minimum hard disk data rate needed

[sapirben]

Hi,
I intend to edit video, using my dv camcorder. Buying a new computer, I could not find what is the minimum hard disk data rate needed for it. They offer hard disks of ATA100, ATA133, SATA, and SATA with raid 0. different speeds and prices, and also influence type of motherboard.
Can you help me?
Thanks, Ben.

[808smokey]

You don't need RAID unless you have more than one harddrive.
ATA's harddrives - get the ATA133 it's faster 133Mhz vs. 100Mhz
Speeds 5,800 or 7,200RPM, get the 7,200

SATA Harddrive - more expensive than ATA100/133 and not all Motherboards can support them (yet).
Speed of SATA's are 10,000RPM's. ATA and Serial ATA are not interchangeable they have different connecting cables. Regardless of which type you get I would get at least a 40gig harddrive.

Motherboards- depends on what kind of processor you want. AMD vs. Intel. Personally I buy Biostar, Gigabyte and ASUS boards and AMD but that's my preference only. Most new motherboards come with Video, Audio, Ethernet Cards (NIC) built in. So if your on a budget you won't need them seperate. I would get a Video card though an older 4x ATI or NVIDIA card will do what you want since your editing video and not cost an arm and a leg. But if you want you could always go with the new stuff, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 or ATI 9800 PRO or something like those about $200+

At a minimum I would get at least a 1Mhz chip and 256Meg of DDRAM. Then CD/DVD burners if you want them.

~ You can try these sites for prices ~
www.newegg.com
www.compgeeks.com
BuyAIB.com (Click Memory, Processor) only buy RAM from them :P

You can build a decent system for what you want to do for about $350.00 US. Are you going to build this computer?

[sapirben]

Thanks for the answer, but I still looking for the answer for the following question: what is the minimum hard disk data rate needed for a good editing machine, using firewire to transfer video from my DV camcoder, and using Premier for editing. The answer will help me to decide what type of hard disk to buy. Can you also specify in what part of the process, a high hard disk data rate is needed? Is it only during firewire data transfering? What is the actual firewire data rate when transferin DV from camcoder to hard disk?
Thanks,
Ben

[gmatov]

Ben,

Do the math. Open your calculator.

DV passthrough is supposed to be 13 gigabytes per hour.

Divided by 60 minutes, dividded by 60 seconds equals 3.611 megabytes per second.

Hell, if your machine was all screwed up and drives running in DOS compatibility mode, they would probably write at that speed.

Your disk drives are not going to cause you any problems unless they are so full and so fragmented that they have to thrash all over the place looking for patchess of free space to write to.

ALL drives today will do more than you need.

Cheers,

George

[sapirben]

Thanks. I like your answer.
But what is the reason that many papers advise to use for video editig 2 SATA hard disks in RAID 0 configuration - that means 300MB/sec ?
Ben

[gmatov]

Because some people get dropped frames when capping and blame the hard drive. "If I only had a faster hard drive, this wouldn't happen!"

Not the processor, not the card, not even the material they're trying to capture. It's always the drives fault.

People are going for bigger and bigger drives. Naturally. They're cheap, now. And if they were all ATA66, there would be an argument over 66 and SCSI. But, since there are 100 and 133s and the brand new SATA, you have the equivalent of Coke and Pepsi.

"I like this." "That sucks! Mine is better."

Read the older threads. You never get agreement on anything. Someone always likes something else, out of contrariness if nothing else.

If you buy 2 drives, on sale, and set up a Raid option, and if one dies, you lose your data, completely if striped, and mirroring reduces your capacity from the git go.

Then, you go buy an identical drive,when it may not be on sale, and there goes your nice, reasonably priced professional setup. And re-rip everything you had.

Your choice, pal,

George