hard-drives for video editing

S

sean90291

Veteran
I bought and installed a Maxtor 6 L300S0 300 Gig drive in my computer for editing, having been told by the vendor this was a "fast SATA drive." I'm also a sucker. With 2 gigs of RAM this drive seems to chug along at a snails pace, and I now get a lot of errors while trying to edit video. What drive are you guys using in your systems?
 
Does your motherboard have on-board SATA or are you using a PCI card? I recently tried to upgrade my system to SATA by installing a PCI SATA card. Avid hated it. The whole system hated it. Went back to IDE for now.
 
This is a similar question to mine...I have a 250 Gig LaCie Drive, and it doesn't work great, but not horrible either...It is hooked up to my Mac Powerbook G4 (1.33 Ghz, 2 Gig RAM) through a firewire 800 port.

I want to get a G-Raid, but how does it hook up to the computer...Is it by the Firewire 800 or something else? I saw the G-SATA, which has a different connector through a PCI Card.

I also just saw LaCie is releasing a SATA II Two Hard Drive...what port does that use?
 
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Owen said:
Does your motherboard have on-board SATA or are you using a PCI card? I recently tried to upgrade my system to SATA by installing a PCI SATA card. Avid hated it. The whole system hated it. Went back to IDE for now.
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Good suggestion. A PCI card is bad. However, I'm running a SATA RAID 0 on a PCI-X card and it's just fine. It's a bandwidth issue.

KingsReign said:
I want to get a G-Raid, but how does it hook up to the computer...Is it by the Firewire 800 or something else?
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Yep, FW 800. It's a pretty cool little box. Anything I've used from G-Technology has been quality stuff. The G-SATA has faster benchmarks, but you need a pretty specific setup to use it. SATA onboard (that you can access externally) or a PCI-X or PCI express card.

KingsReign said:
I also just saw LaCie is releasing a SATA II Two Hard Drive...what port does that use?
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Drumroll ... a SATA II port. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) Sorry. Couldn't resist. It's identical to a SATA port, but you have to have hardware that's SATA II capable and can support the higher transfer rate.
 
I'm not using a PC card adapter. It's a SATA compatible ASUS motherboard...apparently.

I'm on Avid Xpress Pro HD 5.0. 2 gigs RAM. P4 3.0 ghz. Nvidia Geforce 6600 Video card.

it was running pretty smoothly on a Western Digital NON-SATA drive...which crashed completely. I was convinced to buy this Maxtor SATA drive cuz it's "FASTER." Only to find it's super super sloooow. I'm going to hire a computer geek to come and check all the BIOS and cache settings and other crap I do not understand at all.
 
That's a good question krestofre. And since I have no idea what the freak it means, I couldn't possibly answer it. But now I know that I should ask someone else that!!! Thanks!
 
I would return the Maxtor before it dies and takes all your data with it.

Maxtor drives don't cost very much for a reason... I've been kicked in the face time and time again because I keep getting lured in with their prices and then found myself at Best Buy again at 10pm trying to find a new harddrive.

They last about 19 months. Just long enough for the short Maxtor warantee to wear out.

That being said, Maxtors aren't really that much slower than a Seagate, so it doesn't really explain the speed issue.

One thing you NEED to check out: load up your Maxtor boot floppy and make sure you aren't in "quiet" (read slow) mode.
 
I had forgotten about this. Sean, any update? Did you ever figure out what was going on with those drives?
 
krestofre said:
Good suggestion. A PCI card is bad. However, I'm running a SATA RAID 0 on a PCI-X card and it's just fine. It's a bandwidth issue.
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That's interesting. I didn't know there were PCI cards handling SATA drives.

What I do have and use is a small box that you plug in the back of a PATA IDE device to convert it into a SATA drive. Then you can use your SATA connections. Seems to work fine.

But in my case I am not using it to handle the main Avid program or the video files. So I don't know how fast it can be.

What I do find is that SATA connectors, particularly those on the motherboard, do not seem too reliable. They unplug quite easily and I am not sure if the contact is as good as it should be. A box to hold it, as on IDE or floppy inputs, should be much better.

Yep, FW 800. It's a pretty cool little box. Anything I've used from G-Technology has been quality stuff. The G-SATA has faster benchmarks, but you need a pretty specific setup to use it. SATA onboard (that you can access externally) or a PCI-X or PCI express card.
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What setup do you need for G-SATA?

Do all FW inputs handle FW800?

Now about sean90291's HD problem:

I don't think your speed slow-down is related to that Maxtor you bought, except if it's deffective. A modern 300Gb SATA drive like yours should be as fast as it can get, for that size and technology at least, not very dissimilar to a Seagate or other. The problem should be elsewhere. Memory, heat, CPU: you name it. Quite likely not on the HD.

BUT... I don't think Matrox or WD are relieable HDs, as too many of them died on my hands, sometimes after a few months.

Now I only trust Seagate, and my latest 200Gb from them seems to run fine after more than a year.
 
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Thanks for following up Krestofre. I only noticed the post now (everything gets lost these days in RED postings....heheheh).

I did get it sorted out. My problem was NOT the SATA vs. non-SATA drive in the end. It was a sloppy computer tech who seated my RAM badly. Next time, I will just buy a Dell. THey're such solid, well tested machines, and I'm just not into learning how to build computers myself. :-)
 
im.thatoneguy said:
I would return the Maxtor before it dies and takes all your data with it.

Maxtor drives don't cost very much for a reason... I've been kicked in the face time and time again because I keep getting lured in with their prices and then found myself at Best Buy again at 10pm trying to find a new harddrive.

They last about 19 months. Just long enough for the short Maxtor warantee to wear out.
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You're scaring me. But then, I do read everywhere that MAXTORs (at least, the lower end models) aren't worth investing into.

Oh well.

I got lured by the low prices not once, but TWICE.

But then, they seem to work fine for me.

I'm editing using Avid Xpress Pro HD on a Dell Inspiron 9300 and two internal Maxtor 200GB 7200rpm in cheap plastic enclosures, and so far, no problems... fast and steady as hell. Had the first one for two years... still, I back up everything on DVDs just in case.

I'd recommend the SEAGATES though... 5-year warranty... can't beat that.
 
sean90291 said:
Thanks for following up Krestofre. I only noticed the post now (everything gets lost these days in RED postings....heheheh).

I did get it sorted out. My problem was NOT the SATA vs. non-SATA drive in the end. It was a sloppy computer tech who seated my RAM badly. Next time, I will just buy a Dell. THey're such solid, well tested machines, and I'm just not into learning how to build computers myself. :-)
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By all means go with a DELL... great machines for an agressive price.

The core duo Inspiron 9400 with an nVidia GEFORCE 7800 video card for around 1200 (or less with coupons) is just about the best laptop deal there is for power users on a budget... I'm very happy with my Inspiron 9300 myself and drool over the new Dell Precision M90 mobile workstation or better yet, the new XPS M1710... *sigh*... I understand AVID hasn't certified the M90 yet... only a matter of time I guess.
 
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