SATA and EIDE mixed system

W

wheatgrinder

Hi,
I have a functioning system with all my software working OK. Windows XP, Running CS3 (Premiere and AE)
I have two HD's both EIDE. OS and Software on C: Movies and data on D:

I have about $100 for upgrading drives.
I can buy a 1TB SATA 7200 RPM, 32MB cache for this price.
Or two 500GB 7200 rpm, 16 mb cache.

Which do you think is the best option?

Alternatively.

Any sense in just upgrading the D: drive and leaving the apps and software running on EIDE?

Thanks
 
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The best course of action depends on what your motherboard will support and what you have room in the case for, and whether your power supply can handle more drives or not... there are several factors at play and the information you've provided isn't complete enough to give a good recommendation...

But, that said:

If your motherboard supports RAID, you'll get a nice zippy speed boost for video editing if you put two 500GB drives into a RAID 0 configuration.. It will appear as a single 1tb drive, but since it's spread across two separate physical disks it would have better performance.

Also there's really no reason you have to replace your existing data drive, just add on more. ;) (unless your computer won't handle more)
 
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Will Vincent said:
The best course of action depends on what your motherboard will support and what you have room in the case for, and whether your power supply can handle more drives or not... there are several factors at play and the information you've provided isn't complete enough to give a good recommendation...

But, that said:

If your motherboard supports RAID, you'll get a nice zippy speed boost for video editing if you put two 500GB drives into a RAID 0 configuration.. It will appear as a single 1tb drive, but since it's spread across two separate physical disks it would have better performance.

Also there's really no reason you have to replace your existing data drive, just add on more. ;) (unless your computer won't handle more)
Click to expand...

Forgive me, Im still not quite understanding.

(yes I know RAID 0 and MB will do it)
Are you suggesting I replace my C: (OS and APPs) with the array, or that I add the RAID array as another Data drive?

I'm trying to understand if I need to upgrade the OS\Apps drive or if I can leave it as is (EIDE)

Thanks
 
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wheatgrinder said:
Forgive me, Im still not quite understanding.

(yes I know RAID 0 and MB will do it)
Are you suggesting I replace my C: (OS and APPs) with the array, or that I add the RAID array as another Data drive?

I'm trying to understand if I need to upgrade the OS\Apps drive or if I can leave it as is (EIDE)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Just add another data drive. If your machine will handle it, there's no reason to get rid of what you already have.
 
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Will Vincent said:
Just add another data drive. If your machine will handle it, there's no reason to get rid of what you already have.
Click to expand...

Understood.

My fear is that my system drive (EIDE) is chocking my performance during pagefile and AE caching access. That spending the 100 bills on new data drives wont make any performance improvements.

On a related toipic: will the RAID0 setup make up for the smaller HD cache. (500GB drive have 16mb and the 1TB drive has 32 mb) Or do we care?

Thanks again..
 
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wheatgrinder said:
Understood.

My fear is that my system drive (EIDE) is chocking my performance during pagefile and AE caching access. That spending the 100 bills on new data drives wont make any performance improvements.

On a related toipic: will the RAID0 setup make up for the smaller HD cache. (500GB drive have 16mb and the 1TB drive has 32 mb) Or do we care?

Thanks again..
Click to expand...

You can specify that your pagefile live on a faster drive..

It's generally worthwhile to put the pagefile on a different drive than the system files anyway. I also like to set it up to be a fixed size, rather than that "let windows manage" setting..

In this instance I think you'll find the cache size is a non issue because almost certainly the 500GB drives have a lot better read/write/seek times than the 1tb drive
 
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Follow up and FYI:

I got the two seagate 500GB SATA drives.
Left the OS and other data drives as is (EIDE)

Configured the 1TBa RAID0 via my mother board setup screens..
Took a while to find the right WinXP RAID drivers for my MB (the ones on the vendors web site did NOT work, had to go to chipset southbridge vendor, VIA)

Move my swap disks and scratch file location to the RAID0 disk.

Also moved my stock footage for composting (VideoCopilot action pack is fun!) to the raid0.

Seems to work as expected.
 
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