Regular Computer Maintenance in HDV Editing
 

Looking for feedback. My system is a quad-core PC, with 4GB RAM, two drives (300 GB/each) 0-Raided, one drive to run programs. I use Premiere Pro (After Effects and CS2) with AspectHD. Obviosly even HDV takes up space, so the question becomes -- what is conventional maintenance to keep an NLE system in optimum performance?

Right now, after deleting files, I run the defrag. That's about it. Not experiencing any problems, but asking this question anyway-- perhaps others are more familiar with details of system optimization. Is there something else I should be doing?

Thanks!

I would periodically defrag my OS drive but never, never defrag your video files drive without backing it up(which you should do, anyway) Defrag of the drive with your video files is prone to corruption.

I disagree. This would only happen if you had hardware issues. Defragging will benefit video as the blocks are sequential and there is nothing special about video files (just 1's and 0's like the OS) that makes them prone to corruption. If you have had experience such as this, replace that drive as it is flawed.

One strategy I have seen mentioned is to use video and render drives only as scratch drives. After each project, format them.

1. Defrag NTFS is good! Because it can be interrupted without loss of data.
2. If you have files with errors(hardware ones) - you want to know, Defrag will report them and then you can backup whats possible

3. Greg: What OS/motherboard do you use to benefit from 4gb memory?

My AMD box gives me 3gb of 4gb total... using Vista 32bit

//Lazze