Two UDMA66 27GB 7200rpm RAID or Single 80GB UDMA100 7200rpm?

[VideoJedi]

I have a ATA100 RAID controller on the way, two UDMA66 27GB 7200rpm Seagate drives and a newly purchased UDMA100 80GB 7200rpm that I just got a great deal on at Best Buy.

I'm confused on how I want to setup my system to capture. I want the best performance with the least frames dropped during capture.

Should I use the RAID card (on the way) as RAID-0 with the dual Seagate drives or just use the RAID card as an EIDE connector (my system is currently maxed on EIDE connectors) and hook my new Western Digital drive into the RAID controller by its lonesome?

The Seagate drives are UDMA66 while the Western Digital drive is UDMA100. My motherboard only goes up to UDMA66 on the integrated EIDE connectors. The RAID card is suppossed to be UDMA100 (or ATA100.. is that the same thing?). I know with RAID-0 I am suppossed to get faster writes than if those sames drives were by themselves, but would the RAID-0 array on the two Seagate drives surpass the ability of the Western Digital by itself?

I got a few days to decide what to do, but any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

[FiEND]

hrmm

i have a celeron 466 overclocked to 582
Abit BH6 + slot1 converter
windows XP 384MB ram
60GB 5400 udma/33 2MB buffer (udma 66 on old mobo)
ati tv wonder
SB live value
dedicated 26GB capture partition

i can cap 704*480 with picview mjpeg w/ 19 quality settings in iuvcr with no frameloss except 10-20 per hour for audio sync. - at least I could before the bug that makes iuvcr stop capping randomly after 3GB.

huffyuv or mjpeg @ 20 quality I will lose frames capping above 480*480 if I have anything open or preview running. 640*480+ with these I will frames cause HD can't keep up.

anyway, just trying to say that raid isn't needed for capping. but the 27GB raid could be nice to store the final encodes on for safety sake.

your new 80gig should do fine or your system has weaknesses elsewhere.

[droolian01]

Hi there.
Just to develop the point further... i am looking around for a new mobo, and am definitely interested in onboard raid (stripping) for getting perfect captures.
But... in a raid set up the video data from the capture card has to share the pci bus with the raid conroller, whereas if your capture hd was on a regular ide channel the video data can have the pci bus 'to itself'.

So i am wondering if some computer whizz can tell us wether (for video capture) a raid system may produce more dropped frames than a vanilla ide setup.

[VideoJedi]

The thing with RAID-0 I have read is that it actually improves write performance because while it is writing some data to one disk, the other disk takes over and vice versa. So you get faster writes. I would expect less chance of dropping frames in this RAID config than just having a disk by itself. With RAID, if you mirror the disks.. I can see how disk writes would be slower since data is written to two disks simultaneously, but with RAID-0 (striping) the task of writing is divided up.

I'm just uncertain if I should put my two 27GB drives on the RAID card (ATA100), even though they are only rated at UDMA66 and put them as RAID-0 or if I should leave everything how it is now, but put the new 80GB drive on the RAID card by itself (just as an IDE device.. no RAID config involved).

I only capture on my Win98 partition with Radeon 64DDR VIVO.. mostly making NTSC VCDs. I loose a frame every 1500 frames captured or something and don't know why. Originally I was getting pops and clicking in my captures on the audio. Then I found the VIA chip PCI latency patch and that is no longer a problem.

[droolian01]

Hi again.
Given what i've just said, i think in your case it would be best to use your 2 smaller drives in a raid 0 config. Although i am no expert, i have a feeling that the best set up for capturing would be a large, fast drive on its own ide channel as the primary master. I still think that this may be better than any raid config due to possible pci bus 'competition' with the capture card (as i said before).

I would love someone more knowledgeable to confirm/refute this.

[VideoJedi]

I came across this page that makes sense of these speeds.. Ultra ATA33/66/100/(133). So EIDE is the same thing..

Ultra ATA/100 FAQ

UPS delivered my ATA100 RAID card today, so first I am going to leave my smaller existing drives by themselves on the motherboard ATA66 controllers. I will put the new 80-gig ATA100 drive on the ATA100 RAID card and see how it goes. I figure since my smaller drives are capped at ATA66 and my motherboard ATA controllers are also capped at ATA66, it would not make sense right away to put my new 80-gig ATA100 drive on an ATA66 connector off the motherboard. I would be limiting 34MB/s to the potential of the new drive. On the other hand taking the two ATA66 drives and striping them on the RAID card might be better performance. The thing is.. the documentation for this ATA100 controller card says if I want to use it in WIn2000, WIn2000 MUST be on a separate drive that is not part of the RAID config. I guess that is what I get for buying a cheapie ATA100 RAID card. I'll have to do some trial and error and see.

[VideoJedi]

Ok, I installed the RAID card in the configuration I last mentioned.. ran the speed tests that come with the pinnacle DC10+ board and here are the results:

Seagate 27GB drive - write speed: 10666 read speed: 21841 - (on motherboard ATA66 controller)
Western Digital 80GB drive - write speed: 42914 read 10666 - (on new RAID ATA100 controller card)

So the RAID100 board (PCI card) is like 4-times faster than the motherboard IDE controller for writing. I could not find a check box to enable DMA on the new 80GB drive in win98 (not in device manager like it for the hard disks hooked on motherboard). Any ideas how to enable DMA for drives that don't show the check box in Win98? The Western Digital floppy disk program didn't include that option either.

Anyway I am still getting dropped frames on big captures like 720X576. I'll have to look at that new system tweak guide that was just posted on here.

[FiEND]

something is really wrong here.

your write speed for SG and read speed for WD are the same.. now that is baked.

try the HD test from virtualdub and see what it says for peak disk performance.

mine is a 60GB Maxtor ATA/33 5400 with 26GB dedicated capture partition and here is my results for 100MB setting.

READ - 113525KB/s
WRITE - 17908KB/s

[VideoJedi]

Thanks Fiend! I can't test it right now over my terminal connection (VirtualDub won't bring up the capture part over a terminal connection), but I will see if there are some disk testing tools I can run remotely (because I am anxious to see what the performance really is right now). I may have jotted down the results wrong or the Pinnacle disk performance section of the DC10+ software is psychotic.

[Bud]

If possible I think your best bet for a RAID device would be to use the Firewire type connection. I use Adobe Premeire 6.0, have two 120 GB Western Digital Disk in the RAID device, I have never received any dropped frames using the Hollywood DV Bridge as the input with a Digital Cable TV system. my system has two Firewire inputs.

Bud

[TheInformer]

VideoJedi:

If you're going to be spending money to 'fix' your capturing problem, why not go for the solution that fixes all these problems at once?

Buy yourself a Sony Media Converter DVMC-DA1 (or 2) or similar device such as a Hollywood DV Bridge.

I capture at 720x480 @ 29.97 fps with zero frame loss.

The DVMC-DA1 couldn't be easier to use - connect VCR (or other analog source) to the input. Connect the Firewire from the DVMC-DA1 to your PC's Firewire port. Run a DV capture program such as ScenalyzerLive.

That's it. No frame loss, and you're getting the entire video signal possible from your analog source.

The folks that have gone this route are all amazed at how easy capturing video can be

eBay always seems to have a DVMC-DA1 or 2 up for auction. In fact, here is a link for one that's due on March 15: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1338127415

[FiEND]

videojedi, the disk tester is in the file AuxSetup.exe in the virtualdub folder so should be able to run it remotely.

[VideoJedi]

Well my terminal connection died, so I can't test anything remotely at the moment. I will just have to wait until I get home later..

I was reading at storagereview.com...
The WD1000BB ships exclusively with an ATA-100 interface. Remember, since ATA drives have yet to break sequential transfer rates greater than even 45 MB/sec that ATA-66 (and in many cases, even ATA-33) interfaces will run a drive with optimal performance. Our testbed remains equipped with a Promise Ultra66 controller.
...from http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200108/2...D1000BB_1.html

So does this still apply? I'm getting around 42MB/s which is close to what that 100GB Western Digital is getting. I can't explain why the write speed for SG and read speed for WD were the same.. I may have written it down wrong.

The only way to tell at this point is to try the VDub test and see if I get the same results. Maybe the Pinnacle program is outdated.

Thanks for the Sony converter tip.. it sounds real good. I should not have sold the Pinnacle Firewire card I got cheap at Sears (doh!). Well maybe someday I will get that sony converter.. until then I have to deal with what I have.. especially after buying this harddrive and ATA100 RAID card. I may fiddle with RAID-0 on the two SG drives for the heck of it.

[/i]