Are 5400 rpm hard drives ok for digital video editing?

[broadwayblue]

I just picked up a couple of the western digital 45 gig 5400rpm drives for $50 each at compusa using the best buy price match and $90 mir's. I want to know if these drives would give acceptable performance for editing video in Adobe Premiere. They support ata 66 and have an average seek time of 9.5 ms. Will I have any problems? Do I really need 7200rpm drives? Thanks.


http://www.westerndigital.com/products/drives/wd450aa.html

 

[urbantechie]

Yea. But if your into serious editing, then you should SCSI.

 

[broadwayblue]

Thanks...so basically there's not that much of a difference between the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives???

 

[urbantechie]

Well not really IMHO. I just have it cause I like having the best if I can, but I have have not seen any reasonable difference in 5400RPM and 7200RPM drives. But that drive is enough for you. Once you start getting really into DV editing then SCSI is the best way to go. Ahh man, with a Segate 15K drive, your in heaven

 

[Radboy]

7200rpm ata drives r considered 'performance' + (obviously) would be better choice to capture/output vdo.

Most ppl who edit vdo (with ata) look for 7200rpm drives.

it u stay away from huge files (long captures/outputs), it should work. But vdo can be quirky, depending on lotsa diff variables.

Can't hurt to try.

but like UT says, it made a monster diff when we upgraded the system drive from 7200rpm ata to 10Krpm scsi. Made a big diff editing (which can get laggy as timeline grows).

 

[Pariah]

The current crop of very large 5400RPM drives are ideally suited for video capture/editing. Video editing is all about size. The current 5400RPM drives do not trail 7200 RPM drives by very much when it comes to STR. Access time counts for very little when handling such large files, so 5400 drives aren't hurt by their slow latency.

 

[broadwayblue]

Thanks for your help...I guess I'll go with the 5400's for now and when anandtech hooks me up with a sick deal on 7200 rpm drives I'll upgrade.