SSD or VelociRaptor or not

[Topper]

.
I do a lot of HD video editing and encoding with FCP, Compressor, QT Pro, and Combustion.
I am not real pleased my processing speed.
I've got one 300GB hard drive dedicated strictly for video editing.
I've got my scratch disks setup correctly.
But it is still not as fast as I would like.
I am sure it will help greatly when the above applications become 64-bit.
In the mean time, would a SSD or VelociRaptor drive speed up my video editing?
.

 

[jdl8422]

I'm not a tech expert on it, but I think you have to consider your size needs. If you need a larger drive you can RAID some 300GB Raptors, but you would more than likely go broke setting a RAID up with SSD. From reading on here you can get some good performance out of RAID0 but there are some cons with that as well so back up your stuff.

 

[alphaod]

If you can afford it I'd go for the SSDs. So much faster random access.

 

[gianly1985]

I suggest Velociraptor:

....if you are a masochist

Otherwise, get an Intel x25-m G2.

 

[maghemi]

If you've got neither, go with SSD for sure. However I went from velociraptors to SSD and for the most part I don't think for the extra cost it was worth it.

But coming from normal grade hdd's definitely go with SSD.

 

[xiovoix]

SSD- value in crucial m225 128gb; on level peg with ocz vertex for performance!

 

[ungraphic]

Instead of going with one 80 or 120gb SSD drive, get two 60 or 64gb SSD drives and raid them both. The price for the two will be about the price of a single 120gb drive, and will give you way better performance. For video editing, this setup will GREATLY improve your read/write performances as I know how much strain such large files put on a typical HDD.

 

[Topper]

The price for the two will be about the price of a single 120gb drive, and will give you way better performance.

Thank you.
Why are two small drives better than one?

 

[TheStrudel]

They're not, necessarily. It depends on what drives you're using.

But in general they would be in a striped RAID, because reading and writing would be occurring on two devices simultaneously to one logical volume, allowing double the speed of just one drive.

 

[gianly1985]

They're not, necessarily. It depends on what drives you're using.

Exactly.

From the post of ungraphic, it seemed that you could stripe any 2 smaller SSD and go faster than a super-fast single Intel x25-M.

That is obviously not correct.

Probably there's no RAID 0 setup of 2 other SSD that go faster than a single x25-M in random write tests.

If you wanna go with RAID, stripe 2 Intel x25-m 80gb drives.

Otherwise, go for a single Intel x25-m.