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Setting Up my Hard Drives

N

newportmac

macrumors member
Original poster
I want to make sure I am setting up my hard drives correctly for video editing.

Drive 1: OS and apps (150gb)
Drive2: imported unedited home movies (1tb)
Drive 3: my so called scratch disk- 160gb 10,000 rpm raptor.

Question: In using the scratch disk I am looking at saving my working files on just the video that I am working on. Should I keep the raw video on the 1TB or should I bring the video onto the scratch disk?
 
The scratch disk is the one that will be used for all editing. The 1TB drive would best be served as an archive drive for completed footage post editing. Of course you do have the problem that your scratch disk is pretty small. As long as your projects are reasonably small you should be okay.

Edit : Depending on the settings you give FCP it will automatically import footage to the scratch disk.
 
well newport, where you keep them depends on how long you plan to keep the raw footage? is it your family home movies for a client's? if it's yours, then yes, the 1 TB drive to archive them (and then back it up too if you plan to keep it). I would use the 160 drive to put the mpeg2 files when you're read to make the DVDs...or just use it to back those files up (keeping them on the larger drive).

in FCP, hit Shift-Q to change the scratch disk.

each hour of uncompressed SD video is 13 GBs approx.
 
Ok so if I understand you correctly, my scratch disc.. the 160gb 10,000 rpm one I will import my unedited home video (say 1/1/1999) and park the project folder containing 20 avi's on it thus taking it out of storage (it was sitting on the 1tb drive with 40 other home movies). I import it from the scratch disc into my video editing program and start the edit process.. I save everything to the scratch disk... So in effect I am both reading (pulling) from the scratch drive as well as writing.. I thought you only wanted to do one or the other on a scratch drive? I am not better off leaving my unedited project on the storage drive and just writing to the scratch?
 
It'll work like this (one of two ways, IMHO):

1.) 150GB for OS/apps as you said
2.) 1TB for unedited and finished projects
3.) 160 Raptor - you move the raw footage to this drive, do all the editing on it, then move the project to the 1TB mass storage when you're done.

OR

1.) 150GB yadda yadda
2a.) 500GB partition for finished projects
2b.) 500GB partition for unedited footage
3.) Raptor for current project
 
Related question - maybe you guys can tell me if this makes sense. I'll order a new MacPro next week (probably on Wednesday, after the keynote and the Apple Final Cut Pro event), and I plan to put four drives in there with 1TB each, which I plan to configure as follows:
  • First two drives: RAID 1 (mirrored set) for my system disk and important documents, and
  • The other two disks: RAID 0 (striped set) used as a scratch disk.
I am not planning on buying the hardware RAID controller - or should I?

An alternative might be to buy an external RAID for the important documents, which would make it easier to access from my other computers.

I guess my main question is: is an internal RAID 0 a good idea for a scratch disk?

Thanks in advance for your input!

- Martin
 
It depends on what you are editing. If you are editing DV or HDV you'd probably be better served having more storage w/two unRAIDed drives as opposed to the increase speed of a "single" RAIDed drive because DV and HDV don't require very much bandwidth. If you were using DVCPro 50 or DVCPro HD and did a lot of multi-track video editing then going RAID 0 would give you more RT performance, but I don't a ton more because DVCPro HD can easily be cut using FW400 HDDs.

RAID 1 is good for redundancy, but not so good for back-up so I'd still recommend backing up to an external FW drive routinely.


Lethal
 
Lethal,
LethalWolfe said:
If you are editing DV or HDV you'd probably be better served having more storage w/two unRAIDed drives as opposed to the increase speed of a "single" RAIDed drive
Click to expand...
I am missing something. Why do two separate drives have more storage when used individually than when used as a striped RAID 0? I thought the total capacity of the two drives was the same either way.

- Martin
 
AviationFan said:
Lethal,I am missing something. Why do two separate drives have more storage when used individually than when used as a striped RAID 0? I thought the total capacity of the two drives was the same either way.

- Martin
Click to expand...

They are the same size. What Lethal was saying was if you're increasing you're internal storage with more than one drive, you're better off without RAID for DV/HDV.
 
AviationFan said:
Lethal,I am missing something. Why do two separate drives have more storage when used individually than when used as a striped RAID 0? I thought the total capacity of the two drives was the same either way.

- Martin
Click to expand...

Complete brain fart on my part. What I should've said, was RAID 0 for DV/HDV is overkill (especially w/the speed of todays HDDs) and adds an unnecessary risk to your footage since if one drive dies you lose all yer data.


Lethal
 
When I get my new MP, I'm going to put in a 320GB WD drive for the OS, plus two 750 Spinpoints for scratch disks. I'll throw in the stock drive for itunes, documents, etc.

can't wait for those 8800's to start shipping.
 
bigbossbmb said:
When I get my new MP, I'm going to put in a 320GB WD drive for the OS, plus two 750 Spinpoints for scratch disks. I'll throw in the stock drive for itunes, documents, etc.

can't wait for those 8800's to start shipping.
Click to expand...

The OS takes up maybe 700MB... what are you going to do with the left over 319GB?
 
The OS and apps together take up a couple gigs. However, hard drives become slower the more you fill them up. That's why, for the MBP, if you're going to have 160-200 gigs of data on the HD, the 5400rpm 200gig HD will actually be slower than the 4500rpm 250gig.

It's basically giving the OS a lot of breathing room and letting the HD perform closer to its potential.
 
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