Keith,

Which RAID controller do you use? What I'm really looking for is one card for more IDE channels so that I can run non-RAID alongside RAID. Are you doing this with your controller ?
I'm just trying to speed up my uncompressed video processing.

Thanks to Brian for the Tom's
hardware links. They cite a 100% increase in disk read/write performance using three disks in RAID0, while two disks
offer a 50% increase. Here's the RAID controller they are
using in the benchmarks:

HighPoint RocketRAID ATA133 4044 Channel ~$100
RocketRAID 404 supports up to 8 IDE hard disk drive

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/frcontroller.htm

Just so you know, you can also buy normal ATA133 controllers
to add to your system for more channels.

Gints: to whom are you asking that?

I use the Rocketraid 404 which is great as I have 4 channels and it has turned out to be one of the most compatable adapters I have used, both the onboard RAID on my Gigabyte 875 board and a Promise FX2000 had major issues with XP with all my adapters and such, especially the onboard CSA Gigabit. The RR404 is rock solid, Ican run RAID sets on their own dedicate chahenls for each drive along side JBOD on the other channels. A very flexible controller. Just be sure to use the latest Firmeware and drivers and it works great. At one point I had 2 x 40GB RAID 0 then 2 x 80GB RAID 0 and another 2 x 80GB RAID 0 all on the same card! Now I run 2 x 80GB RAID 1 and thena 120 GB and 160GB as JBOD all on their own channels!

<<<-- Originally posted by Gints Klimanis : >If you're doing HD, that's a different matter.

Isn't HD still a 25 MBit MPEG2 stream ? -->>>

HD at 25 mbps is a new construct for use at the consumer and prosumer level. The JVC camera is the first instance of the standard that was just approved by Sony and the other Japanese camera manufacturers.

The 'big-boy' HD like that used in Star Wars and other movies is way beyond 25 mbps.

Ok. After checking the Web, here's an interesting review of the
Promise TX4000 4 channel (8 disk) ATA133 RAID controller,
which sells for about $170 .

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...tx4000_11.html

There's a nice table that includes mention of performance in Premier 4.2 and Sound Forge 4.0. The interesting thing is that
FAT32 performance on page 12 blows away NTFS performance.

I'm not that surprised. NTFS is a much more complex filesystem
that does journallig, security, encryption etc. which FAT32 doesn't
do. So therefor it has a lot less to check etc.

But, it won't go beyond 4 GB files which basically means it is
unusable for most types of video work. Also NTFS is much more
robust if something goes wrong.

Anyway, I'm going for RAID with the HighPoint 404 four channel ATA/133 RAID card for $120. I just scored a couple of 120G drives (Western Digital, 8MB buffer, 7200 RPM) for $50 each after rebate and will have my friend pick up two more.