Hard drive questions, using 3 disk total, 1 system 1raid 0

[Dave Morgan]

I have a win7 x64 and have 3 disk total, 1 disk is for programs/OS, the other 2 are Raid 0 1.5gb 3.0gb total.

Question is about the Raid, Should I only have my current video project(s) loaded on that disk for optimal speed?

Because as of now I have 2GB of "other" files and "437GB of current video projects.

So should I find another place for the "other" files, and just have current video projects on the RAID0 ?

[Eric Olson]

Don't use RAID 0 for important files. It has no fault tolerance and is twice as likely to fail as a non-RAID system. Backup and then convert the array to RAID 1. This will increase read speed slightly because the data is now redundantly available on either drive, but more importantly this will provide fault tolerance for the array.

[Jay West]

Originally Posted by Dave Morgan

I have a win7 x64 and have 3 disk total, 1 disk is for programs/OS, the other 2 are Raid 0 1.5gb 3.0gb total.

Question is about the Raid, Should I only have my current video project(s) loaded on that disk for optimal speed?

Because as of now I have 2GB of "other" files and "437GB of current video projects.

So should I find another place for the "other" files, and just have current video projects on the RAID0 ?

I would agree with Eric if you editing professionally, but, for your situation, a RAID 0 is just fine. What you need is an external drive to which you frequently and regularly back-up your video and editing projects.

Your real problem is using that RAID 0 for all those "other" files. Right now you have the RAID almost 85% full, which will really slow down its performance. For a video drive, you want to keep disk usage down below 60%. (If you want more details, Harm Millard has explanations of this here in DVInfo and on the Adobe forums.) You definitely want to find another place for the "other" files. Some of the files --- if they are word processing documents or the like --- will be fine on you OS drive (unless it is an SSD).

I strongly suggest you get some additional drives. Get at least one large-capacity USB 3 or eSATA external drive and regularly and frequently back up the video and project files from your RAID. Get another large hard drive in the system (or another external drive) and move the rest of the "other" files there.