Is interal RAID hard drives worth it?

[the vj]

Hi.

I have a Mac Pro Quad Core 2.8 Intel Xeon. I am working in video editing in FCP for a TV station.

Inside my computer I have a 256GB hard drive for software and system ONLY, and a 700GB for storage, scratch and where the video files are.

I have 2 internal hard drive slots free.

I was wondering if removing the 700GB drive and installing 3 new drives of the same capacity and brand, PLUS a RAID PCI card to handle the 3 drives.

OR

Use the 3 drives in RAID just via software, because I am doing standard video, no HD.

Actually the 700GB that I have is fine but I will have a lot of work coming over and constant.

Let me know if:
1. The PCI raid is worth it.
2. The arrange of 3 drives without PCI card is actually enough (I think it is)
3. I need capacity and speed so: can I use 3 1TB drives? or 3 700GB faster drives?
4. Or is better to have 5 external hard drive raid arrange? (more bulky on the desk).

The budged is basically mine.

Thank you very much for your input.

 

[bigbossbmb]

if you're just doing SD video, I wouldn't go with a RAID for speed. I might get 2 big and fast drives and mirror them for safety in case of a drive failure... but you aren't hitting a bottleneck with single drives in SD.

I work with all 1080p ProRes material and I went with a 4-drive internal RAID5. I get good data rates and decent protection.

 

[kohlson]

Using the Apple RAID is pretty easy, and supported. In my 2009 4-core MacPro, I switched from the stock drive WDC 640G for boot/data to a RAID0 (2xHitachi 1TB). XBench disk-related performance improved by about 30%, and there is a definite sense of "not waiting" on my system anymore. Note that I have both TM and Carbon Copy Cloner making backups. Cheap ($110 for the pair), beneficial, and easy.

 

[pprior]

Just getting your video off the same drive as scratch will make a difference. Your hard drive speed may also improve just by going to a higher density modern drive. For SD video you don't "need" faster speeds, so it's all relative.

If your projects are mostly capture, edit, burn and delete, then putting a couple 2TB drives in a raid-0 stripe using software would give you signifcant speed increase at minimal cost. Of course you need to back up.

Most video editing in SD is processor limited, not hard drive, so doing this will not necessarily increase your actual render times at all.