sizing up new HDD - how large...? plus other queries

[gmatov]

Trev,

Misspoke on Raid 0. Should have said twice your smaller drive. I think that was your correction to me. You have a 100 and a 200, your total is 200.

I'm not too worried about the cost either. I have 7 drives between 2 machines , 60 OS, 100-120-160, same machine, buy them when the price falls and rebate is right, the 60 is actually the most expensive, oldest one.

Soon probably get some 200-250s, migrate these to the kids, g'kids.

I have some 1/2D1 caps on 1 drive, 6 hours, 10 gigs. Set it and went to bed. When I choose the cap settings, and the cap drive, it tells me that drive has anywhere from 400 hours MPEG 4 to maybe 30-40 hours full D1.That's on a 123 gig partition.

I've done the math. DV at 13 gigs per hour needs to write at a speed that MS-DOS compatibility mode can probably handle. I am not saying we don't need or want faster drives. I'm saying we don't need RAID for vid cap.

If you want RAID, god bless you. Go for it. Just don't sell it as the be all and end all. You will never have another problem. It even fixes problems with MS OS's.

For the polarbear, if it weren'tfor MS, this forum would probably not exist. If he did nothing else, Gates brought the price of computing OS's down to where the average Joe could afford it. I wouldn't want to have to use my old VIC 20 today. Although Satstorm has me thinking I should hook it up for the g'kids, if nothing else. Some of those near 25 year old games were pretty good. Maybe because I could beat them and can't beat today's.

Will,

Nah, it ain't the old cold bones. Hurt my back at work last Friday, and am in just a little bit of agony. About on par with a bear with a sore tooth.

Is Dan'l getting a little excited with the Christmas season? Hope he's not afraid of Santa. Different when he can run aroundd and see that "this is for me not just some nice clothes mum 'n Dad think I'll look good in". And, probably, just spit up on.

And it's closer to35, my oldest will be 37 Thursday. Hell, my oldest g'son will be 15 Sunday.

And, you know, whether you're copying BB rentals or not, the space is recoverable. With 400 gigss, I admit, I don't erase 'em, but I do have all the originals, and will soon have to, especially now that I am into DVD, at least get rid of the burnable VCD-SVCD MPEGs AND bin/cue files.

Hey, I had to eventually come into the 21st century, no?

We've been arguing SATA-PATA. I don't think SATA gives you an edge in captures-DV passthroughs. You get nowhere near the write ability of a PATA drive.

And, as written elsewhere, throwing bitrate at a lousy VHS is not going to give you DVD quality, so capping at high bitrate won't solve anything.

I gotta go. This damn KB is pissing me off. I don't know if one of the kids spilled Coke in it, or I spilled beer in it,b ut it's double striking, not striking, and I spend more time proofing each line than I do typing it.

Cheers,

George

[trevlac]

Trev,

I think that was your correction to me.
....
If you want RAID, god bless you. Go for it. Just don't sell it as the be all and end all.

George,

Maybe racerxnet was trying to correct. I don't think I was. Also, I never ment to sell raid (or anything) to anyone. My experience has been that raid was a logical upgrade as I expanded to more drives. Worked well for me. Just trying to share.

Conversly, have you been saying that raid is just smoke and mirrors? No value to anyone? Seems many corporations use raid and heavy duty video systems have raid arrays. Are they all full of shit? Am I ?

Oh yeah, I hate VCDs (can't imagine why I ever made one)

[duhmez]

Corperations do NOT use raid-0. (Unless it's a fast cachine drive where the data on it truly does not need to be kept. Like massive database systems)

They use Raid-5 wich gets extra speed like raid 0, but redundancy in case a drive fails nothig is lost. Raid 5 is definately good way to go if you got the controller and the $$ for 3 or more drives.

[SMHarman]

<snip>

Conversly, have you been saying that raid is just smoke and mirrors? No value to anyone? Seems many corporations use raid and heavy duty video systems have raid arrays. Are they all full of shit? Am I ?

Oh yeah, I hate VCDs (can't imagine why I ever made one)

Most corporations will use hardware driven RAID5 arrays with a 6th disk spinning for redundancy. In the event one of the 5 falls over the 6th will automatically be rebuilt as the damaged disk using the other 4 and checksums, then the damaged disk can be swapped out.

Corporations use RAID for failsafe fall over, not speed.

I have 160G of RAID0 on my PC If one of the disks fails I lose all my data, thats why I back it up. A DVD burner helps a lot and if you are editing camcorder footage then you have the tape and the edit file in MSMMII and you can recreate where you got to. Once it's made into a DVD copies are distributed to family globally so I should have a backup somewhere.

[PolarBearWY]

The newest SATA drives are capable of more than today's motherboards can give them.

This is so untrue it makes me laugh.
No hard drive today can push 133 MB/sec. Nor 100 even. The limitation is NOT the sata bus of 150, it is still the physical drives.

The 150 MB cap COULD be used if a bunch of drives are set for raid 0 however. (Like 6 or more)

How about backing up a statement like that? Every review site I see and even the hardware manufacturers I see report that the latest SATA are "capable" of more. What numbers do you see that support your claim that it's the drive that is incapable and not the interface, the cable, or the OS? I have seen no tests that show the drive is the slowest link.

All I have seen is that tests show the SATA drives aren't at 150MB/s. I also see tests that show IDE drives aren't quite at 100MB/s or even 133MBs. That is the ONLY evidence we have to draw conclusions upon, whether you want to think SATA or IDE are better. I didn't state that SATA was better in my post. All I did was state that he may want to consider it, mostly because the cable is longer, smaller, and more flexible than even braided cables.

Draw your own conclusions, but at least pretend that you went through school and understand how to analyze existing data.

[PolarBearWY]

Umm... how about captured video from TV ?
How about hours of painstaking work, avisynth scripts, audio and video files in various levels of processing, project files. hs list goes on and on. It's not all about DVD ripping..........

I have NO problems capturing 30+M/s with my NON-RAID system. I have a Western Digital 120 SE that's pretty much full, and I can easily capture at full rates. RAID is overkill, IMO. If you need RAID just to write to your discs, you should probably buy a faster system.

[PolarBearWY]

I like it!! Anyone who doesn't jump at the chance to bash evil Bill must be a real trail blazer.

Let's all argue about SATA vs PATA.

How do you like your 300 disc changer?

I just think people need to put the blame where it belongs. There have probably been more than 50,000 that have worked for M$ in the last decade or two. Bill Gates didn't design Windows. He didn't debug anything. He probably never even wrote a line of code. A CEO is simply a pawn or image that a corporation uses for PR, power, loans, etc. And guess what guys -- Bill hasn't been the CEO of M$ for many, many years now. I'm not sure what his current position is, but he certainly isn't really "running" the company, except by fact that he may still be the majority stock holder. Do you also have a problem with ESPN? If so, do you complain to Disney? Do you even bring up Disney's name? Take a look at what Disney owns (radio stations, magazines, TV networks, etc). Mentioning Bill Gates when you have a problem with M$ is about as ridiculous as mentioning Disney if you have a problem with ESPN (or the History Channel).

And that's exactly I don't like M$. Because set up an industry, the one we know today. 15 years ago, there where more platforms to choose from and hell, lot's more fun!

... and 15 years ago, there was no conformity in hardware or software. Sure, there may have been the Atari, Commodore, Amiga, IBM, and Apples. But who wants to have to choose between all that crap? Today we have two choices -- M$ or Mac OS. Imagine all the idiots that are running around calling themselves "skilled" at computers. If things were as they were 15 years ago, people couldn't get laid off and run around calling themselves skilled. They'd have to know many times more than they do now to be able to walk into a business and start using their computer systems. M$ helped standardize and unite the entire planet. In just about any country, you could walk into a shop and start using their computer system. You couldn't have done that 15 years ago.

And it wasn't just Bill that made the computer affordable. It was also Intel, Seagate, Western Digital, all the RAM manufacturers, ... plus the game designers that put out some of the first games that benefitted from 3d acceleration such as Doom, Quake, etc. All M$ did was kick the rest of the industry in the @$$ and spark interest in the minds of billions of people. If you want to blame someone for the current state of industry, blame people like you and me. Blame people that can't wait for the next CPU to buy, ... people with GeForce 2, 3, 4, etc sitting in their closets. I know people that have a P4 2.4, a 2.8, and a 3.0. What's the purpose of buying chip after chip, month after month? I don't see people buying Honda Accords in all 3 trim levels -- DX, LX, EX.

[gmatov]

Trevlac,

Sorry, should have responded with racerx in salutation, he corrected a stupid too quick reply.

But, no, not at all, RAID has its place. It just, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't fit us. You don't need the incremental increase in write speed, since almost nothing you will capture or convert will exceed the capability of ATA100-133.

I say almost because your chart way back on the first page shows uncompressed video as 20 MB per second. That is approaching the capability of ATA100.

I find it hard to believe, as that is 160000 kbps and we make DVDs at 8000 kbps I can't dispute it, just doesn't sound right.

Someone else made ention of RAIDing say 2 160s. You have 320gigs. A little faster (unnecessary ) write, 1 dead drive,320 gigs lost.

2 160s, non raid, 320 gigs, one dies, 160 gigs lost.

2 160s mirrored, 160 gigs, one dies, still 160 gigs.

Then you have 5 + 1 or something, failsafe, ultracritical data, banks and brokerage houses, maybe government tax roles, but it takes at least 3 drives striping data so you can rebuild a broken drive's data onto a new drive. You can't pull data out of the air, so it's written to all the drives in some scheme, so you have even less capacity. 3 160s probably total out as 160 gigs, maybe even less.

I was reading about this some months back, decided it didn't appeal to me, don't think I even finished the article. Have to dig it up. I do remember the letters column a month or two later corrected some hooey that the author got way wrong.

Now, in your answer to Ronnylov, it appears you need at least 3 drives. An OS drive that you also cap or render to or you cap to that fast RAID array and render to or write to the OS drive, losing the speed advantage, as you are sending data to a non RAIDed drive, or you RAID 2 drives for the OS drive (don't know if you can do that, probably could be done).

Question here, as I don't know, what advantage RAID if you are reading from, rendering, writing to that RAID array? This ? is not meant to be argumentative, I'd really like to know.

Have to go buy one of those "little" 120s, now. Probably should be ashamed of myself for it, but can't pass up a sale. 17 cents a gig? Hell, 200 buck for 4 gigs was a bargain not that many years ago.

Cheers,

George

[SatStorm]

@trevlac: Believe it or not, most of the other forums about our hobby, or are inferior or too technical. Even the private ones...
Also, I like it here

Beyond few well known - lots of avatar - specific users, the 99% here are nice people.

@PolarBearWY: Yes, you are right. Sorry. Long live M$ & Disney (www.savedisney.com).

[gmatov]

SatStorm,

I never knew you to do wrong before, but savedisney link doesn't work.

The poster about the 120 gig WD must haave been wrong. They're 60 bucks after rebate Too small. I'll wait for 200-250 to drop little. Just got back from a wild goose chase.

No biggie.

Cheers

George

[trevlac]

Also, I like it here

I like it here too, but geeze. I just got jumped on by 2 posters in a row about my mention of Raid for corps and not making it clear what they do it for. I was just trying to make a point to George that it's not smoke and mirrors.

@PolarBearWY

You got me wrong buddy. I thought you were brave standing up for Bill. Most of the time when he comes up in a forum, it's a pile on of who can say he's evil fastest. I'm kinda nutral on the man myself.

But I think I'm gonna start to bad mouth the mouse. Seeing that SatStorm seems to like him. :P

[PolarBearWY]

Trevlac,

Naa.. I didn't get you wrong. I knew you were raising your pint glass to me with neutral support. I wasn't jumping on ya, or at least wasn't meaning to. There are about 5 of us having 3 different conversations simultaneously.

I was just messing with SatStorm, after the anti-M$ comment. I'd bet $5 that he's using M$ on his system as he types that. SatStorm, if you dislike M$ so much, I invite you to the world of Macs or Linux. If you are genuinely against M$ and use no M$ products (including a mouse), then I apologize sincerely. But if you just think saying "anti-M$" makes you cool, then I have only three syllables for you... hyp -- o -- crite.

The above statement is not intended to be an attack. As a discussion forum which is used for the gain of information, we need to weed out the people that post a bunch of nonsense, even if SOME of their posts contain useful info. But if someone is spouting anti-M$ while he is booted to XP, ... well, what can we really believe from him?

[gmatov]

Trev,

I nevers said it was smoke and mirrors. It sure as hell ain't for this sstuff

But I will reiterate that it IS overkill. If you take 13 gigs per hour, what I keep hearing about DV, and divide by 60, for minutes, and divide by 60, for seconds, you will see that ANY drive can write that speed.For this, in particular, we don't need more than what we have.

If you want it, more power to you, but to tell a new member he has to buy SATA, or he has to go RAID , or he has to go SCSI is just bull crap.

We are not, I repeat, NOT, misison critical, here. We are, for Christ's sake, backing up ,o r copying, a DVD . We have the original.

It don't damn well work do it again. If it is the original cable delivery of ET, cap to your HDD, but at the rate they're sending you data, X kbps, you don't need X to the 4th power write speed..

I don't know how I can be clearer than that.

Cheers,

George

[PolarBearWY]

I'll agree with gmat 100%.

gmat, understand that the mindset RAID people have isn't much different than the mindset overclockers have. An overclocker will buy a cheap 2.4C chip and spend $200 too much on super fast memory to overclock their system as fast as they can. Instead, they could have spent the extra $200 and got the 2.8C or maybe the 3.0C chips... lol. But, they are so single minded that all they can see are Sandra numbers, yet NO ONE will ever notice a difference between a computer running at 200 FSB vs one running at 220. Never -- without some arbitrary benchmarking number.

Same thing with RAID. The benchmarks and maybe a stopwatch are the only way people can tell that a RAID 0 system is possibly faster than a non-RAID system in everyday life. And the truth of the matter is... it isn't needed. If you need to justify RAID (or WHD, wasted hard drive) with a stop watch to see how many seconds you saved on a file move, then you haven't yet learned how to multi-task and you probably don't need your Pentium system in the first place. IDE can write as fast as you can transfer -- plain and simple. If you want RAID, fine. But it isn't necessary. I once read that about 90% of people, when asked to count out 60 seconds without looking at a time piece, missed the actual time by more than 5 seconds. Nearly 45% of those people missed it by 10 seconds. So who really cares if it takes my computer 5-10 more seconds to write a file to a non-RAID drive. I will never notice. You aren't going to start capturing your VHS tapes at 15Mbps, so your IDE will be more than fast enough, no? And of course, non-RAID IDE should be able to write a capture at that bitrate as well.

Heck, my computer can run eDonkey, write a CD or DVD, capture MPEG2, and have several IE windows open, all while I'm playing a game of Hearts or Freecell -- without RAID -- without losing one single frame.

(and I'm not running a special HDD just for my captures. Actually, my capture HDD is 90% full and hasn't been defragged in weeks. Doh!)

[SatStorm]

@PolarBearWY: I use W2K and Linux. I also never used IE, I was a netscape and now I'm an opera user. Long time ago, I was a ZX Spectrum user, and later Amiga user.

The reason I use w2k, is simply because most of the programs I have to use for this hobby, are based on windows.
Few facts:
1 - I don't play PC games. I only play games on Linux emulators of Spectrum, Amiga, Gameboy Classic, PS1 and Dreambox I already own.
2 - I use the less possible Intel products, also the less possible M$ products.
3 - I never visit / use MSN, AOL and I never bookmark sites "optimised for IE X.X"
4 - I don't use M$ programs like Office, Window player, codecs, etc.
And other many things...
On w2k, I manage to unistall any IE / MSN etc stuff
I do use a mouse, an Apple idea of the early 80s. Not an M$ one.
I had the opportunaty to work with apple LCI III 10 years ago, same time Win 3.11 appeared. 10 years later, winXP looks like that OS.
Apple PCs are too expensive in my country, also they don't have local versions. I don't use English on my computers. So, I can't take your invitation for Apple.
I'm on Linux and I have switch most of my activities in this OS. Unfortunatelly, many programs can't run under Linux.

I also was an active BeOS user.

Also, I don't have to say things to be cool. In the matter of fact, I don't care to be cool in the cyberspace. I look to be OK (not cool, "cool" is the US trading name for "Mod Lifestile", an idea which i don't like. I'm not a consumer of those things)

BTW, here is again the link, for those who can't copy paste it to their browser
www.savedisney.com

[SatStorm]

Also, PolarBearWY, it seems that you have a lifetime mission in this forum... To mess with me (with various avatars, right?)
Now, that's what I call "Cool".

Get a life man...

[PolarBearWY]

Also, PolarBearWY, it seems that you have a lifetime mission in this forum... To mess with me

No idea what an avatar is. If it is a nickname... no. I only have this one. And I didn't come to this forum to mess with you. I came to this forum to read as much as I could about capture and authoring. I saw your "anti-M$" comment and called you on it. Now that we all know you are full of crud, we can all move on.

You can't state that you are a vegetarian and then eat meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can't say that you are anti-M$ just because you don't use IE5.0. You admit that you use Win2K as your primary OS. Sure, you may have "switched most of your activities over to Linux" but without the M$ OS, you would have never been online in the first place to get Linux, and all the tips you needed to set it up. That was half of my point.

And yes, in your country Apple computers are VERY expensive. So again, maybe you should THANK M$ for putting out an OS that allowed you to get online in the first place. Without M$/Intel/IBM, you would not be on a computer today in your country, unless you wanted to shell out the money for an Apple, which would be more expensive without the IBM-compatible competition. That was the other half of my point... that M$ helped put computers in the homes of citizens in dozens or 100s of countries. That was EXACTLY my point, and you proved it for me. The inexistence of M$ wouldn't have made the Apple alternative cheaper for you. In fact, it has probably made it less expensive.

It's nice to jump on the anti-M$ bandwagon, but people on that wagon forget that their #1 alternative (Linux) was developed by haters of M$. Without M$, Linux would not exist or would not have been developed as rapidly as it has been (speculation). So the ENTIRE world of computers that you know and have access to is directly related to the favorable existence of M$.

[SatStorm]

Better haters than thiefs!
Windows are nothing more than Apple's spin off!

& who said that I use w2k for my primary OS? Don't put words in my mouth! I use w2k ONLY when I don't have other alternative.

BTW, I use the windows for the programs they hosting, not the windows themselfs. There is a difference... Read about it.

Anyway, I won't bite more from you. After Augost, which this site gain huge popularity with publications on various PC magazines around the world, I notice many "users" like you.
I also know about the "teams" some big ones pay just to visit various succesfull sites in the net, so to leed convertations, etc. It is a part of the promotion for them. A situation like sending to schools teaching kids about how bad and illegal is to copy CDs and DVDs (even if they own them..)
Another example about those users, is here https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=188625&highlight=

I don't say that you are one of them, but you sure look like.

Anyway, my first post, half was a "joke", an internal "joke" if you prefer (real forum members understand it) and half "true". It is more than easy to understand that it is mostly a joke.
You turn a "joke" to a convertation, by "attacking" me and try to present me stupid.
So, I won't do the mistake to analyse on hundred of pages why I dislake M$. There are plenty forums (and sites) out there, just for that. Go and read there about it. I'm with "them"

Now, let me quote you a bit:

" As a discussion forum which is used for the gain of information, we need to weed out the people that post a bunch of nonsense, even if SOME of their posts contain useful info. But if someone is spouting anti-M$ while he is booted to XP, ... well, what can we really believe from him?"

Now go and read my 1360 posts in my almost 4 years history in this forum. You'll see about 20 questions from me (most unanswered) and about 1300 answers to other forum members (new ones, old ones, it doesn't matter).

This is my answer to the ones like you

Why I'm wasting time for answering you then? Well, in the future, when someone like you pop up, I gonna simply point him to read here, or simply "copy / paste" it from here, as an answer. It is the last time I waste time for the obvious. I could answer to 2 - 5 members here in the forum all this time I replying you, by doing something really usefull. Help people around, not try to " just messing with SatStorm" as YOU do...

My goodmorning to your team BTW...

[trevlac]

I'll agree with gmat 100%.

gmat, understand that the mindset RAID people have isn't much different than the mindset overclockers have. An overclocker will buy a cheap 2.4C chip and spend $200 too much on super fast memory to overclock their system as fast as they can. Instead, they could have spent the extra $200 and got the 2.8C or maybe the 3.0C chips... lol. But, they are so single minded that all they can see are Sandra numbers, yet NO ONE will ever notice a difference between a computer running at 200 FSB vs one running at 220. Never -- without some arbitrary benchmarking number.

Same thing with RAID. The benchmarks and maybe a stopwatch are the only way people can tell that a RAID 0 system is possibly faster than a non-RAID system in everyday life. And the truth of the matter is... it isn't needed. If you need to justify RAID (or WHD, wasted hard drive) with a stop watch to see how many seconds you saved on a file move, then you haven't yet learned how to multi-task and you probably don't need your Pentium system in the first place. IDE can write as fast as you can transfer -- plain and simple. If you want RAID, fine. But it isn't necessary.....

You guys convinced me. I pulled my raid cards and threw them in the trash. Now running my 3 HDs and DVD drive from my MB. Too bad I waisted the $20 on those cards.

Thanks for the help

[racerxnet]

Hey Trevor,

I laughed my a$$ off when I read your post

I too will scrap my 3ware card and 4 drives. Guess there is really no benefit to using raid.

[PolarBearWY]

Trevlac,

I wasn't saying RAID wasn't nice to have. I was saying that it isn't a necessity for video capture, which is where the conversation was heading. If someone has a decent system, their IDE drives will be more than adequate for today's capture bitrates.

What's with the people in this forum reading what isn't there? (not talking about you, Trev) Teams? Anti-M$ people that use M$ and technologies that came about because of M$, such as Linux, cheaper Apples, etc. lol. It's too bad people aren't sophisticated and smart enough to have decent, intelligent discussions. (not necessarily talking about anyone.. just a generalization)

[trevlac]

@PolarBearWY

I'm with you man. I just happened to mention that I got cheap raid cards when I expanded to additional controler cards. I like how it's worked out. I am FAR from a HW expert.

A rule of thumb around here could be the longer the thread, the more senseless argument is going on.

However, I find that along with the arguments there are quite a few gems.

And I like SatStorm....although he does tend to rant about things non-video.

Seems to me he as got the video stuff about 90% right. Then again, how the heck would I know.


@SatStorm

I think VHS is 240x576 TVL resolution. That equates to a digital frame size of about 320x576 pixels on a 1.33 dar TV. AKA, 1/2 D1 is mostly good enough.

Or is that another thread ?

[8trackkid]

To Gmatov,
Its true, the generic 120GB HD's from Western Digital, with red and white labels in the clamshells, are $19.99 after three rebates! I purchased it on 12/11/03 from CC store #413 in Santa Barbara, CA. The rebate is from 12/10/ to 12/24. They may not have had it posted or the employees may not have known about it, however, the rebates are three $40 mail-in rebates. Its 139.99-40.00-40.00-40.00: $19.99
Sorry if they didn't know about this offer, but its good for a spare HD or for smaller capturing jobs, just not for your uncompressed AVI's.
Thanks...

[gmatov]

Apple didn't invent the "mouse". It was invented at the Palo Alto Research Center , PARC, and used with some GUI they used with Unix.

So, it wasn't stolen from Apple. The single guy who made it didn't patent it, never realized a dime from it.

SatStorm,

I didn't copy/paste because I thought it was a joke address, since you just said "I hate Disney"?

George

8track,

I believe you. My store didn't have them in ad or on display.

No biggie. A much "biggier" one is what I want for my next ones anyway.

Just gave my g'son a capture card for his b'day, "only" put a 40 gig in his mach when I built it, would like to have migrated an 80 or 100 out of one of mine to his.

You know, 120 buck rebate, 140 buck item is getting to be g'damn ridiculous.

[jtommyj]

@ Surreal

OK- Anyway, did you ever get a new hard drive ? Or was it sandwiched somewhere between all the "To raid, or not to raid, that is the question" rhetoric ?

Tom

[proxyx99]

Hmm, I understand that everone wants to come across as a seasoned pro. RAID is "in" so we all switch to RAID correct? We're all pros, aren't we?
Now some common sense stuff. Out of 4 PC's in my basement (1 used, 3 retired) and 2 other upstaires + laptop not counting my computer professional life I have to say that I've witnessed only 1 HD failure (probably still recoverable). Looking from probability point of view, very unlikely. Even less likely if you belong to those who know what they are doing.
Since I switched to ATA 66 few years ago I never dropped a single frame. I'm using ATA 100 and 133 and feel completely beyond "drop frame danger zone". One would have to spend lots of time to convince me to use RAID (even though I have it "onboard").
I see often users advising others to buy God knows what, especially if they don't own the stuff themselves. Like: without RAID, dual Xeon, 2 Gigs of memory, most expensive video card and water cooling don't even think about video editing and capture. The truth is much more trivial then most think. Anyone with a decent recently made mid-class PC with cheap video card and some HD space that corresponds to his ambitions can do that succefully with no dropped frames. Those who have decent systems and still drop frames need to spend more time on maintenece and brushing up their PC skills. That's the truth. Let's keep it simple.

[lordsmurf]

I've read in some places that RAID 0 and a few other RAID flavors actually harm the drives more than not, and can cause some to fail that would have otherwise not failed on IDE/ATA interfaces.

Thus meaning you need to also pour money into the drives ... meaning the generic Maxtor or WD won't hold up as well on RAID as it would on IDE. They were never meant for RAID.

I'd believe it too, as I've seen it happen. Drives were fine until RAID 0 carried them to the grave.

[gmatov]

Proxyx,

Bravo. Everybody jumps on the latest/greatest without the slightest iddea what they have just read about and, god damn, that's the way to go.

I'm sorry I never ran a benchmark when IDE drivers were not insstalled, see what the MS-DOS compatability mode trans sfer rate was. Most likely more than needed for video capture.

Ah,well, they'll learn.

The guys who said they were convinced and threw away their RAID cards, sarcastically, should go to the trash can and retrieve them. They still work as IDE expansion cards. They can talk like asses, just no sense being asses

Cheers,

George

[proxyx99]

Great point, I value more having 6 IDE devices then RAID. The only thing I belive in right now is MHz (good to have as many as you can afford) and Gigs (same applies). All the rest in moderation like salt, cigarettes and saturated fats.

[gmatov]

Proxyx,

You losst me there.

I smoke like a chimney. Non-filters.

I salt near everything. Not cake or ice cream.

I wouldn't dream of cutting the fat off a steak. Even shave the nice crisp fat off the ham and scoff it up before the kids do.

Haven't you heard of Atkins and how the muckety mucks can't explain why fat eaters have lower cholesterol than the grass eaters? And lose twice as much weight, for the fat eaters, compared to the grass eaters?


Then too, to enjoy a nice steak, as opposed to suffering with a block of tofu, also gives an Atkins follower a sense of superiority. Hey, I'm not suffering. You are.

Cheers,

George