i use the Promise SX4, a 34gb raptor for system files and 3x200GB seagate (7200rpm) hard drives in raid0 for 558GB of hard drive space.

i just wanted to get an idea of how other people utilize what space they have.

I have two systems.

A laptop with builtin 80 GB harddisk (unsure what exactly) and
a desktop with onboard UDMA133 connected drives totalling
60 GB or something. There is also a Promise Ultra TX2 133
controller in that system. In addition I have a 160 GB external
firewire/USB2 Maxtor drive.

I've got a couple of WD 74GB raptors striped as RAID 0 running off the on board ICH5 SATA RAID on my i875 Gigabyte MB, these are used for all my uncompressed (SD) footage for editing and compositing. I have a couple of 200GB WD SATA (7200rpm) drives as RAID 0 on the other SATA controller for General video storage and editing DV. The Raptors run pretty damn quick off the onboard RAID, i saw a review a while ago in which they came out as the fastest 2 drive SATA RAID 0 setup around, i dont know if this is still the case but they work fine for me.

On my next dual opteron system I'm planning to build im going to go for an 8 channel PCI-X SATA RAID card running 5 74GB raptors in RAID 5, anyone got any suggestions on which card? Ideally im looking to deal with uncompressed 720p @ 25fps.

Sam.

http://www.samsharpe.com

a little over a terrabyte of HDD space.

As for controllers, i use ur normal everyday mouse and KB (MS Wireless Desktop Elite with wireless mouse etc etc.)
BUT, as i use Vegas, i use a Yamaha RS7000 Workstation through midi to control my envelopes etc etc

with a TB of space you can dump 70+ hours of DV footage and edit from that!!! =^). good enough for even Lord of the Rings! i was thinkin about that... then i realized that i didn't need that space yet and my 500gb is doing me just fine. 35+ hours if more than enough to make 15min shorts or even 2 hrs movies! =). good stuff guys.

You could archive projects on there.

In pro environments, that can be very useful when clients come back 6 months later asking for changes.

If it won't fit on one or two DVD RWs, I make them buy a hard disk and then I put the disk on the shelf.

100 Gigs is what, $80 these days?