New PC with RT.X10 - what hard disks do you recommend?

[Taliska]

Okay, as I'm specing my new PC, the final thing that I need to consider are the hard disks - they'll be IDE (PATA or SATA).

As I'm getting an RT.X10, I gather that it needs two hard disks at least. Now I think that I could run to two separate hard disks that are used solely for video editing.

I'm under the impression that you need 7200rpm disks as a minimum, but what size would be appropriate? Ideally they'd be as big as possible, but what would be the lowest useful size? I'd only be editing up home videos for DVD and possibly backing up or mangling my prerecorded DVDs.

Is it worth going for 10000 rpm drives?

Now the motherboard will be a GA-8KNXP (not Ultra) and it has 4 PATA and 4 SATA connectors so plenty of connectivity there. (That's 8 PATA devices, but I'm not sure whether it will support 4 or 8 SATA devices - any ideas?)

I'm thinking of putting the OS on a smaller faster disk - and I'd guess one of the SATA ports would be appropriate. My old PATA 5400rpm drives would become archive storage on one of the controllers and the CD & DVD writers could have PATA controller each (or share one).

I'm not overly worried about using RAID, unless it will really improve performance - it should help reliability, but as I've never had a drive go yet... (shut up, you're tempting fate)...

I'd welcome any thoughts from you all, especially those who have RT.X10s.

Cheers,

Taliska

[Dr Mordrid]

This basic arrangement has worked with an RT.X100 using the PATA ports;

I use single drives that are 7,200 RPM, but on a RAID they're cumulatively much faster so the 5,400 rpm D540X's are more than enough.

Primary master: removable boot
Primary slave: video exports
Secondary master: video capture, image sequences, uncompressed video & animations
Secondary slave: removable general storage; downloads, audio, images, general content etc. (doubles as the bay for a remoable Ghost backup HDD).

PCI IDE (Promise Ultra133): DVD and CD burners.

Most systems here are running Maxtor D740X 7,200 rpm drives, but if I were building them today I'd probably use the DiamondMax Plus 9 in 60g (boot & export) and 120g (capture & general storage) sizes.

If I were to use SATA it would be for video related storage since this is where you need the extra speed.....not necessarily for the OS or general storage.

I use removable boot drives so I can have both a "normal" and an "EDITING ONLY" OS installation with no email or the other general crap that builds up and can bog down a general purpose OS install. This keeps the editing OS install lean & mean.

With the RT.X cards RAID isn't really necessary and sometimes can be detrimental since both RAID's and the RT.X card require gobs of PCI to host memory bandwidth, and often they will contend for said resource. My SX-4000 isn't a problem in this regard but some others are (most notably the Adaptec 1200 and other older RAID cards).

'tis better to wire things along the lines noted above and keep as much stuff as possible off the PCI slots.

BTW: the above noted PCI IDE and its burners don't interfere with the RT.X since they aren't using cycles during edits...only when I go to burn the final product.

You won't have the need for a PCI IDE with all those connects on your proposed MB

Dr. Mordrid

[Taliska]

Thanks for the feedback on your setup Dr. Mordrid. I guess I'm thinking along the right lines...

BTW, how's you P750 doing - as I understand it, P750s should have hit our British shores yesterday (Friday). That will be the final piece in the jigsaw for me.

Regards,

Taliska

[Dr Mordrid]

It's been working out just fine with my RT.X100. Its been stable and is a very good card for a video workstation, though as you might expect it's not a front-line gamer. As far as image quality goes though it's great....especially its DVDMAX module.

Dr. Mordrid