RAID or separate hard drive?

[vorador]

Currently I have 2 IBM 60gxp's in my PC. They have been stripped using the RAID controller that came with my Abit KG7 motherboard.

The thing is that my PC isn't capturing video as fast or reliable as I hoped it would.

I only have these 2 drives and I have windows 2000 installed on my system. (But I can exchange it for a windows Me disk anytime)

Can somebody please tell me what is more effective:

a) running windows 2000 on my RAID array or
b) using 1 of the drives exclusively for video capture and the windows swap file? or perhaps
c) using Windows Me instead?

Any help would be appreciated,

 

[lakedude]

I don't think that the drives are the problem. Those are very nice drives and should easily be able to handle anything a consumer capture card throws to them. As and example a 2 hour dvd runs about 6GB in MPEG2 format 6GB \ 2 hours \ 60 min per hour \ 60 sec per min is about 830kB per sec. This means that the HD only needs to store under one megabyte per second for full DVD quality MPEG2 video. Any even semi new single HD can go way faster then that. The only way you could stress those monsters of yours is if you captured in MJPEG or some other really low/no compression format. Run Start/programs/accessories/system tools/system monitor and select edit/add item/file system/bytes written per second and run it while capturing. You will see the data rate is very low.

Your CPU and mostly your capture card have the most to do with the quality of the capture. If you don't like your results get a better video/capture card.

Remember if you ain't Muslim you ain't Shiite.

 

[Guest]

in two drive situation it is better to seperate them and have one drive for system, programs and such and second drive for capturing.

 

[Guest]

I am running Win2k, AMD1.4ghz, 512ddr & currently have 2 IBM 60GB GXP's. I run them seperate so that my OS and all my program crap is on one and I capture to the other. I will be getting another soon to keep my music on...as I understand the preferable scenario would be to keep music & video on seperate drives. For a while I had two IBM 40GB and one 60GB. I loved that setup because I was striping (RAID 0) across the two 40's...this was my capture disk. That ran FAST! I did the striping through the Win2k disk manager. Win2k will let you stripe using only two drives...as apposed to true RAID which I think requires 3 disks.

I LOVE the IBM's. For IDE, I wouldn't edit with anything else. (I've tried with unhappy results.)

 

[Guest]

having the audio and video seperated is very much depend on the video editing program you are using.
For example Adobe Premier in most cases multiplex the video and audio together so no real reason to use seperated drives and a Raid will give better resoults.
InSync speed Rasor is known to spliting the material and having two seperated drives will be better.

We normaly use a seperated small HD just for music that we use in lot's of projects. This way it's both faster and easy to manege.


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http/www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

 

[texas_techie]

On-board RAID is mostly cpu dependent. Unless you get a controller card with its own cpu, then your taxing your computers CPU to do the raid.
SO what kind of CPU do you have?

2. What kind of capture card do you have
3. What editing/capture program are you using
4. Is there anything running in the background
5. Do you have DMA enabled
6. How much RAM do you have. Is it DDR or Rambus
7. what format are you capturing into? mpeg4, mpeg2 ?

Answering some of these may help us at least diagnose your problem.

year 2010: Intel? Whose that?

 

[globe111]

I have a question about the "quality capture card" lakedude,

I have a jvc gr310 mini dv camcorder, and a $30 firewire card (I guess its the same as a capture card)...

running a XP1700 system, overclocked at xp1800
mushking 512 ram, wd ata100 hdd, winXP

I use adobe premiere software to capture.

The question is, will I get better results if I used the $800 card like the maxtor rt2500,
if so how much better?

XP 1700+ Soltek 75drv2 512 MB Mushkin rated 233 Radeon 7500 Audigy MP3+ Sony 16x10x40

 

[Guest]

what are results ?

Using a Matrox RT card or Pinnacle DV card or Canopus Storm card will not give you better quality, as your quality is limited by the DV format of the video.
Your 30$ fire wire card will give you exactly the same quality as my T3K in DV.

What the more expencive cards will give you is somthing else. SPEED !!!
You normaly will not have to render when editing, effects in real time and more.
Also excelerated export to Mpg2 in most cases.


Intel / AMD - <A HREF="http/www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white_news.html" target="_new">IBM are still the best</A>

 

[globe111]

so my card is good enough to do anything the big brothers can, accept not in real time, and much slower.

Mostly what I work with is editing home videos, so it should suffice for the time being.

thanks for the input.

XP 1700+ Soltek 75drv2 512 MB Mushkin rated 233 Radeon 7500 Audigy MP3+ Sony 16x10x40