Hey guys,

I'm excited to report that my new HDV Edit system just arrived. I loaded up my Vegas 6.0d and DVDA. Before I download the Cineform HD Connect and capture some footage, I thought I'd check to see how the hell to use a Raid 0 drive array. I've read that Raid 0 is the best array, I've only previously used 1 OS drive and 1 storage drive. I've now got the 3-320gb Seagates listed below. 1 for the OS and 2 for storage.

I'm going to do some more research before getting started but I welcome any comments/suggestions.

Thanks.

Here's the system:


Case
Antec P180 ATX Advanced Mid Tower Aluminum Case 4X5.25 1X3.5 6X3.5INT No PS

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.40GHZ 1066FSB 4MB

Operating System
Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Motherboard
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe ATX LGA775 975X DDR2 2PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 GBLAN

Memory
OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-12 240PIN DIMM Dual Channel

IDE Hard Drives

3 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive

Video Card
Sapphire Radeon X1950 XT 625MHZ PCI-E 256MB 1.8GHZ GDDR3 VGA DVI-I HDTV Out

Power Supply
Thermaltake TR2 550W ATX12V2.0 20/24PON AMD Intel Power Supply W/PFC

DVD Writer
LG GSA-H22N DVD+RW 18X8X16 DVD-RW 18X6X16 Dual Layer 8X

If you're at raid 0 on the ICHR7 bus, you're set. Your Sata II drives should provide approx 110-120 Mbps sustained data transfer, with burst much higher. Raid 0 implemented in hardware (as it should be on that board) just presents a 640GB drive to the OS, with data striped across both. If you lose one of these drives, you've lost the entire volume. Add another drive in there and you could run a 4 disk RAID5 (just over 1TB) or run RAID 10 (mirrored RAID 0 for 640 GB) Raid 10 is the fastest way to run your disks, and maintain redundancy in case of drive failure. You need to get Vegas using your raid 0 array now for scratch etc.

If you want some free speed, the Core 2 Duo processors can be very easily and safely overclocked on that motherboard. Just go into bios and select one of the overclock profiles (10, 20, or 30 %) or adjust your front side bus to increase the processor speed. This cooler (http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/Products.aspx?pid=1260) will keep operating temps around 40C even during 100% CPU loading...and takes about 5 minutes to install. Asus has released quite a few bios updates for the P5W, so you should make sure it is up to date.

I'm running a 2.13 GHz E6400 quite happily at 3.1 GHz.

Thanks Dennis!