HDs and RAID for VIDEO-PC

[HHM]

Video-editing is totally new to me, VEGAS and LIQUID is ready to be installed,
and a new OCed Q6600 is in build, from the vegas forum it seems that most
users don´t realy whant to deal with the raid-troubles,.. general suggestion
is "just use two good disks" (since rendering read/writes at once if possible)

So I go for at least two nice new 7000.11, 500G, 32M Cashe, 105 MB/s,...

However others seems to praise raid-speed for video-work, so I wonder:

1. how much more performance would I have if I used two of
these disks in raid-0, (yes I could live with the risc) ,...

2. Is a controller-card much better than build-in "intel-matrix-raid"

3. Am I right assuming that in raid-o cashe-size would sum up also ?

thanks for any help

 

[rpstewart]

I wouldn't use a single RAID array for video editing, the "use two good disks" argument is very sensible. If you're reading one big file and writing out another at the same time you ideally want two independent disks (or arrays) to remove any I/O contention by reading from one and writing to another.

In answer to the specific questions

1) In terms of sustained transfer you're looking at about a 70-80% increase with two disks and possibly 100-120% with three (at a guess).

2) For RAID0, RAID1 or RAID10 then a controller card isn't any use because there's no specific processing required. For RAID5 or RAID6 then a decent card is pretty much essential.

3) No, the disk caches work independently.

 

[HHM]

I wouldn't use a single RAID array for video editing, the "use two good disks" argument is very sensible. If you're reading one big file and writing out another at the same time you ideally want two independent disks (or arrays) to remove any I/O contention by reading from one and writing to another.

Yes ! absolutely right ! I sure want seperate source/destination discs or
array, (I will return my exact idea later in this posting)

Sorry for being a little unclear, this part of the question was more "general"
as to how big a part the HD-Speed has in the big picture, (total render-time
etc.), since it is always a combination between CPU-Power and HD-Speed,
if the HD-part is neglible then the reason for raid would be very weak

1) In terms of sustained transfer you're looking at about a 70-80% increase with two disks and possibly 100-120% with three (at a guess).

Like said, no experience, but sure it sounds like a welcome inprovement

2) For RAID0, RAID1 or RAID10 then a controller card isn't any use because there's no specific processing required. For RAID5 or RAID6 then a decent card is pretty much essential.

I am so happy you cleared out this issue, then I am able to use on-board
intel matrix controller on my upcomming gigabyte P35 or 965 based board

I wouldn't use a single RAID array for video editing,

Looking at intels site I am still confused, ideally I would like to use their
6 channel matix-raid something like this: (would it be good & possible ?)

DISK1 non-raid (OS system drive)

DISK2 first raid-0 (first out of two)
DISK3 first raid-0 (seccond of two)

DISK4 seccond raid-0 (first out of two)
DISK5 seccond raid-0 (seccond of two)

DISK6 reserved for external eSATA connection

(Alternatively just 2 discs could be used if "105 Mb/s is more than enogh")

3) No, the disk caches work independently.

hmm ,.. yes they do ,.. what I meant was that when two discs with 32 MB
cashe each are gathered in raid-0, each file would be split between the two
discs, ant thus only occupy half the space in cashe, relatively, in other
words the new raid-0 array should feels and functions like a simular drive
but with the double cashe-size, in this case 64 MB, (and that sounds nice)

Thanks for the help sofar, hope for a little more light on the matrix thing

Henrik

 

[HHM]

I did make a new thread speciffic about the Matrix question

btw your pic´s are cool