is there any reason to configure HD into RAID0 anymore?

[Larry Secrest]

Hello,

I built a machine in 2007 to run vegas 7. It's been working beautifully. In addition to HD hosting XP Pro and external storage I have two internal hard drives configured into a RAID0 for faster capture. Until this day it's working amazingly well. I'm about to build a new system to possibly host Vegas 12. Does anybody know if there's any reason to have a "faster" hard drive system, which is two hard drives configured into RAID 0 for capture, or it's now not needed anymore with the fastest drives on the market? Should I bother about RAID0 or just let the capture being done by a very fast dedicated HD to that particular task?
Thanks
Larry

[Steve Game]

You will still get an advantage when rendering or scrubbing from a fast data drive on which your captured/imported files are stored. Whether a fast single drive is better depends on how much space you need and whether you will use intermediate codecs like DNxHD, Cineform or Pro-Res. Rendering from three or more streams at 100Mb/s each could seriously tax even the best single drives.

[Larry Secrest]

Yes, I see your point.

Instead of building a system with a SSD for the boot and OS drive + a RAID5 with internal disk I was thinking of some form of external storage.
Do you have experience with some decent ones that don't break the bank?
Thanks

[Steve Game]

I don't have any experience of fast external drives or arrays but I recommend that they should be connected by an E-SATA port or USB3 as a minimum. Don't forget even the fastest single HDDs can only read at about 250MB/s (e.g. a Velociraptor under ideal conditions) and it costs a lot of power (heat) and accoustic noise.
The SSD system drive is the way to go as editors pull in small programs for every filter and effect that you use on the timeline, Soon, SSDs will be cheap enough and large enough as mass data storage devices, but I don't think they read/write speed they will offer can be used by the rendering engine, (CPU) even in a few years.
For my system, I am about to evaluate Vegas Pro 12 before I replace the HDD system drive with an SSD, but the 2TB RAID 0 will be retained as a repository for current project resources where fast access is needed during rendering and scrubbing. The output of renders goes either to a local data HDD or via gigabit ethernet to a NAS. The output speed during rendering is normally much slower than read access to the project resource media.

Hope that helps

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Larry Secrest

I have two internal hard drives configured into a RAID0 for faster capture. Until this day it's working amazingly well.

I'm not sure how fast hard drives expedite capturing. Most any hard drive will be much faster than needed for the physical act of capturing, as the media you are capturing from will likely be much slower than the drive being downloaded to. So having a fast drive dedicated for capture doesn't make sense, unless I'm not understanding something.

I download from SD cards, and even my fastest ones are dreadfully slow.

I think most editors use a fast drive configuration for the purpose of editing current projects, or as scratch drives, as some of us call them.

I personally use Cheetah 15K SAS drives which are extremely reliable and fast. They are enterprise class, so they are expensive, but for editing there really is nothing superior, if there was I'd probably buy it. If you want to take the guesswork out of which drives to buy, and if you like knowing you have the best of the best, the Hitachi 15K drives and the Cheetah 15K drives are it I think, or very close to it. I know there are some very good SSD drives out there, but I'm wary of them still. I think most editors still prefer disc drives, but I might be wrong.

[Larry Secrest]

Steve and Jeff,

Thanks for your answers. Yes, I've just discovered that. No need of a fast drive for capturing. Well, I also used RAID 0 for editing.
I'm going to ask further question about RAID0 and RAID5 in a more appropriate forum
Thanks again
Larry

[Jeff Harper]

Remember if you are using onboard raid from your mobo you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot. Onboard raid basically sucks eggs and is a waste and resource hog. If you are not using a good hardware based controller I'd just get the fastest drive you can afford and then forget raid. Just my 2 cents. I am not a technical person, but my opinion is based on experience and my own research.

[Larry Secrest]

I will definitely keep this in mind.

[David Chien]

1) No.

2) SSDs are faster. You can get a 480GB for <$400 and render off that far, far faster than any RAID 0 HD subsystem.

3) RAMDisk - Software - Server Memory Products & Services - Dataram
Add LOTS of RAM, create a RAMDISK, put your video there and render to/from that for EVEN faster than SSD speeds.