If you have the money, Here's a fast hard disk

[paulw]

The Fastest Hard Drives You Can Buy

Want the absolute fastest hard drives you can get--damn the cost?
Seagate and Quantum each have new Ultra 160 SCSI hard drives that
surpass existing speed barriers. There's no doubt that the 15,000-rpm
Seagate 18GB Cheetah X15 and 10,000-rpm Quantum 18GB Atlas 10K deliver
speed, but can you afford them? Read more in Today's Review.


Today's Review: Seagate 18GB Cheetah X15 and Quantum 18GB Atlas 10K http://www.pcworld.com/r/pr/1%2C2061...7669%2C00.html

[AlgoRhythm]

If anyone gets one, I hope you have a HUGE fan to cool it off with. I have "just" a 10K RPM 18GB Cheetah, and it gets burnin'!


AlgoRhythm

[Dr Mordrid]

I guess the main question is: once you get past 40-50 mb/s what's the use? Bragging rights?

It only takes 30-36 mb/s to capture uncompressed D1 video in RGB (even less in YUV). That level of performance can be achieved much cheaper and with far less heat by using 7,200 rpm IDE's in a RAID0 array.

For 99.9% of us that's plenty until HDTV capture/editing hardware comes along.

Dr. Mordrid

[Walrus]

Dr Mordid: What can you get with these hard drives? Better server performance & better heavy duty database performance. For certain applications you need every scrap of performance you can get. However, for current video purposes, I agree with you. It's totally unneeded.

[Mardon]

I have two 36.4 Quantum Atlas 10K U160 HDs in my system.
www.quantum.com/products/hdd/atlas_10k/atlas_10k_overview.htm

These are connected to an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card. Since the MoBo is an Asus P3B-F that doesn't support the U160, I don't get full throughput but they are still very fast. For cooling I added two additional case fans in my full tower AOpen HX08 case. These fans are on the outside, where they pull the air trough rather than blow it out. They are too big to install inside the case. I also mounted a large fan under my desktop to pull the air away from the PC and into the room. The room is small and it does get kinda warm! :-)

I have one HD with two 4MB partitions for dual boot W98 and W2K and the remainder for data and programs. The other HD is for video and audio storage for my RT2000. My camcorder is a TRV900 so I record and capture in DV and (from my perspective) 36GB isn't all that much storage. Disk space gets taken not only by the raw footage but also by Premiere's preview files and the final edited product. If I want to produce a 30 minute program from a couple of DV tapes full of raw footage, it's tight. (This video stuff is just a hobby BTW, no 'pro' here!) I'm actually running out of disk space and am thinking about adding another HD. The HX08 case will hold two more internally.

I went the SCSI route because I wanted an all-SCSI system that would help me avoid IRQ conflict problems with a system that has lots of 'junk' installed. CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, PCMCIA PC Card Reader, Soundblaster Live! with Live! Drive, the RT2000, TI1394 DV capture, Agfa T1200 scanner, Zip Drive. From what I've heard from other RT2000 users, I suspect the lack of problems that I've had with my RT2000 is partially due to the fact that I went all SCSI.

I would be the first to admit that IDE HDs in a RAID array makes a lot of sense. And I know it is way more cost-effective too. For me, however, potential IRQ problems caused by the number of peripherals that I have and the ability to expand by adding even more storage pushed my decision towards SCSI.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Mardon

[Dr Mordrid]

IRQ problems are not foreign to SCSI controllers any more than they are to Fasttraks, which to the system ARE SCSI controllers. Both can run into PCI loading problems on some systems, not to mention contending for resources with PCI audio & NIC's.

That said I have no problem with the following;

Asus P3B-F
256 megs
Matrox RT-2000
8.4g multi-boot drive (Win98SE, Win98SE+editing, WinNT4-SP6 & Linux)
2.0g swapfile/Program Files2 drive
120g RAID0 (Fasttrak66 w/three DiamondMax Plus ATA66's) + one 40g single drive "array".
Toshiba SD-M1202 DVD/CD reader
HP-8100i CDR/RW burner
Linksys EtherFast 10/100 full duplex NIC (connected to Linksys Cable/DSL router + cable modem)
A3 scanner

IMHO the 160 SCSI hardware is fine for servers & database use, but extravagant overkill for video. Also I can get a ton more capacity at a much lower cost with ATA.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 20 July 2000).]

[Pertti]

Mardon,

When using add-on controllers, you don't need support on the mobo side, so your P3B-F shouldn't have any effect on the throughput.

I am still using a P2B-S (to be replaced by a CUSL2 this week) on my RT2000 setup, and there are no problems with having:
- G400flex+RT2000
- Matrox Millenium II
- Promise FastTrak 33
- RTL8029 NIC
- SB32AWE
- Integrated UW/U2 SCSI

The above allows me the use of 4 IDE HD:s on the motherboard (90GB), a 3 drive array on the Promise (22GB), and 3 additional drives connected to the SCSI (at 4.5GB a piece - too small by todays standards)
SCSI would allow for easier expansion, but the price for the drives is just too much, considering how much more space you get with IDE.
The CD and CD-RW are SCSI

Pertti