I bought 2 Sata Hard drives, wich one to use for editing etc...

[faramith]

Hi i bought 2 SATA drives: Western Digital Raptor 10krpm 150g 1.5 sata and a Seagate 7200.10 rpm 320gb 3.0 sata. My system is a Core 2 Duo e6600 with 2gb ram.

i would like your opinion on what task should I assign each:

1. Operating system / games -
2. Video Editing + Encoding -
3. Video Compression -
4. DVD Ripping -
5. DVD Recording -
6. Downloading from internet -

thanks!

[jagabo]

Unless you're working with uncompressed (or very lightly compressed) video use the bigger drive for video, the faster drive for the O/S.

[Scorpion King]

I'm using 4 drives here and I like this setup.

C:\ Windows and all my installed programs
D:\ My Documents, downloads, saves, and my extended video projects folder
E:\ My Capture drive and ATI's temporary drive. Movie and video storage.

Drive C is 80G. (67G free right now)
Drive D is 80G. (49G free right now)
Drive E is 2x160G Raid0. (209G free right now)


This setup helps to keep fragmentation down on drive C.

Both your drives are good and fast. I'd probably part the Raptor 40/60? for drive C and D, then use the big drive as I do my Raid, for capture and video storage. I might even slip a 30G partition on the end of that big drive, format it Fat32 and use for my ghost image backups of drive c.

Good luck.

[Skith]

Personally I would partition the raptior into 2 parts, as above, but I wouldn't put more than 20GB for the primary (OS) partition. 10GB would probably be enough. I would then install all programs on the second partition of the raptor. (you may even want to create 3 partitions, C (OS, 10GB), D (Programs, 20-40GB), E (temp storage mabey? a place to dump completed or projects you want to set aside). That is just my opinion though.

This will aid in orginization, speed defragmentation. I wouldn't touch Fat32 unless you need dual boot compatability (older windows, linux). NTFS is much less error prone. Consider Acronis True Image if you want to make drive images.

[rallynavvie]

There's really no need for partitioning anymore, all it does is clutter you up with driver letters. The problem with it is that you're putting data on different areas of the platters on the hard drive. Best just to keep the drives as is and defrag as needed. The only reason for drive partitioning anymore is for making drive images and restoring the OS and apps seperately. It's a healthy precaution but not necessarily needed unless you're in a time-constrained situation (like in an office setting) otherwise a backup will do just fine.

Obviously use the fast-access drive as your primary, the larger one for secondary and storage. Map your "My Documents" folder to the second drive too so you keep any of that clutter of your OS drive. Capture video to the OS drive and then render/encode it to the other for its final resting place. Best not to be reading/writing the data to the same drive if you can help it.

[Skith]

There's really no need for partitioning anymore, all it does is clutter you up with driver letters.

Which is why I stated it was my personal preference. To be honest, I prefer smaller partitions whenever large amounts of data (such as video) is not being used. It speeds error checking (disk scans) and defragmentation. I also prefer to keep things like photos, documents and other data files seperate from OS/program partitions. This is a safety precaution in case the OS goes coocoo and requires a format/reinstall. I keep games on a seperate partition because of frequent install/uninstall & demos. Some might think I am crazy, but my system looks something like this:
(sizes are not exact).
C: (OS 10GB)
D: (Scratch disk for programs such as photoshop)
E: (Programs 20GB)
F: (Games 40GB)
G: (Photos/documents 60GB)

Then of course I have three other HDs (320GB SATA, 160GB via firewire and an old 18GB SCSI that refuses to die).

[jsmithepa]

I ALWAYS asssign an ~8GIG partition to the OS+Apps (larger if u have lotsa apps). WHY bother u may ask? So I can use GHOST to take images of my OS at intervals. Saved me countless times to having to reload and reconfigure (time consuming) OS. RECOMMENDED.

Format your video-only large drive with 32k-64k cluster size.

[edDV]

Unless you're working with uncompressed (or very lightly compressed) video use the bigger drive for video, the faster drive for the O/S.

Why buy a Raptor except for games --- that is for loading textures during gameplay or speeding OS reboot when the game crashes.

Video people realize that capacity rules so long as speed is enough for bitrates needed.

[dun4cheap]

Never, ever partition your drive. Did I say never.

I am running 7 Hard drives.

I am running 3 Sata Seagate 300Gig Drives, 1 Sata 300gig WD, 2 eide 300Gig Seagates, 1 eide 400 gig Seagate and 2 Pioneer DVD-R Burners

Drive C: I have my OS and my installation files and programs
Drive D: Render Drive

The rest are media drives.

I am not running any external box. My Asus P5LD2 Deluxe board has 3 eide slots and 6 Sata slots.

Yes I do a lot of Video editing.

[edDV]

Never, ever partition your drive. Did I say never.

I am running 7 Hard drives.

I am running 3 Sata Seagate 300Gig Drives, 1 Sata 300gig WD, 2 eide 300Gig Seagates, 1 eide 400 gig Seagate and 2 Pioneer DVD-R Burners

Drive C: I have my OS and my installation files and programs
Drive D: Render Drive

The rest are media drives.

I am not running any external box. My Asus P5LD2 Deluxe board has 3 eide slots and 6 Sata slots.

Yes I do a lot of Video editing.

Yes and?
Are you speaking for faramith?

[dun4cheap]

The point is storage is more important than the minor spead difference on the hard drive. Keep your media separated especially with PIP or multic cam edits. I also try to keep my render drive on a seperate channel from my media drives.

Defrag every so often as well.

[dun4cheap]

You may want to check in to raid configurations. I have heard you can gain performance using raid setups, not to mention data retention.

Frys has a 400GIG Seagate for $99 free delivery, add one more drive. OS, Render and Media Drive.

They also have a 300 gig Sata Seagate for $89.99. I would op for the 400 myself.

Download the garbage on to a flash drive, or create a sub folder on the C drive.

rippinn and burning, same drive c

[dun4cheap]

Never, ever partition your drive. Did I say never.

I am running 7 Hard drives.

I am running 3 Sata Seagate 300Gig Drives, 1 Sata 300gig WD, 2 eide 300Gig Seagates, 1 eide 400 gig Seagate and 2 Pioneer DVD-R Burners

Drive C: I have my OS and my installation files and programs
Drive D: Render Drive

The rest are media drives.

I am not running any external box. My Asus P5LD2 Deluxe board has 3 eide slots and 6 Sata slots.

Yes I do a lot of Video editing.

Yes and?
Are you speaking for faramith?

He can get another case and mother board for the games and stuff. Keep the editing setup clean.

[edDV]

You may want to check in to raid configurations. I have heard you can gain performance using raid setups, not to mention data retention.

RAID zero should not be used (all about loosing your data with no benefit) or RAID 1 (half the capacity with "data retention" but also alot of disk activity).

[Skith]

Never, ever partition your drive. Did I say never.

Never is a strong word. Understand that most people don't run seven HDs. In anycase, partitioning is personal preference and with seven drives it is not all that different from having a couple of drives with a few partitions on one of them. The only major difference is the amount of space per drive letter assignment.

Different people, different needs, different preferences, there are no absolutes. At best we can provide recommendations for the OP, but in the end it is the OP that must decide which of the solutions best meets their needs.

[edit: I agree with EdDV, RAID is is a waste for (personal) video editing. Only if you are working on something that is mission critical, you might consider one of the raid solutions that provide data retention (parity/mirroring).]

[dun4cheap]

There are different steps to raid, some beneficial and some not.

As for partitioning drives and then consider using it to video editing has high potential for problems. Partitioning a drive has been known to cause more problems and slow down access times as well.

So when I say never, in todays world where hard drives are a dime a dozen, its not worth partitioning a single drive in to multiple drive letters. There is really nothing gained other than a drive letter.

[Skith]

Tests (just look at some hardware review sites) have proven that raid is of little benafit in desktop enviroment, granted there are some exceptions. True, hard drives are cheap, even so, not everyone can afford to stuff their PC with drives.

Partitioning a drive has been known to cause more problems and slow down access times as well.

I would like some proof (links) about Partitioning a drive causing more problems. As for access times, it would depend on how you partition it (mainly where you place the OS partition and what size clusters you use).

In any case, access time/performance impact on modern drives would be negligible in terms of real world performance.

Like I said before, different people, different needs, different preferences, no absolutes. If there were absolutes, we wouldn't need this forum would we?

[rallynavvie]

I think it's so interesting that people still corrupt their OS and need to re-install it. I haven't done this since 98SE. I've run Win2k and XP since they both came out and have never had to reformat due to Windows failing.

At work, however, I used to have to use our company installation bundle to reformat the OS partition on almost every workstation I managed. The strangest part is that the bundle itself was locked down pretty hard so the end user couldn't install anything or the like yet we still had problems.

Honestly I think the reason people pooch their OS is because they're either not paying attention or taking risks and installing this, that, and whatever onto their system without regard for what it could be doing.

So as I said there is still a place for partitioning. However if you're concerned about making restore disk with Ghost or whatever you can do it on a larger drive. On my primary workstation I have a 74GB Raptor for OS and applications. When I first installed it I put on the OS and ran all the updates to get Windows up to date with itself and the hardware in the PC. Then I installed my core applications, which for me are the Adobe Creative Suite and Video Suite, TMPGEnc, Norton Suite, O&O Defrag, codecs, and a few others. Then I'd update all the software with the current patches. After all this I'd defrag the entire thing and was able to make a Ghost image that only spanned two DVDs (just single layer, may be able to fit it all on a DL disk). I had this restore disk but I've never had to use it, and I played games and did all sorts of other things with that workstation. You shouldn't have to worry about wrecking your OS, but it is still a good precaution to back up. I'd be more worried about a drive failing than something causing Windows to fail.

[Skith]

Slightly off topic, but:

I think it's so interesting that people still corrupt their OS and need to re-install it. I haven't done this since 98SE. I've run Win2k and XP since they both came out and have never had to reformat due to Windows failing.

In my case, it is more often due to major hardware upgrades (motherboard). As I have mentioned, partitioning is my preference for both orginazational and backup reasons, I am not so concerned about performance.