Need hard drive advice

[Kino]

I'm putting together a new machine based around an Asus CU4VX motherboard (VIA Chipset) that I prematurely purchased a couple of months ago, and my trusty Marvel G200. Unless someone strongly argues that I ditch the board (returning it would cost me a nasty restocking fee), I will use it.

I need some advice for what hard drive(s) I will put in this machine. I have a limited budget, so I can't get too fancy. But I want a big and relatively fast drive for Marvel capture, and some future DV work. Future purchases will include an IEEE 1394 card and a Digital 8 camera.

Now for my questions...

The CU4VX motherboard supports ATA66. What does this mean? If I purchase an ATA100 drive I won't get the full benefit? Should I also purchase a Promise controller (the Fasttrack is not exactly cheap). I was thinking the new IBM 60GB drive (75GXP, 7200RPM). I put at least 2 partitions on drives these days, and always back up an image of a clean system install. If I partition the drive say - 2GB (system C: drive), 8GB (data, apps D: drive), and create a third 50GB partition for video capture and editing, how does this sound?

I could consider 2 smaller drives, but it's not my first choice as it adds to my budget.

Thanks in advance for your advice and info.

K

[Dr Mordrid]

Unless the drives are attached to a RAID card you won't notice much of a difference at all between an ATA66 and ATA100 drive.

Some drive makers may require that a DOS program be run to configure the drive for use on an ATA66 or ATA33 interface, but some don't. It's up to the drive maker.

The IBM drive is a PERFECT choice for the capture drive. It will handle DV and MJPeg captures with lots of performance to spare. YUY2/HuffYUV captures will be OK too.

DO NOT PUT BOTH THE OS AND CAPTURES ON THE SAME PHYSICAL DRIVE!! This violates rule #1 of Videomaking 101. They WILL contend and cause dropped frames and other problems. These drives should also be on different cables of the same controller.

For best results purchase a 10-20 gig boot drive and use the big IBM as the capture device. This is one place where you should NOT cheap out.

My choice for a cheap but very good boot drive: Maxtor 20g ATA100. About $129-$139 USD at Best Buy or most online dealers.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 02 February 2001).]

[Kino]

Thanks for the advice.

One last thing...I've heard recommendations that if you have 2 hard drives that they be from the same manufacturer?

How important is this or can I ignore?

Thx.

[Dr Mordrid]

This only matters if they are configured into the same RAID array. Otherwise you can mix & match.

The PERFECT setup is to have a PCI ATA controller board like the Promise Ultra66 or Ultra100 just for the video drive. That way the boot and video drives are even more segregated from each other.

It also prevents the CD and video drive from contending as they would if they were both on the secondary IDE cable.

Here's how I usually lay out the drives on my systems;

primary IDE (master): boot drive
primary IDE (slave): empty
secondary IDE (master): DVD/CD reader
secondary IDE (slave): CD writer

(most new burners have large enough buffers to pull off this arrangement)

PCI controller (Fasttrak RAID): 2-4 drives in a RAID0 array

OR ----

PCI controller (Ultra100-(pri/master): video drive #1

PCI controller (Ultra100-(sec/master): video drive #2

Either secondary controller arrangement should work fine.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 03 February 2001).]