Which WD Raptor & 7200 combo? (Hard Drives)

[Deisel Weisel]

Putting together a new computer. Nothing too taxing planned for it, during working hours, but one or two evenings per week, I plan video work. Was going to get an 80GB (7200 SATA Hitachi or Samsung) programs drive (working with Sony Vegas), and a separate 160GB (7200 SATA Hitachi or Samsung) for video files. But having been impressed by the rave WD Raptor reviews, I thought maybe with 36 & 74GB Raptors instead, I might get a significant speed increase(?). But this comes at a large price premium, of course. But what if I went halfway, and had one Raptor and one 7200rpm drive....is it advantageous to have one quicker than the other? If so, which drive – programs drive or video file drive? Is it not 'rendering' which takes up time, so does that not occur on the video storage drive?

I’ve heard hard drives are now the speed ‘bottleneck’ in computers, these days. Is this correct?

Planned spec: P4 2.8, 800mhz fsb, 512 or 1024 3200 RAM

Btw, my question is not concerning size. I think 74GB will be acceptable for storage, for the video work I plan. I can always back up to DV tape. My question concerns speed.

[RabidDog]

I think youve nearly hit the nail on the head

it not 'rendering' which takes up time, so does that not occur on the video storage drive?

rendering is mostly dependent (95%?) on the cpu.
Analogy: you want to go from boston to LA. You drive to the airport in 20 mins flight takes 4 hours, at Lax you drive to your hotel for twenty minutes. Now whats going to speed up your journey the most? a faster car(Hrd disk) or a faster jet(CPU).

I might get a significant speed increase

I dont regard anything less than 20% speedup as significant..