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**Dr Mordrid** · 19 February 2003, 02:24

Typically you see delay write fail errors when the target device's removable media has been ejected prematurely.

Other than dropped frames using a RAID should not affect visual quality of a capture. That's a function of your capture drivers and the codec.

OTOH a RAID card with a Highpoint chipset can be troublesome when it comes to consistand data throughput.

Dr. Mordrid

**Brian Ellis** · 19 February 2003, 02:58

What do you mean by "loss of quality".?

As Doc says, the only possible effect would be loss of frames. Saving to disk, whether in an array or singly is a kinda sorta all or nothing affair.

What does Sandra say for sequential read/write when the array is newly formatted?

"I have a tonne of stuff on this RAID": this may be worrying. When did you last empty your trash can/defrag it? Even so, defragging isn't as good as reformatting (and is faster!). Not doing this regularly can also be a major source of drops, even more important with analogue capture, like you're doing. I reformat my array before every project. It is also better not to have partitions on the array.

**Will Hay** · 19 February 2003, 06:52

Thanks for the replies folks...
....my post wasn't clear, sorry

When I say loss of quality I do indeed mean loss of frames, any more than quality setting 17 in the PicVideo codec and I lose too many frames (I say that, I lose zero over 25mins at quality 17 and 200 on quality 18 - various tests, more loss over 18).
Don't even get me started with huffyuv - of the brief tests I've done I lose way more than 200 in 25mins.
When I say I have a tonne of stuff on this drive I mean I use it as storage as well as capture.
For instance, I have a Norton Ghost 3gb backup file on there, I have all 4gb of my family pictures on there and also my previous home movie captures.
Of the 160gb capacity at worst there has been 40gb free space.
There are no programs installed or running on this Raid drive and no trashcan/recycle bin (although I haven't run scandisk since installing back in November) although I empty my primary recycle bin at least twice a day.
I don't accessing any data on this drive whilst capturing, in fact I don't use the machine at all while capturing.
I also haven't run Sandra which I've only seen in passing other posts and don't really understand it's function (other than reporting on your system profile and capabilities, right?).
With regards the write error message I'm getting, this is happening when I try to access the RAID drive, and is solved my opening up the case and removing and replacing the IDE cables. It's happened four times in the last 24 hours and perhaps four times in whole of the three months prior.
I do remember someone recommending a certain type of controller card and to avoid Abit if possible (it may have even been you Dr Morbid) but as I bought both the hdd's and card from the same source on ebay I didn't have a choice.
I'm happy to change the card to solve any issues and finally, I've noticed a significant downturn to access time when accessing data on this RAID drive.
Kind regards,
Will

**Brian Ellis** · 19 February 2003, 08:13

It doesn't look good with lots of small files (family photos) It only needs a small mod on one or two of them, or an erase or whatever, and conditions are ripe for a fragmented capture which could be a cause of dropped frames.

Get Madame Sandra from http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/ . You won't regret it. She's even free of charge for the basic parts.

Dunno about Abit RAID cards. I use a Promise and it works for me. Sandra gives me over 35 Mb/s on sequential read and write with 2 60 Gb Maxtor drives and that should be enough for what you are doing. I admit I had to fine-tune the system to reach it; it started out at under 30.

**Will Hay** · 19 February 2003, 08:19

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
It doesn't look good with lots of small files (family photos) It only needs a small mod on one or two of them, or an erase or whatever, and conditions are ripe for a fragmented capture which could be a cause of dropped frames.

I must confess I'm constantly moving stuff around, deleting etc.
I was thinking of adding a 4th hdd so maybe this is the way to go, use this as purely capture and the RAID as storage

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
Get Madame Sandra from http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/ . You won't regret it. She's even free of charge for the basic parts.

Okay, I'll do that this week and report back with the results for comment if that's okay.
Thanks Brian, nice to hear from you again.
Will

**Brian Ellis** · 19 February 2003, 08:45

Originally posted by Will Hay

I was thinking of adding a 4th hdd so maybe this is the way to go, use this as purely capture and the RAID as storage

No, Will, the other way round, please! RAID nearly doubles the speed of your disks (or should do).

**Flying dutchman** · 20 February 2003, 01:24

Is your Raid adapter sharing an IRQ? Landrover's capturing improved after he put it on a separate IRQ.

**Will Hay** · 20 February 2003, 06:43

Hi Brian,

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
No, Will, the other way round, please! RAID nearly doubles the speed of your disks (or should do).

Kinda the whole point of my first post!

Glad it provoked the correct reponse!
I'm trying to ascertain whether I should stick with Raid to capture or simply configure them as two drives but from what I've gleamed from the replies my problem's aren't related to the premise of RAID, more so my niave ignorance of how to use it properly, right?
Are you saying I shouldn't have *anything* on this RAID drive, not even stored avi's/mpeg's?
I can't really stretch to another hdd to be honest, when I last posted here (and you helped with my Via problems) I intended only a new motherboard and maybe sound card, and ended up spending £650!
Will

**Will Hay** · 20 February 2003, 06:46

Originally posted by Flying dutchman
Is your Raid adapter sharing an IRQ? Landrover's capturing improved after he put it on a separate IRQ.

Now you mention it at boot I'm sure I noticed the same IRQ number for another device.
I'd check in device manager, right (WinXP)?
Would it fair to say if I simply removed the device in control panel it would re-asign a seperate IRQ and more importantly I wouldn't lose any data once I reconfigured the drives?
I've nothing really on there now of any real significance, but they'd be nice to keep if possible.
I'll also create another profile and disable all non-essential hardware in device manager (I found landrover's post, took me a while to read it all!).
Will

**landrover** · 20 February 2003, 07:36

No, it wouldn't be fair to say that simply removing the card in the device panel should help. I had to physically move the card to another PCI-slot to have it assigned a new IRQ, which at that moment was shared with devices that I could disable in the BIOS.
Before moving the controller, it shared IRQ11 with the Matrox Marvel, which of course wouldn't do either device any good.

**Brian Ellis** · 20 February 2003, 07:40

Will

Your video disk(s) should ideally have nothing on it/them except what you are using for your current project. If you reformat it/array before starting a project, you will be working under the best conditions. Store everything else somewhere else (e.g., burn CD-ROM/DVD to keep your family photos: cheaper than hard disks!).

The answer to your question to FD is no, that will not work. To do that, the easiest way is to try swapping cards round in slots. That may do the trick, otherwise, it's a BIOS set-up job.

**Will Hay** · 20 February 2003, 07:55

Thanks guys, I appreciate your help.
W.

**landrover** · 20 February 2003, 07:56

Brian,

I won't argue over it, but I've never heard before that formatting the disk/ array would be necessary or preferable over just removing and/ or defragmenting. What benefit could there be if you just clean up entirely and start capturing without reformatting?

**Will Hay** · 20 February 2003, 08:00

I'll be capturing on a regular basis and wouldn't have the time to do this anyway, my one year old son keeps me far too entertained!

Announcement

Any opinions on RAID 0 being detrimental to capture?

Any opinions on RAID 0 being detrimental to capture?

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