, like video files, you'll see a smaller performance gain on smaller files and applications that use smaller chunks of data. Check out links. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel0-c.html http://www.acnc.com/raid.html Raid 0 is GREAT for video processing, not so good for program files as a disk problem can wipe out all the data on the array.
Actually i have my raid setup running two hard drives on the same ide channel and dvd burner and cd rom set on the other ide channel. I never noticed a performance difference having the drives on two seperate ides...plus i wanted my burner to be master ...not a slave under on of the drives.
So you think I should consider raid, but only for my video editing and just leave windows and my other small programs on my other SATA drive with no RAID. If I was to buy another disk drive and setup a 400Gb Raid drive for video would you recommend installing all my video software and encoders on this drive also? I completley understand where you are coming from because everything I read shows RAID 0 is only good for large files and does Windows really count as loading large files? I am strongly considering Raid 0 for Video as I use DV and my files sizes are around 40GB at times. Any other suggestions, but you think I should leave windows alone on its own SATA drive?
Windows being alone - without question. Given the enormous file sizes involved, i think raid is wise.
Windows being alone - without question. Given the enormous file sizes involved, i think raid is wise.
Thanks for the info you all ahve shedded some light on a newer topic for me. I think I may try raid 0 for my video stuff, but do you think I should install adobe, and my encoders on the raid drive also as right now I am loading them from a seperate partion on my windows sata hard drive. Or would this really make a difference. I guess having all video materials on the raid setup would seem more effecient. Maybe the raid setup would help my rendering times in adobe as it is funny I went from a 2.8E P4 to a X2 4400+ and it takes two minutes longer to render a 22min vid on the amd system. It could be the software though. Again thanks a bunch I am confident having winxp seperate would be best as any video I process it is constantly in then out so If the Raid system crashed I really would not lose anything important. Thanks a bunch Just everyone is telling me to use my motherboards raid features, but I would like to use them for what is best for my needs. Also do you think running games from my 120gb ide drive affects performance much? I have tried to tweak my X2 ssytem for maximum performance, but am finding software is where the downfall is. As for encoding an X2 blows all others away and it is amazing sometimes the cores work together on software that is not written for dual core. Thanks for all the insight
You'll have better performance with the program files on one disk (like the system disk) and the data on the raid disk. Data moves faster across the system bus than it does internally in the hard drive, especially with SATA since each drive has its own channel, IDE's operate 2 drives per channel. If you look at my sig. you'll see that I use a 74gb Raptor (SATA) as my Windows/Program File disk. The Raptor is a SATA drive based on a fast SCSI server drive and is faster than other SATA drives, so my programs load and fly. In video processing I use DVDRebuilder Pro with CCE Basic to back up my DVDs, I rip the disk to the Raid, I have Rebuilder's temp. work file on the Raptor and then the output goes back to the Raid array. So the data is always traveling across the system bus (the fastest way). This maximizes throuhput and processing. For more $$$ I could add a another Raptor and have a Raid 0 boot and another 250GB Hitachi, that would be close to the fastest setup, after which diminishing returns and overhead eat up any gains. Read the reviews on tomshardware.com and anandtech.com about the Raptor drive, it makes a real difference in Windows operation and program operation if you're looking for a fast solution.
Thanks I have thought of the raptor and read many great reviews. Also they have come down in price so maybe that would be a logical next step with a raid0 setup for my video file storage and the raptor for windows. I would make more since anyway since I partion my SATA drive into a 50gb section solely for windows I guess having a single scsi raptor drive of 74gb makes just as much since and would really take away the bottleneck in my system. Thanks to everyone input I appreciate all the links and advice I have read througha ll of them and have decided that in the future to go a single raptor drive for my boot drive, use different drives for programs and games and such and maybe build a Raid 0 array solely for storage of video files. Thanks a bunch to everyone
You're welcome, that's what we're here for! The Raptor may not be the be-all and end-all drive but it's certainly got the most grunt that actually warrants the price. RAID two raptors, shove Adobe on it, and watch it open quicker than you ever thought possible.
