video rig setup

[pilau ahi]

Good afternoon, am trying to get back to encoding and have a dually setup. Running raid on 2 WD hard drives plus I have another WD hd as backup and storage.
I would like to ask what is the optimal setup with the raid drives, I have partitioned it into 5 drives using fat32. Is this ok? Will ntfs be a better file system? How about cluster sizes, what is optimal for large file transfers?
How do you guys setup your machines, or does it even matter?
TIA for any help.

stinky

[Gees]

Will ntfs be a better file system?

I can only answer that part: Yes. Definitely :c)

[pilau ahi]

Thanks Gees, will try to convert with PM.

stinky

[The village idiot]

Most likely you will want one big partition or 2 smaller partitions from you striped drive. And you will want NTFS with out question. Some have said NTFS with a larger than normal default allocation size if it is primarily used for video (large files).

[DaveS]

my 2 cents if it's not too late: I partitioned my 120 gig drive into two roughly equal partitions and I regret it (and as soon as I can get everything off there I will repartition back to one logical drive).

I did this thinking I would put different projects, etc. on each and that would help me keep them straight. instead what happened is that I end up w/ free space on each where I'd like to have that as one 'pool' of available space. I find rather than keeping different projects on each as I thought I would, setting up the same directory structure on each is what helped me most, which also tells me that the logical partitions didn't help me in how I am using the drives

I can't say anthing re cluster sizes, etc. but if you want all your free space available without spending too much time managing it, make your physical drive one logical drive. if your drive is 'very big' (whatever that means) and your projects are small, then maybe my recommendation is not for you, but I have found that w/ a 120 gig drive and several 'home movie' projects going at once (editing avi's etc.), one logical partition would be easier to manage.

[pilau ahi]

Thanks for the tips. Will keep the partitions for now but will run the extra drive as one big 100 giger for storage.

stinky

[redwudz]

I run two 80G Maxtor drives in a raid 0 configuration with 64k striping. This gives me about 150G raid. Both are set as master and I don't have any slaves on the raid controller. Just one big partition. Maybe just personal preference, but I have not seen much reason to have multiple partitions on any drive. NTFS used in all hard drives. Boot drive is seperate on the main controller. Works great for video.

[vhelp]

.
.
And, here's my recommend...

If you're going to partition anyways, better to do it like this:
* C:\ 1gig for your "root" windows installation and any pertanent software
* D:\ 119g (or remaing) you can set to your logical one

Here is another recommend...
* C:\ 1gig for your "root" windows installation and any pertanent software
* D:\ 5-10 gig for your external software ie, Office, Browser etc etc
* E:\ 110 gig plus (remaing) for your capturing only drive

I would prefer to have drive C:\ and D:\ as my Primary drive (slave)
and then have your Capture drive on another IDE channel so that there is
no interference w/ your Primary C:\ and D:\ drives.

Now, one main reason for the C:\ and D:\ drive setup is for those many
crashes you will encounter. I have them to this day, on my 2nd pc setup
which I use for my capturing or DV'ing. It crashes whenever or when I'm
networked and my main pc bombs or becomes unstable (due to my retentiveness)
When the system crashes, it has to be checked or scandisk. And, that can
take eons to complete if you got THOUSANDS of files on your hd and part'ed
to only one drive, and you are pressured to complete w/ limited time, as is
the case in most of endeavors. Drives me crazy when I have to wait several
minutes for the scandisk to complete.
.
.
But, if you setup a 1gig, and being that it's your main root drive, this is the
drive that will crash in all cases. And, since it crashes in all cases, it would
be better and wiser to partition it only to 1 gig, so that the scandisk will
only take but a few seconds to complete, and you're backup in no time!!
.
.
I know that this works, because this is the setup that I use to this very day.
And, despite my so called perfect setup, I still do crash. Other reasons for
my system having to run through scandisk every boot up is because lots
of times, I turn on my 2nd pc, but NOT my pc monitor. And, becuase I do
not log in to my setup (I have to every time ) and can't remember the
exact keyboard short cuts blindly, to shut down, I just shut the pc off all
together. Natually, this will cause my next startup to run scandisk. So,
definately having a 1gig partion is a worthwhile step

Good luck,
-vhelp