Setting up hard drives

[zoobie]

After a nasty hard drive failure, I'm looking to setup my new C & D drives specificially for video editing. Any good pointers, partitioning tips, or tutorials out there for doing this?

250gb Seagate (new, will be my C drive)
250gb Maxtor (2 years old)

Thx

PS - I was under the false impression video can be stored on hard drives. My 60gb Maxtor only lasted 3 years so now my avi's gets burnt to quality data disks.

[redwudz]

Though I don't generally use more than a single partition on a hard drive, two partitions might be the way to go with your boot drive. It would make malware scanning easier and faster by using a, say, 50GB OS partition. It also speeds up defrags or CHKDSK.

I would also consider a backup software for your OS partition, such as True Image or Ghost. You can back it up to DVD or other large media. For your video data, just back up if needed. I don't keep any data on a hard drive that I can't afford to lose.

I use NTFS for all my hard drives. I only store temp data on the boot drive. Even with a separate partition there, the OS uses the drive quite a bit, which can slow down transfers to it. I prefer 3 hard drives, small for BOOT, larger for EDIT and for ARCHIVE.

Most of my new computers are all SATA 2 drives, with a SATA 2 controller. If I have a spare internal SATA socket, I run that to a PCI bracket external SATA socket to make a external SATA drive easy to add if wanted.

Hard drives do fail, just be prepared.

[zoobie]

I see...
Forgot to mention this will be a multi-function computer (internet, email, etc) as opposed to a dedicated video editing station.
Thx

[akrako1]

IDE (PATA) only: Make sure the drives are on different IDE channels (ie. different cables coming from the mobo). when you run two drives on the same ribbon cable, they essentially share bandwidth. Put each HDD on a seperate cable (with the other plug being used for your optical drives). I know the cables don't always stretch far enough to do this, but it is the optimal setup.

All types of drives: when you install the D drive, (while it's empty) move all of your paging file to that drive. That way, Windows will be able to simultaneously access OS files, and read/write from the paging file. Putting the paging file on the drive while it's empty ensures that it's written on the edge of the platters - ensuring the fastest read/write times.

[zoobie]

I'll need another pci card for that setup since I've 2 optical drives as well but it's no biggie.

I'll read up on moving the paging files...

Thx

[akrako1]

pci card? are you using a Promise HDD controller? If the cables will reach, you should be able to hook up 4 drives total (2 HDD, and your 2 optical drives) directly to your motherboard, without the need for an expansion card.

[zoobie]

Well, if I want to give each HD it's own cable...In fact, I had 2 HD's on the same cable and feel they may have influnced each other in this recent crash. My second HD is now formatted RAW and it's a huge PITA to recover.
Thx