Hard drive data rate not up to par

[richardb]

I bought a new computer a year & a half ago with the intention of eventually editing my DV home movie tapes and burning to DVD. I bought a Micron machine that was advertised as a "video editing & DVD production" machine and came bundled with Pinnacle Studio 8. I finally got around to doing my first project recently and when I went to capture video in Studio 8, I got the message "Drive c: is not capable of capturing DV data." Ditto for D: drive. According to the data rate test I am getting 3040 kb/sec on the read and 3238 kb/sec on the write and that it needs a data rate of 4444 kb/sec. I e-mailed tech support at Micron (now MPC), which was a total waste of time . I e-mailed Pinnacle who responded back with some suggestions to make sure the Intel Applications Accelerator was running and all unnessary programs and services were turned off, which I have done. Due to a misunderstanding with the greenhorn salesman that I bought the computer from (it's a long story) my RAID that the computer came with was disconnected. According to Pinnacle support disconnecting RAID has no effect on data rate speed, and that my problem is strictly hardware related. Sorry to be so long winded, but my question to the forum is: Is Pinnacle correct in that RAID is not necessary for full data rate speed? If so, any ideas on what the problem could be and how to fix it? Thanks for any help!

[Capmaster]

No, of course not. RAID isn't necessary. There should be no "minimum speed" necessary for DV transfers to the hard disk. But that number still sounds awfully slow for a HD transfer rate.

You're not "capturing" when you use firewire, you're only copying a file, and file copying isn't speed-dependent. Your camcorder has already "captured" the video.

The only reason I can think of it giving that error is if you're trying to copy the DV to the HD real-time as you capture it. I wasn't aware that camcorders would do that, but if they can, that might be it. The easy solution is to merely capture it to DV tape. Then transfer to HD from the tape after your capture is finished.

You can also check in Device Manager and verify that your IDE controllers are running in DMA mode. If they're running in PIO mode, which I suspect, disable them and power down. Then restart and let Windows re-detect the controllers. Verify they're running in DMA mode.

[guns1inger]

Firewire transfers are real time as the playbacl on the camcorder is at a single speed - the record speed. Therefore 1 hour of DV footage takes one hour to transfer, at approx. 12GB per hour. If your disk can't match this speed, then you will drop frames, unless your transfer program decides to step in.

Having said that, I first started using DV on a celeron 500 with 5400RPM HDDs, with no problems at all.

Follow Cap's suggestion and check DMA settings. Also, try one of the many free transfer applications, which can be found in the tools section of this site.

If you drive is really this slow, the whole system would be very slow - have you noticed performance issues elsewhere ?

[Capmaster]

Firewire transfers are real time as the playbacl on the camcorder is at a single speed - the record speed. Therefore 1 hour of DV footage takes one hour to transfer, at approx. 12GB per hour. If your disk can't match this speed, then you will drop frames, unless your transfer program dicides to step in.

Having said that, I first started using DV on a celeron 500 with 5400RPM HDDs, with no problems at all.

Follow Cap's suggestion and check DMA settings. Also, try one of the many free transfer applications, which can be found in the tools section of this site.

If you drive is really this slow, the whole system would be very slow - have you noticed performance issues elsewhere ?

Thanks for clearing that up guns1inger I don't own a camcorder so I wasn't sure about that. But since you play back the tape to transfer it, it makes sense that the HD has to keep up with 1X DV (DUH! )

[richardb]

Yes, I forgot to mention, Pinnacle suggested checking DMA, which I did and both drives are in DMA mode. Thanks guys for the input. I haven't noticed performance issues, but then again I upgraded from an 8 year old computer so if it is slow it feels fast to me! It looks like there is going to be no magic bullet to fix my problem. Maybe I will try one of the transfer programs on this site and see if Pinnacle can take it from there.

[lordsmurf]

Ditch Pinnacle altogether. You'll be better off.

[snafu099]

Ditch Pinnacle altogether. You'll be better off.

Nothing to do with your problem. Pinnacle support was correct in saying it was hardware issue.

Had a simular problem with a high end Maxtor drive in a system, would only do 3999 transfer, never was able to correct it installed internally but when put in external usb box it improved to 9mb/s for usb 1.1 and 14mb/s for usb 2.0. Still not close to what the drive should have done, but atleast it was usabe for vid capture.

motherboard was supposed to be ata 100 capable, but never did with any brand/type drive I tried and was unable to flash or upgrade drivers for ide

[lordsmurf]

It could be. Use some freeware like WinDV and compare results. Nothing to lose.

[snafu099]

I was not trying to say anything good or bad regarding Pinnacle software, just the fact that whatever capture software he has does not have anything to do with results of a hard disk speed test.

slow HDD read/write speeds, barring virus, spywareor indexing, should not be affected by installed software. The most probable cause to trouble shoot would be hardware/drivers, IMHO

If in doubt, shutdown all backgorund programs and processes and run the speed test again.