Best RAID0 hard drives at DVinfo.net

Renat Zarbailov · March 7th, 2008, 02:50 AM

Can anybody recommend a reliable hard drive model/manufacturer currently best for RAID0 setup? I have a WD Raptor 10,000rpm 150GB set as a C: drive. I will also have a separate scratch disk drive. So the only thing left is choosing two identical drives.
I'll be editing in WinXP Pro SP2 using Premiere CS3 (update 3.1.1)

Any help is truly appreciated.

Thanks

Shawn McCalip · March 7th, 2008, 03:47 AM

I'm trying to plan the same thing for a purchase in the future, and I'm looking into picking up two 1TB hard disks made by Hitachi- Deskstar 7K1000 or something like that. They're listed on Newegg's site, and their prices have dropped significantly over the past few months. With projects in HD looming on the horizon and with the need to keep several projects on the drive to update periodically, the more space the better!

Ted Ramasola · March 7th, 2008, 07:47 AM

I've used striped barracudas for a while. Didn't have problems with them. i had 2 80 gigs, 2 120 gigs. All 7200 rpms.

Damon Gaskin · March 7th, 2008, 08:36 PM

I also have striped Barricuda's(3 of the 3.0 SATA 7200.10 drives) for my video drives and striped Barricuda's for my system drive also(2 of the 80GB 3.0 SATA 7200.10 drives)but I will probably purchase a few of the ES.2 drives by seagate with 32MB Cache soon for my video drives and throw the other 3 in my gf's machine. The ones I have had have been churning away greatly over time without any problems whatsoever on either array. I also use CS3 with the updates in HDV and they are wonderful to work with. I can constantly, if scrubbing the timeline quickly, see the hdd led going, but never a failure in well over a year(knock on wood)...

I would highly recommend their from experiences I have had with them. Before these I had two Seagate SATA I drives in a raid and they worked well also(in the gf's machine). My original 200GB IDE that is over 3 years old that I edited(SD w/Matrox X100 card) on is also residing in the gf's machine as her photo drive. The longevity is there as long as you have good cooling in your case. If you don't have that, no drive is going to last too long.

Seagate has a great warranty on their drives also.

Renat Zarbailov · March 8th, 2008, 03:34 PM

Great points about cooling and longevity Damon!
I wonder if 32MB cache actually improves editing as opposed to 16MB.

Thanks

Damon Gaskin · March 8th, 2008, 09:12 PM

Not sure to be honest, but from the reports on the drives, people are getting some pretty good sustained speeds from these. Not to mention they are built tougher.. Honestly, I love these things compared to the raptors.. I have a raptor and as I am typing this, it's sitting on my desk collecting dust. When I first got the 80 gig drives, I tested them against the raptor that I have and the speed really wasn't that much different in real world applications because of the perpindicular.

So to answer and think about your question, I am really not sure, but I remeber the boost from 8 to 16 made a difference in how the timeline felt to me. Then jumping to the raid, it was another great improvement. Then the perpindicular drives, another improvement. If I didn't need more space, I would leave it the way it is to be honest as pretty much everything is instantaneous overall in the editing app. Matrox makes a difference also without a doubt(RTX2), but even in non accelerated apps, there is a huge difference in performance and accessing information..

Renat Zarbailov · March 9th, 2008, 09:09 PM

I found this drive (http://tinyurl.com/2m3qgz) that I think will be great for RAID0 when paired, totaling 1TB. The thing is that I am encasing the whole PC into a carry-on luggage. So the weight is major concern. So 150GB raptor as a C:drive two RAID0 seagates and one cache and previews drive. I am, however thinking about jumping ship with Premiere Pro CS3 and start using Sony Vegas Pro 8. I've been hearing lately that Premiere CS3 3.1.1. is bloatware even on a fast hardware config. Premiere is very intuitive and I feel at home with it, I have been with it since version 3.
Damon, you mention the Matrox RTX2 card. If I move to Vegas then it makes no sense to have this card right? Do you really get everything realtime using this card when in Premiere? Does it justify the hefty price for it?

Thanks gain!

Renat

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damon Gaskin

Not sure to be honest, but from the reports on the drives, people are getting some pretty good sustained speeds from these. Not to mention they are built tougher.. Honestly, I love these things compared to the raptors.. I have a raptor and as I am typing this, it's sitting on my desk collecting dust. When I first got the 80 gig drives, I tested them against the raptor that I have and the speed really wasn't that much different in real world applications because of the perpindicular.

So to answer and think about your question, I am really not sure, but I remeber the boost from 8 to 16 made a difference in how the timeline felt to me. Then jumping to the raid, it was another great improvement. Then the perpindicular drives, another improvement. If I didn't need more space, I would leave it the way it is to be honest as pretty much everything is instantaneous overall in the editing app. Matrox makes a difference also without a doubt(RTX2), but even in non accelerated apps, there is a huge difference in performance and accessing information..

Damon Gaskin · March 10th, 2008, 09:04 AM

Hello Renat!

Lets see, I am sure those drives would be good. I am currently at work, so I will try and respond fully and more thouroughly later. But.... I love Seagate drives.. They are whisper quiet, run cool, and for me have been pretty much bulletproof. And that is saying alot with the RTX2, which leads me to your next inquiry...

Ok, lets see, the X2... What can I say? Is it worth the price with Premiere? OMG yeah man! The one thing that people face is the specific hardware that the card does require, but once your past that, comparing it to the software alone is really no comparison... I will put it like this.. Unless your loading your timelines to death with effects, you will not render much, and when you do, the rendering is fast.. Extremely fast. I am running a quad(Q6600) and rendering(once again on the rare occasion that I have to) is ridiculous.. The only things that I find myself having to render are the things like the shine effects and the dynamic linked comps. The card really makes it as easy to work with HDV as DV. Even moreso with simply color correcting, scaling, manipulating the size of either video or photos(and I am talking about RAW pictures) and more. There really are few things that produce the red bar. I commonly work with timelines that are a good 3-4 layers simply because in all honesty I can. It's "NOTHING" to that card! And that is not a lie! You do need a pretty hefty gpu and the matrox cards work best with ATI cards. I would recommend a 3850 or 3870. I have a 1950 and every time I updgrade graphic cards or cpu, the experience with the card keeps getting better and better.

So is it worth the price? Yeah! LOL Especially if your doing things with it day in and day out.. Yeah.. I commonly leave my machine up and running or loop a timeline overnight just to every now and then test the machine and hardware smoothness... You get audio meters on capture, direct manipulation on the program monitor for your 3D dve's(which by the way, you can set as your default for the motion effect in premiere)Seriously, the card is nothing to sneeze at! And then, when you do have to export a file, the achillies heel of it and Premiere at this point is H264 and flash export. Those things take a while(on my system, I am getting 3-4X realtime to export these formats), but the results are pristine. This is the most time consuming thing.. For shooting out an AVI(I-frame), mpg, windows media, it's nothing for the card and most(depending on your effects you use) are definately less than realtime depending on your preset. I usually select the largest frames and bit depth also and on average, my exports from HDV downconverted to these formats range from 1/2 to 3/4 realtime... It ups your workflow that much.

It is easy to kind of get carried away with the effects and get into a rendering situation because the effects are soo easy to workwith and you can load the timeline with customizable effects and then just keep going and not have to wait to view them. I sometimes have to turn off say a layer or so if I don't want to render to get a look at the effect, but then once I get the effect the way I want, I turn the layer back on, render and keep on going.. It's that easy...

So yes, it's worth the fork over of the funds... And if your going to switch to Vegas, nope, the card only works with Premiere...

If you have any more questions, fire away...

Damon Gaskin · March 10th, 2008, 09:33 AM

I just thought of this.. It's better to see than to tell someone.. These are some of my "10 minute edits". I honestly only spend 10 minutes on the edits and whatever I come up with, that is what I do.. These were all realtime and the photos were raw SLR pics and were moved and the video was scaled to 140% in realtime and all of the effects also. Each little clip is on it's own timeline with no nested sequences. I didn't have to render any of the effects or the resulting clips.. I just edited and exported, no rendering or redlines whatsoever.. Most were 3-4 layers of video and titles with as you will see opacity, color corrections, move and scales, cross dissolves, etc and for the 03/01 a blue matte underneath it all. All realtime and once again, done in 10 minutes.

http://rchelidigest.blip.tv/#714590

Renat Zarbailov · March 12th, 2008, 12:25 AM

Thanks Damon!
The clip looks great. How do you make the edge fade of the Picture-in-picture?

I have just discovered that the RAM I have gotten only works in x64 environment :( Newegg doesn't even mention about x64 exclusivity (http://tinyurl.com/2qvjbu). Corsair doesn't advice to install this Ram on x86 OSes.
That means that if some software will not work in x64 WinXP Pro then I am screwed since I will use this sys on the road (I'm encasing it into a luggage called Xcase). I will most probably be switching to Vegas Pro 8, but install the Adobe Production Premium CS3 just for the unfinished projects.
Here is the list of things I am getting to make this sys.

ASUS P5K Premium/WiFi-AP
Q6600 with mini-ninja heatsink
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
XFX nVidia 8600GT card
C: 150 WD Raptor,
D: Two Seagate Barracudas 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB in RAID0 config
E: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 as a scratch disk for Premiere Pro CS3
Corsair HX620W PSU
Adesso foldable keyboard
Wacom Cintiq 12WX
All totaling around $2400

Any comments regarding editing using 32bit video-editing in 64bit environment?

Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damon Gaskin

I just thought of this.. It's better to see than to tell someone.. These are some of my "10 minute edits". I honestly only spend 10 minutes on the edits and whatever I come up with, that is what I do.. These were all realtime and the photos were raw SLR pics and were moved and the video was scaled to 140% in realtime and all of the effects also. Each little clip is on it's own timeline with no nested sequences. I didn't have to render any of the effects or the resulting clips.. I just edited and exported, no rendering or redlines whatsoever.. Most were 3-4 layers of video and titles with as you will see opacity, color corrections, move and scales, cross dissolves, etc and for the 03/01 a blue matte underneath it all. All realtime and once again, done in 10 minutes.

http://rchelidigest.blip.tv/#714590

Damon Gaskin · March 12th, 2008, 04:43 PM

Thanks man... And the border and PIP is a Matrox effect and parameter, so yup matrox hardware only for that one..

And for the build, sounds good! I haven't done an Asus board in a while, but they are fun to say the least! Also, that is a bummer about the ram.. That is kind of weird though and I have never run into that. It's very interesting to say the least.

Duane Steiner · July 18th, 2008, 06:16 PM

Going to be getting a new system just for editing (use Premiere Pro CS3) and want to have a drive/drives just for video. Thinking of doing a pair of drives (500GB) in a RAID 0 or just a single larger drive (1TB). What would be the advantages of the RAID 0 set up? Also what is the difference between the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2? One more questions, how do the Samsung drives compare to the Seagate as they seem to be less money for the same size? Thanks.

Harm Millaard · July 19th, 2008, 02:33 AM

Samsung versus Seagate:

Cooler, quieter, faster. I guess those are the only major advantages of the Samsung.

Renat Zarbailov · July 19th, 2008, 02:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duane Steiner

Going to be getting a new system just for editing (use Premiere Pro CS3) and want to have a drive/drives just for video. Thinking of doing a pair of drives (500GB) in a RAID 0 or just a single larger drive (1TB). What would be the advantages of the RAID 0 set up? Also what is the difference between the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2? One more questions, how do the Samsung drives compare to the Seagate as they seem to be less money for the same size? Thanks.

I was also curious about noticeable speed differences between going 2X500GB RAID0 as opposed to one solid 1TB.
Anyone has some wisdom to share on this?

Thanks

Harm Millaard · July 19th, 2008, 03:58 AM

In a (R)aid0 with 2 disks the transfer rates are almost double that of a single disk, but the drawback of losing all data due to disk failure also double. That is the reason it is better called an Aid0, due to lacking redundancy. Another thing to consider when comparing different disks is the number of platters. The less the better for temperature, noise and speed. That is why the Samsung 1 TB is better IMO than the Seagate, three platters versus four and hence those major advantages.

Here is an example, even though it is not a comparison between the same capacity disks.

March 7th, 2008, 02:50 AM	#1
Renat Zarbailov Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Brooklyn Posts: 125	Best RAID0 hard drives Can anybody recommend a reliable hard drive model/manufacturer currently best for RAID0 setup? I have a WD Raptor 10,000rpm 150GB set as a C: drive. I will also have a separate scratch disk drive. So the only thing left is choosing two identical drives. I'll be editing in WinXP Pro SP2 using Premiere CS3 (update 3.1.1) Any help is truly appreciated. Thanks __________________ Sincerely, Renat Zarbailov of Innomind.org

March 8th, 2008, 03:34 PM	#5
Renat Zarbailov Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Brooklyn Posts: 125	Great points about cooling and longevity Damon! I wonder if 32MB cache actually improves editing as opposed to 16MB. Thanks __________________ Sincerely, Renat Zarbailov of Innomind.org

July 18th, 2008, 06:16 PM	#12
Duane Steiner Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: CA Posts: 195	Going to be getting a new system just for editing (use Premiere Pro CS3) and want to have a drive/drives just for video. Thinking of doing a pair of drives (500GB) in a RAID 0 or just a single larger drive (1TB). What would be the advantages of the RAID 0 set up? Also what is the difference between the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2? One more questions, how do the Samsung drives compare to the Seagate as they seem to be less money for the same size? Thanks. __________________ www.speedandmotion.com

July 19th, 2008, 03:58 AM	#15
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	In a (R)aid0 with 2 disks the transfer rates are almost double that of a single disk, but the drawback of losing all data due to disk failure also double. That is the reason it is better called an Aid0, due to lacking redundancy. Another thing to consider when comparing different disks is the number of platters. The less the better for temperature, noise and speed. That is why the Samsung 1 TB is better IMO than the Seagate, three platters versus four and hence those major advantages. Here is an example, even though it is not a comparison between the same capacity disks. Attached Thumbnails

March 7th, 2008, 03:47 AM	#2
Shawn McCalip Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Anchorage, AK Posts: 315	I'm trying to plan the same thing for a purchase in the future, and I'm looking into picking up two 1TB hard disks made by Hitachi- Deskstar 7K1000 or something like that. They're listed on Newegg's site, and their prices have dropped significantly over the past few months. With projects in HD looming on the horizon and with the need to keep several projects on the drive to update periodically, the more space the better!

March 7th, 2008, 07:47 AM	#3
Ted Ramasola Trustee Join Date: May 2005 Location: Allen, Texas U.S.A Posts: 1,117	I've used striped barracudas for a while. Didn't have problems with them. i had 2 80 gigs, 2 120 gigs. All 7200 rpms.

March 7th, 2008, 08:36 PM	#4
Damon Gaskin Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn Hills, USA Posts: 217	I also have striped Barricuda's(3 of the 3.0 SATA 7200.10 drives) for my video drives and striped Barricuda's for my system drive also(2 of the 80GB 3.0 SATA 7200.10 drives)but I will probably purchase a few of the ES.2 drives by seagate with 32MB Cache soon for my video drives and throw the other 3 in my gf's machine. The ones I have had have been churning away greatly over time without any problems whatsoever on either array. I also use CS3 with the updates in HDV and they are wonderful to work with. I can constantly, if scrubbing the timeline quickly, see the hdd led going, but never a failure in well over a year(knock on wood)... I would highly recommend their from experiences I have had with them. Before these I had two Seagate SATA I drives in a raid and they worked well also(in the gf's machine). My original 200GB IDE that is over 3 years old that I edited(SD w/Matrox X100 card) on is also residing in the gf's machine as her photo drive. The longevity is there as long as you have good cooling in your case. If you don't have that, no drive is going to last too long. Seagate has a great warranty on their drives also.

March 8th, 2008, 09:12 PM	#6
Damon Gaskin Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn Hills, USA Posts: 217	Not sure to be honest, but from the reports on the drives, people are getting some pretty good sustained speeds from these. Not to mention they are built tougher.. Honestly, I love these things compared to the raptors.. I have a raptor and as I am typing this, it's sitting on my desk collecting dust. When I first got the 80 gig drives, I tested them against the raptor that I have and the speed really wasn't that much different in real world applications because of the perpindicular. So to answer and think about your question, I am really not sure, but I remeber the boost from 8 to 16 made a difference in how the timeline felt to me. Then jumping to the raid, it was another great improvement. Then the perpindicular drives, another improvement. If I didn't need more space, I would leave it the way it is to be honest as pretty much everything is instantaneous overall in the editing app. Matrox makes a difference also without a doubt(RTX2), but even in non accelerated apps, there is a huge difference in performance and accessing information..

March 10th, 2008, 09:04 AM	#8
Damon Gaskin Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn Hills, USA Posts: 217	Hello Renat! Lets see, I am sure those drives would be good. I am currently at work, so I will try and respond fully and more thouroughly later. But.... I love Seagate drives.. They are whisper quiet, run cool, and for me have been pretty much bulletproof. And that is saying alot with the RTX2, which leads me to your next inquiry... Ok, lets see, the X2... What can I say? Is it worth the price with Premiere? OMG yeah man! The one thing that people face is the specific hardware that the card does require, but once your past that, comparing it to the software alone is really no comparison... I will put it like this.. Unless your loading your timelines to death with effects, you will not render much, and when you do, the rendering is fast.. Extremely fast. I am running a quad(Q6600) and rendering(once again on the rare occasion that I have to) is ridiculous.. The only things that I find myself having to render are the things like the shine effects and the dynamic linked comps. The card really makes it as easy to work with HDV as DV. Even moreso with simply color correcting, scaling, manipulating the size of either video or photos(and I am talking about RAW pictures) and more. There really are few things that produce the red bar. I commonly work with timelines that are a good 3-4 layers simply because in all honesty I can. It's "NOTHING" to that card! And that is not a lie! You do need a pretty hefty gpu and the matrox cards work best with ATI cards. I would recommend a 3850 or 3870. I have a 1950 and every time I updgrade graphic cards or cpu, the experience with the card keeps getting better and better. So is it worth the price? Yeah! LOL Especially if your doing things with it day in and day out.. Yeah.. I commonly leave my machine up and running or loop a timeline overnight just to every now and then test the machine and hardware smoothness... You get audio meters on capture, direct manipulation on the program monitor for your 3D dve's(which by the way, you can set as your default for the motion effect in premiere)Seriously, the card is nothing to sneeze at! And then, when you do have to export a file, the achillies heel of it and Premiere at this point is H264 and flash export. Those things take a while(on my system, I am getting 3-4X realtime to export these formats), but the results are pristine. This is the most time consuming thing.. For shooting out an AVI(I-frame), mpg, windows media, it's nothing for the card and most(depending on your effects you use) are definately less than realtime depending on your preset. I usually select the largest frames and bit depth also and on average, my exports from HDV downconverted to these formats range from 1/2 to 3/4 realtime... It ups your workflow that much. It is easy to kind of get carried away with the effects and get into a rendering situation because the effects are soo easy to workwith and you can load the timeline with customizable effects and then just keep going and not have to wait to view them. I sometimes have to turn off say a layer or so if I don't want to render to get a look at the effect, but then once I get the effect the way I want, I turn the layer back on, render and keep on going.. It's that easy... So yes, it's worth the fork over of the funds... And if your going to switch to Vegas, nope, the card only works with Premiere... If you have any more questions, fire away...

March 10th, 2008, 09:33 AM	#9
Damon Gaskin Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn Hills, USA Posts: 217	I just thought of this.. It's better to see than to tell someone.. These are some of my "10 minute edits". I honestly only spend 10 minutes on the edits and whatever I come up with, that is what I do.. These were all realtime and the photos were raw SLR pics and were moved and the video was scaled to 140% in realtime and all of the effects also. Each little clip is on it's own timeline with no nested sequences. I didn't have to render any of the effects or the resulting clips.. I just edited and exported, no rendering or redlines whatsoever.. Most were 3-4 layers of video and titles with as you will see opacity, color corrections, move and scales, cross dissolves, etc and for the 03/01 a blue matte underneath it all. All realtime and once again, done in 10 minutes. http://rchelidigest.blip.tv/#714590

March 12th, 2008, 04:43 PM	#11
Damon Gaskin Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn Hills, USA Posts: 217	Thanks man... And the border and PIP is a Matrox effect and parameter, so yup matrox hardware only for that one.. And for the build, sounds good! I haven't done an Asus board in a while, but they are fun to say the least! Also, that is a bummer about the ram.. That is kind of weird though and I have never run into that. It's very interesting to say the least.

July 19th, 2008, 02:33 AM	#13
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Samsung versus Seagate: Cooler, quieter, faster. I guess those are the only major advantages of the Samsung.