Raptor better used as boot disk or for footage

joshtownsend

Well-known member
I only have one 80 giger right now and I'm about to take me computer apart. Can soemone save me some testing and give me an answer.

I'm running vista with an amd x2 6000+ 2 gigs of pc800 ddr2 ram and currently have a sata WD400 giger as my boot drive with my footage on a seperate 500 giger sata.
 
I have one of the older 36GB Raptors in my editing system, and I use it exclusively for the Windows page file, the location of the temporary files, and as scratch space for applications.

The OS and software are on a separate drive, and all the assets I'm editing with are on a RAID array. All the drives in my system (including the optical drive) use SATA connections.
 
I'll run HDTach when I get home on my 74G raptor vs a 250G SATA drive and show you the different. If memory serves correct, the raptor should have a higher data-rate and faster access time than most "normal" 7200rpm SATA drives.

Now, whether this becomes aparent when you're editing or not I'm not sure. I, too, keep all my footage on a RAID0, which is much faster than a single raptor. Windows boot/page/temp is all running off the 74g raptor also.
 
I think, in general, you would want to keep a fairly large drive for your boot disc so you can add additional software over time.
Faster (and dedicated) HD's are best for your video.

I've been using a Dell workstation for over a year with a 250gb (sata) boot disc and two 150-160gb Raptors for editing Hi-Def without issue. They do sound like jet engines though . . . <g>.
 
My RAID array is actually RAID1, not RAID0.

RAID0 has twice the potential points of failure, and if either of the drives dies, you've got nothing. You should have backups of everything anyway, but that is twice as important with a RAID0 array.
 
My source footage for a 4 minute music video was 2.5 hours /50g of DVCPROHD
You will need a couple of 500g. Once I made a dvx copy and a proxy copy I had almost filled a 250g drive. Get as much storage as you can afford
 
haven't checked lately but I don't think Raptors come that large, so if you are looking for fast (10-15k) drives . . .
 
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