Hello,

 I'm currently building an editing computer, and am trying to figure out how to configure my various hard drives for use with Media Composer. I have two configurations in mind, and need help in deciding which one is better.

What's the better scenario?

6 x 7200 RPM 500 GB Hard Drives in RAID 5 configuration

vs.

2 x 7200 RPM 250GB Hard Drives in RAID 0 (OS)
2 x 7200 RPM 500 GB Hard Drives in RAID 0 (Scratch)
3 x 7200 RPM 500 GB Hard Drives in RAID 5 (Media)

What's the better configuration? I'll be using AVID Media Composer to edit.

Thank you very much for your time and advice.

And the answer is... none of the above!  Firstly, one large RAID 5 array is a poor decision.  You must must MUST have your OS/launch drive physically separate to your media drive(s).

There won't be any significant gain in having your boot drive striped.  If you really feel that you must RAID it (and it may cause problems with your Windows install), use RAID 1 instead.  Mirroring your boot drive will give a greater level of security for your project data.  For the average Avid configuration 250 GB should be more than adequate.  Until very recently my boot drive was 80 GB and it never even got half full.

If your controller will support it, configure your 500 GB drives as a single RAID 5 array.  Partition that as your media and scratch drives, although I'm a little surprised at the amount of scratch space you feel that you'll require.  Avid won't need or use it, so I can only assume that you plan on using something like After Effects and/or Photoshop to create media and you want to store it there.  Possibly you want to buffer disc-based media there.  It still seems like a lot of space.

So my variant on option 2 would be

2 x 7200 RPM 250GB Hard Drives in RAID 1 (OS/applications/project storage)
5 x 7200 RPM 500 GB Hard Drives in RAID 5, partitioned two ways

I would use the two partitions on the RAID 5 array for media storage.  If you plan on doing large HD projects you may very well need more than the just under 2 TB that this will provide.

Thank you

By my own experience with a Windows 2003 server. Do not use software Raid on Your boot drive. You will be able to salvage Your data but it takes time. It take me a week to reinstall the first drive which failed. I could not boot the computer and there was lots of other problems before I fix it.

Boot drive raids must use an external raid card which make both mirrored drives exactly the same. The software raid do not put the boot section on both.

I see the consensus is to not RAID the OS drive. But wouldn't that make a bottleneck if my media and scratch drives are running faster? Would I need to get a faster harddrive, like 10000 rpms, to compete with the speed of the other Raided drives?

Thanks again for all your input.

The OS and apps do not really benefit from a super fast drive.  They can do what they need to do with a single drive.  I'd probably always use a 7200rpm, but that's just me.  The fast RAIDed media drives don't "compete" with the boot/system drive.

I still don't understand your need for a "scratch" drive or drives.  What are you intending to put there?  It may not be necessary to raid that either.

As ususal I agree with Jwrl. I might add that drives like the seagate 7200.10 class use 160 Gig platters, so I typically use 160 gig single platter OS drives (cooler and quiter). If you want more space, go for 320 gig. Also I would skip raid for the OS, and keep an image of the drive somewhere.

 I'm very comfy with my setup, which consists of OS and Avid on a raid 1 setup the motherboard provides, and the media drives on a hardware raid card in raid 5. As the actions of the OS and the MC software involves transferring a lot of small files from and to the ram of your computer, accesstime is the most important number to look at if you want it to be fast. And accesstime doesn't differ a lot between raided and unraided drives. The lowest accesstimes are found on SSD drives with the WD raptors on second place. I'm waiting a year or so till prices for such devices come down a bit and the technique of SSD is developed a little more. (I would prefer ssd over wd raptor, due to their high speed raptors are too noisy for my taste)

rinzeschuurman:

(I would prefer ssd over wd raptor, due to their high speed raptors are too noisy for my taste)

Brief note - the new "Velocraptors" (300G, 10K, 2.5") are much quieter than their previous brethren.  Have two in an XW4600 and don't hear them at all at idle - CPU and system fans make more noise, even at low speed.  Some slight clicking is audible during seek, but still nothing like their older brethren.

 Thanks for the info sysmangler, good to know

The new Velociraptors are the best but most expensive. You can get a similar boot drive experience with a "WD6400AKS" WD 640 GB 2-platter drive. The latter is $85.00 at Newegg and consistently delivers about 100 MB/sec read and write with one drive, no RAID.

My machine became about twice as fast when I imaged my 7200.11 320GB drive to this new 2-platter drive.

(2-platter drives have much higher bit density, so the data comes off faster.)