Witch drive should one get?

[Lundberg.nu]

Hello everyone.
Witch drive should I get for doing editing?
I would want one that I can put about 90 min
best kvalite. RRG
Is a 18 gig disc enough for that.
Also I want one thats really fast but IDE
The ones I have now is to slow
3-5 m/s in the Matrox HD Test with the result of loss of many frames.
The one I'm looking are IBM Deskstar.
Are they anygood
Thanks

[This_Idiot]

At maximum quality, you will be pushing about 3.1 Mb/s. That gives approximately 5 minutes per Gig (slightly less in fact). 18Gb will be big enough for slightly less than 90 minutes of captured video.

But don't forget that if you are going to edit and produce a final AVI (or whatever), you need space for temporary files and the final copy. Effectively you need double the HD space of your input clips.

Almost all drives you buy these days will be ATA66 compatible, but very few motherboards can cope with these drives yet. Visit the websites of all HD manufacturers that you are considering and make sure that they provide a utility to force the drive into ATA33 mode if it becomes necessary. Or, consider buying a Promise ATA66 HD controller or Raid card

[DrMordrid]

18 gigs is barely big enough if you're using 704x480 @ 3.102 mB/s.

90 min would require about 16.4 gigs (90 x 60 (secs) x 3.102) and that doesn't count any graphics, audio or additional sources for your project.

I'd go for at least 22 or even 30 gig drives.

Dr. Mordrid

[This_Idiot]

I just read a warning in the November issue of Computer Video.

Apparently some mobo's are unable to correctly diagnose drives (or raid combinations of drives) that are greater than 33.8 Gb. So take care with bigger drives

[Pertti]

Hi Lundberg.nu,

I'd be looking for Maxtor ones with the same specs.

I have a couple of HD:s here and the IBM ones are just not up to the same performance as my other 7200rpm ones (Maxtor and Seagate).

The datarates on IBM ones are full of spikes as the other ones have quite stable ones, and otherwise working logical unlike IBM drives.

Pertti (still a MURCer )

[This message has been edited by Pertti (edited 11 November 1999).]

[DrMordrid]

I've also had better luck with Maxtors. I have about 8 of them on various systems here. Great performance and I've never had one die in the 6+ years I've been using 'em.

I wouldn't take a Seagate as a gift because of past bad experiences with the 'sticktion' problem.

I also have a pair of 18g IBM 7,200 rpm ATA66's on a Fasttrak66 but haven't noticed the problems Pertti mentioned. Maybe Pertti got some bad ones? Or maybe mine were built on Wednesday ;-))

Dr. Mordrid

[Pertti]

Hi Doc,

It doesn't require that much to get the Seagates running properly - just a little cooling

Pertti

[This_Idiot]

Pertti,

I think you have the geographical advantage in the cooling stakes

BTW, I run Fujitsus exclusively and (as Doc said), haven't had a failure yet. I've currently got 5 (I think) lurking around in various PCs, from the old MPA prefix 3034 thru to MPC 3084s. I was also priviledged to trial a pair of MPDs which worked fine on an individual basis but refused to talk to my FT33 raid controller (at the time)

My cooling strategy is to leave the cases off the PCs and to open a window. The former because I get fed up with stripping the cases off every time I have to make a system change, the latter because I'd choke to death in here with cigar smoke if I left the window closed.

Maybe I should also say that PC1 has been running virtually continually for the last 2 years running the same drives. The only time it gets switched off is for HW upgrades or bluescreens

[SteveR]

Losing many frames when trying to get a transfer rate of around 3.1 MB/s...?

Is your current drive UDMA/ATA33? If not, does your motherboard support UDMA/ATA33? Sustained transfer is difficult without UDMA - not just drive speed, but also high CPU load.

Here is some info on the 32 GB BIOS problem:
http://www.maxtor.com/technology/infobulls/13027.html

[Mark F]

And I thought there was something funny going on when my MOBO lattest BIOS listed the following improvement, among others:

"Support IDE detection of HDD size over 136GB"

Mark F.


------------------
OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[tsi]

Strange... my motherboard has trouble with anything over 540.

-Chris

[Marijn]

Hi there,

just to give you a wider point of view, check out http://www.storagereview.com

This is where they have tested allmost every drive that has been build over the past few years. This is where I got info for my new drive. Two drives I have, both Maxtor, both 7200 rpm. I like them and together provide 30 MB of storagespace. As Doc said, the 18 GB may sound large, but is rather small once you use it for video.

Happy editing,

Marijn