I was wondering if your average sata drive spinning at 7200 rpm is fast enough for DVC PRO HD/50 media.

Also what sustained data rate should a drive have if you want to edit DVC PRO HD.

I'm thinkong DVC PRO HD isan entirely different animal equipment wise than HDV. If I decide to go the HVX route I want to know what I'm in for.

Standard SATA drive will be no problem, it'll slow as you fill it so don't expect to get to any more that 70% full.

Today's good hard drives can sustain roughly 40-50 megabytes/sec across most of the drive, which works out to ~300-400 megabits/sec. A single layer of full-quality DVCProHD is 100 megabits/sec, so shouldn't be a problem on a non-fragmented drive. For multi-layer editing you'll probably want something other than a single-drive setup.