Is it better to capture to the system drive or a separate

[MrMungus]

drive? How much does it matter and why?

TIA

[SLICK RICK]

I always like to capture to a seperate hard drive. The price has come down so much on hard drives that it is very inexpensive to have 2 or 3 hard drives.

SLICK RICK

[BrainStorm69]

The main reason it matters is because Windows occassionally accesses the hard drive for "housekeeping matters" and/or to use the swapfile (or I guess it's called the pagefile these days). This can momentarily interrupt/slow down the transfer rate of your capture, perhaps to the point where you drop frames. That is why ideally, you want not just a separate hard drive, but a separate hard drive on a separate (usually your secondary) IDE channel.

[ZippyP.]

And make sure it's defragmented, it's easier to do that on a physically separate drive.

[fmctm1sw]

I too cast my vote for separate. I did a test with virtualdub bencmark program. The separate drive had a far higher max capture rate...

[MrMungus]

The main reason it matters is because Windows occassionally accesses the hard drive for "housekeeping matters" and/or to use the swapfile (or I guess it's called the pagefile these days). This can momentarily interrupt/slow down the transfer rate of your capture, perhaps to the point where you drop frames. That is why ideally, you want not just a separate hard drive, but a separate hard drive on a separate (usually your secondary) IDE channel.

That's what I remember (now). I always have duplicate drives. What I'm debating is how big I want my primary drive to be in my next computer. Right now I'm running three 40gb and a 120gb. I'll probably move the 120 to the new computer to be the system drive and get a 200gb or 250gb.

[indolikaa]

A separate drive? Well, you can't go wrong. On my puny system, it allows me to still do basic things. Like stay connected to this forum, and FOX News Channel, and my firewall, and my antivirus, and Word, and...

Running Win2000 Pro doesn't hurt either.

[MrMungus]

A separate drive? Well, you can't go wrong. On my puny system, it allows me to still do basic things. Like stay connected to this forum, and FOX News Channel, and my firewall, and my antivirus, and Word, and...

Running Win2000 Pro doesn't hurt either.

Yeah, same here. Cap to one drive, surf on the other.
I just couldn't remember the exact reason but it's all coming back to me now.