Feel Like a Noob

[Qbrick]

From "day one", I've gotten conflicting advice about setting up scratch disks. I updated to CS3 because I can now import MXF files but the whole system seems extra buggy since the upgrade---especially for whole timeline renders. I have a Dual Opteron processor and 2 TB Raid. I've tried different arrangements and nothing seems to work and now I don't know who to believe. I have two drives that are designated as 'C' and the other is 'V'. The latter is the Raid 5.

If you were editing on this system, how would you set up your scratch disks in CS3 so that the damn thing won't crash.

[Shooter]

Are you using a Mac or a PC?

Why do you think its your scratch disk location causing the issue?

[Qbrick]

Shooter,
I have a PC with a Dual Opteron 252 and Raid 5 Sata which suggests that I've got all the power & storage I need---at least that was the case when I was using PPro 1.5.

Why do I think it's the scratch disks?

I am grasping at straws because after trying everything else to fix the issues with my system, I thought it might be user error (me). I came out of the analog editing world and still don't quite understand what makes NLE's tick. Mainly, I've gotten conflicting advice on how to set up the scratch discs for the optimum performance. I posted this hoping to get a consensus on how people with a similar system have set up their disks. To me the obvious place for all my video assets is the Raid after that, I'm not sure where to assign the previews, media cache, etc.

[Shooter]

Rule of thumb is different disks for different media. Keep everything off the Boot drive except the applications.

Go with the manual recomendations on 'Scratch Disks' but I doubt this is your issue

Crashes can be caused by heaps of things. eg other processes running simultaneously, internet updates, screen savers, heat issues (monitor this and fix if neccessary), bad ram, virus scanners, old drivers, .....

[Qbrick]

Hey Shooter,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I may have resort to doing another complete clean re-install of Windows XP. This actually cured the render failure issue but render times and project load time got really sluggish. So, in my effort to fix the latter, I probably re-introduced the original problem.

I may re-install Premiere 1.5 because the machine really functioned nicely with that version.

[PhantomVideo]

1.5 and CS3 will probably coexsit ok if you want options, i have found CS3 also to be rather unstable too, but the features it offers (AE dynamic link and Audio Source Channel mapping) make it impossible for me to go back.

What Version of CS3 were you running ?
Ive found 3.2.0 to be more solid than 3.1.1 or 3.1.0