This is what I have to work with:

i7 920, 12GB ram, 1 80GB Intel X25 SSD, PPro & AE CS4

Hard drives:
2 - 150GB 10k rpm Raptors
4 - 74GB 10k rpm Raptors
3 - 500GB
2 - 1TB (brand new)
3 - 250GB drives
1 - 8 port 3ware Raid controller & 5 available ports on Intel onboard Raid


I am in the process of upgrading my pc and I have too many hard drives to know what to do with.

From my experience and from what I've read, Premiere's "Media Cache" location is important to editing and rendering speed.

With that in mind, I am considering this setup:

4 74GB Raptors in Raid 0 or 5 for current project video
2 150GB Raptors in Raid 0 for Media Cache
2 1TB in Raid 1 to store original video
2 500GB in Raid 1 for photos & stock video

1 500GB in external for immediate backup
3 250GB drives as long term backup(fill em up and store elsewhere)

I like to have speed and security, so, please don't try and talk me out of Raid 1.

Has anyone used PPro and/or AE with a SSD? If so, what are your thoughts?

What are your thoughts about the 2 Raid 0 arrays for current project files and media cache?

Thanks.

I would advise against a 4 disk raid0, but go for a raid3, if the 3Ware supports it, otherwise go for raid5. With projects you don't want to lose any data due to a single disk failure. Better get some redundancy.

Why use raid1 for media, that can easily be recaptured and neglect that for projects, that can not easily be restored? It is a waste of storage room, and if you want to use raid1, do so for your projects, not your media.

Media cache is no problem on a raid0. It can easily be recreated.

If you already have the SSD, go ahead and try it. From what I have heard (heard, not experienced!) the read times are great, the write times deteriorate rapidly after some months of use and the TRIM function is not yet available to compensate for this deterioration. SSD's at the moment are way too expensive but may be attractive in 1-2 years time IMO.

I should have mentioned that the camera is the EX1 so recapturing is not possible.

With project files, I was thinking of Raid 5 with the 4 74GB drives but I wanted to see what other people thought about Raid 0.

With SSDs, the Intel X25 automatically "fixes" itself so that it doesn't suffer any performance degradation. The new X25 also supports TRIM controlled by the OS and Windows 7 will be released in 2 months.

I should have mentioned that the camera is the EX1 so recapturing is not possible.



Just use a separate 1 TB disk for backup of your SxS or MxR cards, even externally.