why should I use a raid to edit?

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pulpwoody

Well-known member
Currently, I'm using a mac book, not a mac book pro, and using fcp studio 2, and editing xdcam ex1 hd footage with external hard drives that are running on usb 2.0.

My question is what are the advantages to running a raid system or using firewire 800? My system isn't the fastest, but everything works fine, and everything I do is supported just fine. Is it just speed?
 
There are many reasons for using RAIDs but no, it's not always necessary. The top three biggies are this :

1. Redundancy & backups !!!!!!!!!

2. increased sustained speeds.

3. Larger combined volume size then what a single drive can deliver.


You only have to live through a sudden hard drive failure once to truly understand the value to having files backed up across multiple drives. Where as a single USB or even FireWire drive going bad causes you to loose EVERYTHING on it, RAID setups such as RAID 5 allows for one drive failure, while protecting your files from complete loss and allowing you to replace the drive with a spare with little time lost on your project without suffering a huge panic attack because you realized you royally screwed up by not covering your ass.

Of course, you could copy/ transfer your files to a second backup single drive, but a RAID is pretty much automated backup. And as you work off your main drive, how ofter would you remember to update your backup drive?

Using Time Machine to backup large video files is a bad idea. That should only be used for OS system & smaller personal files due to their sheer size Vs the size of your Time Machine volume.
 
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Jim Brennan said:
Hooooolleeyyyy CRAP!

What were you editing?
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I assume your talking about my sig image? I don't remember since it was a long long time ago. I just recently found the screen cap I made from it and made it my sig. I do remember though, at the time I canceled the render/export and tried it again, and then it worked normal. So it really was just a glitch thing. :laugh:
 
RyanBellaCine said:
There are many reasons for using RAIDs but no, it's not always necessary. The top three biggies are this :

1. Redundancy & backups !!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

RAID1 can be good for redundancy, but it's not a good back up. It doesn't protect against accidental deletion, file corruption, theft, 'acts of god' (ex. power surges) etc.,.


-A
 
I know its good to have separate drives for, application, scratch and render. But I need to know if I set-up Raid-0 on the application drive will it speed things up? All the talks about Raid 0 have been on render disks.
 
ihatedv said:
I know its good to have separate drives for, application, scratch and render. But I need to know if I set-up Raid-0 on the application drive will it speed things up? All the talks about Raid 0 have been on render disks.
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Your Apps might launch faster but things like rendering and exporting won't be changed as those are CPU based.


-A
 
DJDecay said:
FYI:

Transcoding,exporting will be faster, due to the fact that I/O is done on different volumes and controllers so long as one is reading and the other is writing.
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I'm talking solely about the system drive being on RAID0 because that is what ihatedv specifically asked about.

ihatedv said:
I know its good to have separate drives for, application, scratch and render. But I need to know if I set-up Raid-0 on the application drive will it speed things up? All the talks about Raid 0 have been on render disks.
Click to expand...


-A
 
You really want to speed up your system drive & applications, go for a SSD. They cost more, but they are tons faster then what SATAs can deliver. You don't even have to RAID it to get to ludicrous speed.
 
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