Capture in 7200RPM HD or Operational System in 7200RPM HD?

[roglopes]

The first HD (Master 5400RPM UDMA133) has the S.O. Windows 2000 Pro and all the softwares.
The second HD (Slave 7200RPM UDMA133) has the captured videos. I'm capturing direct to this HD.
My doubt:
Am I doing the right job?
Or the S.O. must has on the 7200RPM HD?
Thanks and sorry about my bad english.

[indolikaa]

Your english is fine.

I think you have it setup right. That's the way I'd do it. You need the speed more for streaming the capture to disk more than anything else.

Are you running NTFS on both drives?

[roglopes]

Yes, both.
My configuration is:
ASUS A7V8X-X
256MB RAM
Athlon XP 2000+
If I had to upgrade, what the device will be preference (to capture)?
Memory (upgrade to 512) or processor (upgrade to XP 2400)?
Thanks one more time.

[WuphonsReach]

2400+ to 2000+ isn't much of an upgrade... if you're using WinXP, then 256Mb is limiting and 512Mb would be much better.

(My rule-of-thumb for CPU upgrades is shoot for a 50% speedboost to make it worthwhile.)

[Perro Grande]

I would capture to the 7200 RPM drive and leave the OS on the 5400 drive.

However, I would really recommend at least 512M of RAM, perhaps even more.

[indolikaa]

The CPU upgrade will not produce nearly what doubling your memory will do, IMHO.

Spend your money on the memory.

[ggtronic]

i'm not sure , but if both HD are on the same ide channel , the 5400
will decrease the other HD performance (if they are both connected to same ide channel), watch the actual DMA speed
setting in your device manager.ATA IDE CONTROLER, than your ide
channel, than properties, pio is the worst setting , and i think 5 is the best.

i have a western digital caviar 7200rpm , and my dma is set to mode 5 for
it , and DMA is set at 2 for my both CDrom drive

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

[gmatov]

And my Maxtor 160s are Ultre DMA6, so now what do we say?

The CPU is more important than more RAM. Boost the CPU speed. The 2000 is fine, but if you want more, you could go 2600 for about 100 USD, not worth it, to me. I am at 2400 now, so maybe my thought doesn't count.

5400, 7200, no difference, both will write faster than anything you can capture.

As an aside, I had a flyer selling 10k, 9 gig SCSI drives for like 20 bucks apiece, at www.microtechcomputers.com .I think they are trying to get rid of them. But I know some of "yunz" swear by SCSI.

Cheers,

George

edit: if both are ATA133, no, a 5400 and a 7200 will not conflict and "drop the fast drive to the slow drive" There IS no fast or slow drive.

Think, man, think! Whoops, you did say you think it will do this....Sorry

[disturbed1]

As an aside, I had a flyer selling 10k, 9 gig SCSI drives for like 20 bucks apiece, at www.microtechcomputers.com .I think they are trying to get rid of them. But I know some of "yunz" swear by SCSI.

Prob. 80pin SCA. SCSI is nice for quick drives. Plus it supports read and write at the same time with out a performance hit unlike IDE drives.

edit: if both are ATA133, no, a 5400 and a 7200 will not conflict and "drop the fast drive to the slow drive" There IS no fast or slow drive.

Correct.

If one was ATA66 and the other was ATA133, the ATA133 drive would only be as fast as the ATA66.

Some 5400rpm drives can be faster than 7200rpm drives. It depends on how many heads and cylinders there are. Also larger drives use larger cylinders, more area for the heads to travel. Many drive makers make a few different models. Seagate for example has 3 80gig ATA100 models, all with different head/cylinder counts.

[SatStorm]

I have the same mobo with yours, and it is an excellent choice, with no issues. With the latest AC97 codec drivers, you don't even need a dedicated audio card to capture the audio. The built in audio codec, does an excellent Job!

Athlon XP 2000 to Athlon XP 2800 gonna be a good upgrade. To Athlon XP 2400 I don't think so...
I saw a huge difference in the encoding speed when I upgrade my XP 1700 to an XP 2600. It almost cut down to half the encoding speed.
Also, a Athlon XP 2400 gonna help you much more if you start capture realtime mpeg 2 with mainconcept 1.4.1 full frame (720 or 704 x 576/480)

One move to concider, is to switch from winXP to Windows 2k.
Win2K works excellent with 256MB Ram and it is overall less demending for this hobby (capture, encode, etc).

Finally, get a new cable and set up your 2nd HD seperately, to IDE1 and as master. It helps a lot that way, for various reasons you gonna learn over the time, by reading and testing yourself things

[johns0]

editing a post

[johns0]

If one was ATA66 and the other was ATA133, the ATA133 drive would only be as fast as the ATA66.

That maybe true about 5 years ago but motherboards are now designed for independent speeds

[disturbed1]

If one was ATA66 and the other was ATA133, the ATA133 drive would only be as fast as the ATA66.

That maybe true about 5 years ago but motherboards are now designed for independent speeds

Really? Didn't know that, thanks for the info.

I know my Abit TH7 Raid doesn't do this. It defaults to the lowest ATA setting on the bus. (is my board really that old )