Do you really need 2 HD for encoding?

[BBC454]

I have a leadtek 2000xp expert capture card. I recorded a show for the first time using MPEG-2 format with 640x480 NTSC size, it recorded fine but when I played the show later in media player it seemed to tax my hard drive. When I try to skip ahead when watching the show I had to wait at least 30 seconds for it to finally skip ahead, with the hard drive maxed the whole time. The most ram it used was 320mb and the cpu fluxuated up to 1.5 ghz only a few times, while staying at 1ghz the rest of the time. Is there anything that I am not doing? I thought my system would not have any trouble playing a video.

My system is:
A64 3200 newcastle
msi k8n neo plat
1 gig corsair xms
evga 6800gt
seagate 160gb SATA
audigy 2zs

 

[oldfart]

How big is the file, and how long is the video?

 

[BBC454]

The file is 3.3gb and it is 1hr 10min long. The only thing it stressed was my hard drive. I know I would be better off with another hd, but if it only gives a slight increase I don't think it is worth it. Should I just use a lower quality MPEG-2?

 

[will889]

My take: Having raid is one way in which raid with 2x HDD's helps. It is probably the only scenario in which I would consider raid. You could go either way. Lower your quality, or run a couple of raptors and take advantage of the bandwidth that raid can give you. You could go with 2X 36G raptors just for the speed and bandwidth, but have that seagate 160gb for your projects to stay on. Raid on any controller is taking a risk (data wise). You likely would,t get any hesitation at all if you raided with a pair of matched good drives, and your encoding time would go way down (time for completion of projects).