Video Editing - Ext FW800 RAID Vs Int HDD

[cosmichobo]

G'day,

I've recently upgraded from a G5 PowerMac to a 2009 2.93GHz iMac.

The primary use for the machine will be video editing.

Inside it has its original 640GB 7200RPM hard drive.

I have 2 x 1TB WD Green 7200RPM drives from the G5, that I was looking at putting into a RAID 1 Firewire 800 enclosure.

How would the two drive options compare in terms of video editing? (IE Internal, vs ext RAID?)

What are the Pro's and Con's?

Thanks

cosmic

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Firewire 800 will not offer more than 70 MB/s sequential read/write speeds, thus it would negate the need for a RAID for speed gains.
If you edit 1080p with an editing codec like ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec or DNxHD, Firewire 800 will be enough for two streams simultaneously.
It is not recommended to use the drive the OS and applications reside on and are run from for storing the video data you want to edit.

 

[cosmichobo]

Ahh, ok, so:

1) Not good to use main HDD as scratch/edit disk
2) Raid pointless (in terms of better speed) over Firewire800

I might grap the FW800 enclosure anyway, but use the 2x1TB drives simply as 2 drives... then grab a USB2 or 3 drive for long term storage...

Thanks