A little while back, I picked up three 750GB Samsungs. Of the three, one was bad, and I don't trust the temperatures reported by those Samsung drives either. The reported temps seem a bit low to be credible. I pretty much lean towards Seagate, in general nowadays, for reliable drives. I definitely avoid Maxtors.

There are big differences between hard drive models, not just make. It's a good idea to look at feedback from users at Newegg as a guide. Also, Tom's Hardware has a nice listing of drives and benchmark test results on them:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/h...mance,658.html

Many (if not most) cases do not provide for adequate cooling of hard drives, and they can get quite hot (not good at all for reliability). No matter what hard drive you use, if it's consistently running well over 50 degrees Celsius, it's almost assuredly going to have a shorter than average life. I particularly like this case for keeping hard drives cool:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Nine%2bHundred

That depends on the cooling you use. The case you mention is definitely a good case, but would never be my favorite. No hot-swappable disks being the major drawback. But then I prefer a large number of disks in a Raid5 or Raid6 configuration, such as in a SuperMicro SC 743TQ-865B chassis. The attached pics show some temperatures with a properly cooled system with 20 degrees Celsius as room temperature and the case that I would prefer.

It's a simple question, but I have to ask it (I got no replies elsewhere):

With 32MB cache and the biggest allocation size possible, can 2 500GB Seagate Barracudas in RAID 0 work for 8-bit Uncompressed HD? Also should I go for a hardware PCI (not PCI-E, the Intensity Pro took up the last PCI-Ex1 slot) RAID for uncompressed or a Software RAID off of Vista? I'm using a Intel G33+ICH9 so it doesn't have built in RAID.

None of my other threads with this ever got answered.

I have two boxes that run Vista x64 using Adobe Production Premium CS3 (along with a variety of commercial plugins) and they work just dandy. I have 4gigs of ram in each and as the x64 version will address all 4GB of ram rather than 3.25GB on the 32bit version it has its advantages. Also, After Effects (32bit) reports using 4GB of Ram on startup (which 32bit apps technically should be capped at), it only addresses 2GB on a 32bit OS with 4GB of RAM due to funky addressing limitations.

However, regarding your RAM, there is no artificial limitation that makes it any different, functionality wise (other than only being able to address roughly 3.25GB of the 4GB in a 32bit OS), when running under a 32bit OS than any other RAM. They are just stating that due to many uninformed individuals returning RAM because the computer doesn't see all 4GB in a matched pair set that they purchase when they use it in conjunction with a 32bit OS.

I haven't built a system to capture live uncompressed HD yet, so I can't speak from experience. That said, the size of the cache shouldn't make a difference. I believe 2 modern drives in RAID 0 would be cutting it close (at best) for capturing 8 bit, 1920x1080 video in real time. When I do build a system for capturing live uncompressed HD, I'll use 3 drives in RAID 0.

For uncompressed HD 3 disks is not enough. It requires at least 4 to 5 disks in an Aid0 to handle a continuous data stream of 1.485 Gbps and that quadruples the chance of losing all data over a single disk. Did you ever consider why there are people that use a Raid01?

The Samsung F1 disk is around the fastest there is, but it's sustained transfer rate drops down to around 55 MB/s when getting fuller. 3 of those disks in Aid0 may achieve, depending on the controller and the inherent overhead something like 140-150 MB but for uncompressed you need at least 200 MB/s. Only when they are near empty you may be able to ingest uncompressed, but they fill up rapidly with these data flows. And the F1 has 32 MB buffer.

Or are you talking about 4:2:2 HDV? In that case only 120 MB/s is needed and 3 disks will suffice.

So even cached, this is not enough? Even at the maximum allocation size?

Now, would one drive or two be needed for optimum performance in "Film Scan" mode in Cineform?

Harm is right. 4 drives is probably minimum. (I don't have the numbers memorized yet - I will when I get serious about building a machine to do it.)

32 megs of cache on a hard drive amounts to less than a second of uncompressed HD video (insignificant). 50MB/s sustained write speed is about the most you can rely on with a modern hard drive (regardless of allocation size).

I also don't remember off the top of my head what the maximum throughput is with PCI, but I don't think it is adequate either.

Are all your recordings so short and the time between them long enough to transfer to HD? 96 GB will suffice for around 8 minutes per card. Better wait for 512 GB cards, they will last around 42 minutes per card, so dream on...

There were 4 minute Beta SP tapes back in the day, this dream is a start. And it's 200 Megabits, not Megabytes (200 Megabytes is 4:4:4(:4) 16bit uncompressed). I take that as kind of an insult.

Again, how many do I need for "Film Scan"? (not Film Scan 2 on the PC and 100% on the Mac)

Now, In my current configuration, I can't use 4-5 internal drives, only 2, but after finding this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812119021

I'm thinking about external 4-5 HDD arrays for uncompressed as a far in the future upgrade. (if it even happens at all...)

This Lacie looks promising (but the price is a little steep): http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...ufacture=Lacie

I also came upon this: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...20Digital%20WD

A 10k RPM SATA2 drive that says sustained rates of 120MB/s, would RAID0ing 2 of these be enough? (will be half the price of an external array)

Also (related to film scan rates of 20MB/s), how reliable is cached sustained speeds of 50MB/s at writing at speeds higher than what the HDD was designed to do uncached? (9-12MB/s). (This will make me second guess my decision for a 2 drive RAID for Cineform NEO HD's Film Scan mode)

If I get no response, I'll automatically assume one drive is enough for Cineform Film Scan.

As proof: http://www.tapeandmedia.com/detail.a...uct_id=BCT-5MA
It's 5 mins though, I was only off by 1 minute. But it doesn't matter, 96GB @ 200Mbit/s will get around 43mins. (a 32GB P2 gets 32min @ 100Mbit/s DVCPRO HD)

Cache on a hard drive has essentially no impact on sustained read/write speeds.

Are you saying I should RAID 0 for cineform?

Run a speed test on your hard drives, and see what the minimum write speed is for the entire drive (not the average or maximum). If it's below the highest bitrate you will need to capture live, then use striped RAID arrays.

Here's a nice reference you might find helpful:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3...%2C1841%2C1795