SCSI versus IDE what is better?

[mostin5000]

Currently I am using an 80g samsung hard-disk with a 2m cache (SP0802N) and can capture about 20 minutes of raw avi before frame loss.

Would getting a hard-disk with a larger cache, eg 8mb allow me to capture for longer peroids of time? Should I also consider scsi as the 10,000rpm option is better than 7,200rpm that ide typically uses.

[triphop]

You have another problem - if you are capturing for 20minutes then you can capture forever - some program or something is starting up and somehow interrupting your capture. Heres what I suggest:

1. Scan disks for errors, run clean disk and defragment.
2. Limit the running processes to essential ones one
3. Get Adaware or Aware search and destroy to kill spyware
4. Disable your virus scanning software during captures
5. Dont mess with you computer during capture.

[sterno]

SCSI is certainly better, but I agree with triphop - you should not be having problems with what you've got. I didn't have any real problems capturing 352x480 HuffyUV to a 5400RPM IDE drive. A bigger cache probably won't really help when you capture.

Losing a few frames here and there is normal, sometimes software will intentionally drop frames to help maintain A/V sync. If there's some noise in your source you might also be losing frames because of that. Have you tried watching your captured material to see if the loss is noticable? If not, don't worry about it.

[aurgathor]

Unless you go up to 15k, SCSI won't buy you much extra performance, if anything at all for video capture. The WD Raptors (36G and 74G) are just as fast or faster than most SCSI drives.

[D_Knife]

According to your profile you are using Win98 - you should upgrade to either Win2000 or XP in order to use NTFS partitions before you talk about new hard disks
When you are talking about capturing "Raw Avi" - what exactly do you mean here??
DV Avi
uncompressed Avi
or what??

[Flukesy]

serial ata raid is probably the fastest drive configuration of the moment and is quite cheap have a look into it. benchmark performances of raid machines compared to scsi is quite close now

[Craig Tucker]

If you are talking about DV avi, rather than raw avi, 20 minutes is around the point where you will hit the 4 GB FAT32 filesize limit (your capture will stop, not drop frames), to capture files larger than this you need to upgrade your OS and use the NTFS filesystem.

[WuphonsReach]

SCSI is certainly better, but I agree with triphop - you should not be having problems with what you've got. I didn't have any real problems capturing 352x480 HuffyUV to a 5400RPM IDE drive. A bigger cache probably won't really help when you capture.

Losing a few frames here and there is normal, sometimes software will intentionally drop frames to help maintain A/V sync. If there's some noise in your source you might also be losing frames because of that. Have you tried watching your captured material to see if the loss is noticable? If not, don't worry about it.

I've been doing 720x480 MJPEG Q20 (roughly 9 Mb/sec) on a 5400rpm drive. Just make sure that you defrag every so often.

Ideally, you should have zero dropped frames (unless it's to maintain A/V sync).

SCSI is rather pricey... just get a 2nd PATA/SATA drive and use that as your capture drive. Put it by itself on it's own cable if at all possible.

[SquirrelDip]

How do you rate better??

Better Price? (IDE)
Better Performance? (SCSI, but close)
Better setup, easier? (IDE)
Better capacity? (IDE)

I voted SCSI because I'm assuming you are asking about performance.

For home use I don't think I'll ever purchase SCSI tho. If you ever have problems capturing it's probably due to a defragmented drive - if you have problems capturing after you defrag it's probably not the drive (assuming you have relatively current hardware)

[Capmaster]

I've always been a loyal IDE man, but my latest PC at work has a 15K RPM Seagate Cheetah Ultra 320 SCSI drive that has made me want one at home. The only problem is that it's 5 times as expensive as a decent IDE drive ..... The ultimate performance does come at a price.

[triphop]

And noisy!!

There is nothing like a 15k drive spinning up - talk about a racket.

[Capmaster]

And noisy!!

There is nothing like a 15k drive spinning up - talk about a racket.

Actually my 15K drive is quite a bit quieter than the 34GB IBM 7200 RPM IDE drive in my old machine. And it's cooler too. Remember the original 10K RPM Cheetah (9.1GB) that you could fry an egg on? My 15K doesn't seem to run any warmer than my older IDE drives. Maybe the case has a good fan design.

[DTSL06]

And noisy!!

There is nothing like a 15k drive spinning up - talk about a racket.

I wouldnt even notice them over the 4 Vantec Tornado fans in my case (3x80mm and a 92mm) LOL Thank god for fan speed controllers.

I use 2 Seagate 120GB SATA (8mb buffer) drives in software Raid 0 (WinXP) and they are fast. Only thing faster are various SCSI and WD Raptor SATA RAID 0 drive configurations according to Sandra benchmark.

[triphop]

Does your machine come with ear-plugs - Seriously I do lots of video editing and I really need a quiet room - the noise from my Athlon fan is very unpleasant. I am considering some kind of baffle enclosure. I'll get right on that after the shed outside, the siding, the paving... oh, well.

[WuphonsReach]

Try a case upgrade first. I'm partial to the Antec p160 case (others like the Sonata) with its dual-120mm low-speed fans. Toss in a quiet power-supply and my game / video editing machine got a good bit quieter then the old desktop case with 80mm fans. Plus, the p160 has oodles of space for hard drives and other toys. Runs a few degrees cooler then the old crowded case as a bonus.

Only downside is that you have to pay attention to the maximum ATX board size, and there's only 1 spot that will accept a full-length PCI card (like a 6-drive PATA RAID card).

[Wetmonkey]

THE SURVEY NEEDED TO ADD SATA TO IT!!!
Iam running WD360 raptors 10K, very quick running as raid 0, they run very well solo as well. As for a great case
Strong performance, most new mobo's are comming with sata and raid onboard so no need for scsi card, drives are somewhat cheaper per meg then scsi, quieter, and nice lil red cables. lol

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-129-115&depa=1

antec as well as enermax's makes this style of case, very easy to work in, all HD, and Drives are in quick disconnect housings. Room for 4 fans. Big case for big balls. I hardly notice when the typhoon is running lol

[DTSL06]

Lian Li or CoolerMaster for Alum cases....class

[devlynh]

I have captured 4 hours of DV material (55GB) to a 7200RPM ATA drive with no dropped frames. SCSI drives are fast but only in a RAID array where the data rate from each drive can be maximized and keep the bus speed high. Otherwise for most applications even ATA drives running off of a RAID controller can be as fast and more cost effective.

Devlynh

Video & Computer Geek

[mostin5000]

You ppl are drifting from the topic. This is not a debate about hard-disk types or how quiet they are, but more along the lines of my original post

(I have read all stick notes on frame dropping I am not that noob!)

I have not had time to update my profile but if u want my specs here:

Capturing with a winfast's PVR program that comes with the card, card on windows xp (NTFS dur) to 384 x 288 in uncompressed avi format. My disk is 7200 40gb seagage running as boot drive also. I got 196mb SDRam and 1.3ghz AMD Athlon

I have tried different ide drives and still more than 20mins adds more drop thats why I posted the question

If anybody else captures at 384 x 288 uncompressed avi for more than 20mins witouth frame drop please let me know so I can see your hard-ware profile cheers

[npaulie2000]

Lower the frame-rate.

[aurgathor]

Something is wrong with your system as the resolution isn't that high. Based on your post, there are a few things that jumps out:
a) you got very little RAM
b) you capture onto the boot drive
c) I'd bet you have the swap space on the same drive, too
d) that 40G Seagate isn't a very fast drive

120G - 200G HD's can be had for around 50 cents/gig after rebate -- do yourself a favor and get one of those, or a WD Raptor.

[disturbed1]

SCSI doesn't add speed. The fastest SCSI is no faster than the fastest SATA/IDE.

ATA 66 with a Seagate 7200 RPM drive, captures @ 7MB/s with 44100 16 bit Audio, 0 frame drops for 70 minutes. Could be more, but that's the limit to a FAT32 partition size.

What SCSI does add is 15 devices per channel. The ability to read and write at the same time.

Firewire and SATA are both better than IDE. SCSI is mainly for servers that need huge amounts of storage (or AV editors :P )

SCSI drives are also built to a higher standard.

If your drive wasn't fast enough, it would start dropping with in 2 minutes.

You have something coming on and running. Or you're hitting fragments on the hard drive or a weak sector at that point.

Screensaver?

XP calling home?

Automatic Updates?

DNS Renew?

Power Saving?

Index Servicing?

If you have a NIC, unplug it.

Disable everything else, just to be safe, too.

[proxyx99]

I agree, too little ram CPU is not too fast either. Don't know how you capture but the bottleneck may be somwhere else. Big HD (doesn't matter whether 2 or 8 Meg cache, difference is minimal) and separate partitions for OS and video may be your answer. Question is how quick is your I/O. Get Sandra 2004 and test your system to find out how far behind the times you really are. Remember that IDE controller speed, IDE cable (new or old style?) is important as well. Are you sure that your OS is set to max DMA mode? 40 Gig HD is too small. Disable system restore as well. HD's are usually the slowest items in the data chain so upgrade your HD to the largest, fastest one you can get. Forget SCSI. SCSI was good when sustained data rate for IDE's was very low. It's not the case anymore. All HD's are A/V optimised. If you invest more then 2 grand in your PC you may consider SCSI, not sooner. SCSI is used for high end editing stations or servers to which your computer cannot even aspire to. Check Tomshardware.com and stick to common sense.

[thor300]

SCSI is way faster than IDE, if the controller is good. Cheap scsi controllers are not so fast, and to really get the advantage of scsi you would need a server mainboard with 64 bit PCI slots. THEN you are looking at big difference but also big money. IDE is affordable and works ok for most people. I do know people who use SCSI only, quite amazing performance. IDE is harder for the CPU, a professional type scsi will barely affect cpu usage at all.

[Capmaster]

I am getting close to the point where I'll be shopping for a new PC. My first instinct is to get what I have at work, an HP xw6000 Workstation....P4 Xeon 3GHz, 2GB RAM, U320 SCSI 15K RPM drive, Gigabit ethernet, Nvidia Quadro 4 980 XGL/128MB, 20" HP Digital LCD. The machine is insanely fast, especially that hard disk.

I've found a version of it with 2.4 Xeon (still HT), 1GB RAM and a lesser graphics card, but the same HD and a 17" CRT monitor for $1900. But a friend recommended putting that money in a P4 3.4, big SATA drive and bunches of RAM, and maybe a big LCD. However the Xeon machine ships with a dual Xeon MB and would allow me to add a second CPU in the future. I'm still undecided. Which would you pick?

[thor300]

Capmaster, check out performance for those CPU's in Anandtech.com, more reliable HW-source than tomshardware in my opinion. Xeon isnt typically compared to home-user CPUs like P4, and is more often tested with server apps than 3D and encoding apps, so could be hard to find a direct comparision chart. Still, Gigahertz isnt everything, the xeon is expensive for a reason. About this Intel MHZ/GHZ hysteria, it lead to far to many misunderstandings, people actualy believes that a P4 3.2 is MUCH better than a Centrino at 2.0GHZ, so Intel will most likely change their naming convention for CPUs: http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1994

[Capmaster]

Capmaster, check out performance for those CPU's in Anandtech.com,

Thanks for the tip. I'll do that

[aurgathor]

I recommend that people check out this link:
http://storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php
Most of the time, the 73G, 15k Atlas is the fastest drive ($400), but the significantly cheaper 74G, 10k Raptor ($200) is usually very close, and in some cases even faster.

Unfortunately, they do not have a video capture benchmark.
For home use most people would be best served by a Raptor, methinks.

[proxyx99]

I use WD 100 Gig and 160 Gig (ATA100) plus Maxtor 160 (ATA133) and have yet to loose a single frame. No need for SCSI, Raptors etc. I believe in lots of storage, fast CPU, 512 to 1Gig of RAM (most PPL won't need more then 512) bust most of all good maintenance habbits, partitioning to optimize performance and smart data management. I would always prefer 250 Gig HD ATA133 or SATA then 70 Gig SCSI. Most tasks don't require superfast HD's but good balance between all components. Capture and encoding has never been a problem for me. Let's rather stick to common sense.

[lordsmurf]

If you're not running a server, I think it's a waste. Same for dual CPU's. Waste.