Seperate Hard Drives?

[Ollie James]

Hi,

I read a thread earlier where someone was asking about how many drives they should have. It would appear that it is sensible to have 3 drives. 1) OS & Applications, 2) Capture Scratch & 3) Edit Files.

My question is, is there any reason why you can't put the raw video files on the same HDD as your edit files?

I'm about to put another couple of drives in my machine, as at the minute I'm running the Application & editing on the same HDD, which I know isn't ideal. I have constructed a neat folder structure that makes finding the files I'm looking for very quick:

MAIN PROJECT NAME DIRECTORY
- AE
- Audio
- Capture Scratch
- Encore
- Finals
- Images & Graphics
- Other
- Premiere Pro

This is working for me at the minute, but would obviously change very slightly if I moved all the captured footage over to a seperate HDD.

I hope the above makes sense?!

Thanks a lot,

Ollie

[Mike McCarthy]

RAID comes into play to alter the optimum config. In your case, your solution should be fine, but you may want to consider using a RAID array for your "project" drive if you are interested in improving performance.
The OS and Apps will be fine on a single dedicated disk (C: Drive) but the higher the data rate of the media you are using, the better the performance you will need, and the bigger you will want that array will need to be.
Now many people edit on their laptops, and technically things usually work just fine. (DSLR, AVCHD, HDV, XDCam, ets.) These recommendations are all for maximizing performmance in a desktop system. Most systems I setup, have a single disk for the C: Drive, and an array of four drives in Raid0 or Raid5 for the media. These arrays can sustain 300-500MB/s so they are well suited to be used for all aspects of media storage at once. (Captures, renders, and exports) Where your system falls within that spectrum depends on your budget and needs.

[Ollie James]

Hi Mike, thanks for your reply.

I'd be interested to know more about the RAID arrays that you mentioned, as I haven't had much experience of this before - I'll do some Google-ing! Any other information you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

[Mike McCarthy]

RAID arrays combine the storage from multiple hard disks into a single volume, with a number of trade offs.

RAID 0 Striping is cheap and easy, and multiplies your performance by the number of drives in the array. If one drive gives you 100MB/s then four of them should give you about 400MB/s (depending on your controller, and a few other limiting factors). The disadvantage is that since parts of every file are striped across all of the drives, if a single disk fails, the data on all of the disks will be lost, so it is less secure than a single hard disk.

RAID 5 adds parity to the mix, and allows you to recover data if one of the disks fails, at the expense of one drive worth of storage space. So an array of four 2TB drives will give you about 6TB of usable space. (4x2TB=8TB and 8TB minus 2TB for Parity data leave you with 6TB) The parity calculations are processing intensive, so the controller speed plays a large part in Raid 5 performance, but assuming a perfect scenario, you should expect performance to increase by the number of drives minus one. So 4 drives that usually provide 100MB/s each should give about 300MB/s in a RAID 5 array. Also, due to the parity and redundancy, data stored on a Raid5 array will be MORE secure than a single hard disk.

The added expense of RAID 5 comes from requiring one more drive for a given storage capacity and perfomance level, and needing a more expensive RAID controller card. For combining two identical drives for double performance, I recommend RAID0, but for anything larger than that, the risk becomes too high, and I would recommend investing in a RAID5 solution. I setup RAID5 arrays of four 2TB SATA drives connected to a four port Areca PCIe controller for most of the edit systems I setup. This gives me 6TB of secure media storage for well under $1000, assuming you have the space inside your case for the four additional drives.

[Robert Ellis]

Ollie and I are probably closer in set up. I've spend as much as I am able to spend and there are both shortcuts as far as a didicated videotographer would have it and all bases covered as far as a weekend hobbiest would have it. I've got a 6 core processor and 12 gigs of ram. I've got a 1TB standard 7200rpm hard drive that backs up to a USB 600GB hard drive. I've just installed a BluRay burner and a 300GB 10,000 sata drive. I can't spend another dime on this. OS and aplications on the 1TB drive. Un=edited video on the 10,000 drive and the USB can back up when I'm asleep. Where I'll have to do most compromise is having to burn off data on the 10,000 rpm drive to BluRay pretty regularly and I'll have to eliminate data from the backup drive before it get too full, leaving Blu Ray discs as my sole archives.
For a poor guy, I don't think this is terrible thinking.
Sorry Ollie. Not to hijack but it seems like we have some of the same questions.

[Tom Blizzard]

Originally Posted by Ollie James

Hi,

I read a thread earlier where someone was asking about how many drives they should have. It would appear that it is sensible to have 3 drives. 1) OS & Applications, 2) Capture Scratch & 3) Edit Files.
I'm about to put another couple of drives in my machine, as at the minute I'm running the Application & editing on the same HDD, which I know isn't ideal. I have constructed a neat folder structure that makes finding the files I'm looking for very quick:
MAIN PROJECT NAME DIRECTORY
- AE
- Audio
- Capture Scratch
- Encore
- Finals
- Images & Graphics
- Other
- Premiere Pro
This is working for me at the minute, but would obviously change very slightly if I moved all the captured footage over to a seperate HDD.
I hope the above makes sense?!
Thanks a lot,
Ollie

Hi Ollie,
That was my question and I sure found a great answer: (looks like your are right on)

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