IDE or SCSI for Video Editing?

[JoshRtek]

Sorry for posting so many replies. A few more questions. How fast will the P3 processors be by July '01? I want the fastest processor I can afford. Is 512 MB the maximum amount of memory I can get for the 815 chipset? I have 256 now, and it really boosted performance while in Premiere from 128 MBs. Any idea if Intel will adopt the DDR memory?

-Joshua

 

[Pariah]

Your RAID array is limited to the smallest drive times the number of drives you have. So, if you buy 20GB drives, you can add a 30GB drive later, but you will only be able to utilize 20GB of it. If you think 80GB won't be enough (20x4), start with 30GB drives which will allow you up to a possible 120GB. If you don't already own one, I would avoid Zip drives like the plague at this point. I would't expect P3's to be much if any faster than they are now in July. You should be able to squeeze at least 768MB of RAM into an modern P3 board.

 

[Urdumb]

If you're editing in DV then any 7200rpm IDE will do the job fine. Most 5400rpm drives will work fine as well especially the newer DiamondMax80s. This is single stream editing - on a RT2000 and other higher end dual stream DV systems you'll need a 7200rpm drive for sure.

If you're working in analog it'll be a different story - 100% MJPEGA requires quite a bit more muscle than DV does.

 

[invasivedoc]

How much muscle? (Pinnacle DC-10+ will hopefully go in the AMD rig I'm building.)

 

[invasivedoc]

quantum 18gig for $239 - rebate
or
fujitsu 18gig oem for $199??
which is better

 

[Pariah]

For a DC10 which is an entry level card, there is no reason to go with SCSI. Even IDE RAID would probably be a waste. A single large IDE 7200RPM drive will be fine.

 

[eyez]

how would firewire drives work in video editing? I've also found some really cheap fiber channel drives...I don't know much about them, but the controller cards are way expensive. Do they word with scsi controllers? How good are they?

 

[Pariah]

All the firewire drives I have seen are 5400RPM IDE drives stuck in a firewire enclosure. So obvously they aren't the fastest option around. The ability to pull 30GB+ of data off of one computer and walk it over to another computer, or take it home does have some distinct advantages. Fibre channel has no place in a home computer, all fibre channel drives are repackaged SCSI drives with a fibre interface.

 

[eyez]

just finished reading a comparo of firewire drives...why do you think there is so much difference in performance? Is it the controller?

 

[Pariah]

Without seeing the reviews and what was reviewed, I don't know.

 

[Namuna]

I'm running a Hybrid (Athlon Tbird 700MHz) Sys.
IDE = 12x-DVD and 12x/10x/32x-CDRW (w/BURN-Proof)
SCSI = 2, Seagate Cheetah 36gig Ultra160 10k drives.

Anytime I do a CD burn from the HD, I can have multiple apps open and do other things with ZERO degredation in performance (Not to mention burning a CD in under 7minutes is just FRIGGIN COOOOL!). BUT! If I'm doing a CD-to-CD burn (IDE to IDE), MAN! I can't do anything else!

The Cheetahs are new, so I haven't had a chance to 'take em around the block' yet as far as Video goes.

So,
SCSI HD for System/Apps
IDE-RAID for Video files
And SCSI whatever else you can, the less burden on IDE the better.

Good luck!

 

[kombatmud]

Pariah, Fibre channel drives are not "repackaged SCSI drives with a fibre interface", rather fibre channel is a type of SCSI interface, much like Ultra 160 or Ultra wide, etc. However, you're 100% right that they have no place in people's homes. They're designed for servers which require very large numbers of drives, and / or long distances from the server itself. They are also capable of operating at a 200MB/sec interface, making fibre channel slightly faster than Ultra 160. The reason they're no good for home users is the $2000 price tag on a controller.

eyez, firewire drives are (from what I've seen) IDE drives connected via a firewire enclosure, like pariah said. The only advantage to them is portability, since firewire only runs at 400 Mbps (50 MB/sec, and ATA-100 is capable of 100 MB/sec), they're also generally significantly more expensive then their IDE counterparts.

JoshRtek, if you can afford SCSI, you will probably be very happy with it. Most 10k or 15k RPM SCSI drives are capable of matching, or coming close to matching IDE 2 or 3 drive RAID arrays in sustained transfer rate. In addition, they far exceed any IDE options in average seek time and average access time. Storage Review (www.storagereview.com) believes average access time to be the most important statistic of any hard drive. I'm not sure how much of video editing is STR vs. access time, because I don't do video editing on my computer. However, the things I've read all suggest that SCSI drives are very useful in video editing, because "A/V optimized versions" of the drives are often available. A/V versions are the same drives with very large amounts of cache. For example, the Seagate Cheetah 73 A/V version has a 16 MB cache on it. (The non A/V version has 4 MB I believe). If you had an unlimited budget, I'd recommend SCSI RAID, but the controllers for that are often prohibitively expensive. In your case I think getting SCSI drives would probably be comparably priced to getting the IDE RAID configuration Pariah mentioned, because you won't need a $240 IDE RAID card, your 2940U2W is an 80 MB/sec Ultra 2-LVD card which can easily support two or three fast SCSI hard drives simultaneously ( so long as they're not X15s ). If you have multiple drives, SCSI brings in an additional advantage of being able to simultaneously access multiple devices, and allowing them to share the bus's bandwidth, whereas IDE is limited to a single drive at a time, taking turns to use the bus.

 

[Pariah]

"Pariah, Fibre channel drives are not "repackaged SCSI drives with a fibre interface", rather fibre channel is a type of SCSI interface, much like Ultra 160 or Ultra wide"

Huh? Fibre channel is as much of a SCSI standard as firewire is an IDE standard, the 2 aren't related. A Seagate cheetah fibre channel drive is mechanically identical to a cheetah SCSI drive, only some electronics and the interface is different. Performance characteristics for the 2 drives in a single drive environment will be identical.

"Most 10k or 15k RPM SCSI drives are capable of matching, or coming close to matching IDE 2 or 3 drive RAID arrays in sustained transfer rate."

Really... Which SCSI drives can match the 35-60MB/s of a 2 drive 5400RPM 3ware array let alone the 52-86MB/s for the 3 drive array.

"In addition, they far exceed any IDE options in average seek time and average access time."

You obviously have no idea how video editing works. Which you do admit lower in your post.

"I'm not sure how much of video editing is STR vs. access time, because I don't do video editing on my computer."

If you don't know how this works, what are you basing your recommendations on?

"In your case I think getting SCSI drives would probably be comparably priced to getting the IDE RAID configuration Pariah mentioned"

Uhh.... no. Please do some research before making uninformed comments like this. A 73GB Cheetah (non AV) runs $1000. The 3ware RAID card + 4 20GB IDE drives will cost around $600. That's a pretty significant difference and the 4 drive IDE array will destroy the cheetah in STR.

"whereas IDE is limited to a single drive at a time, taking turns to use the bus."

The 3ware card I am recommending has 4 seperate IDE channels, so each drive gets its own channel making your point irrelevant.

 

[UN1Xnut]

I would say the A/V rated SCSI drives from Seagate. I have a friend who does video work for a living and will buy nothing less. For streaming video 7200RPM SCSI is a min.

The problem with using anything less is the thermal calibration that drives do from time to time. While this is happening there are no writes and can get a capture to drop frames.

-nut

 

[kombatmud]

Fibre channel is a SCSI standard, albeit a much less common one. If you're going to dispute that, please point me to anything that takes use of fibre channel other than a SCSI hard drive. I also suggest you take the adaptec certification tests, which refer to fibre channel as a SCSI interface in at least one place.

I admit that I didn't do any research about the 3ware card, so I didn't realize it was a 4 channel card. 60MB/sec on a 2 drive 5400 RPM array is amazing, please show me where you got that figure from. If this figure is accurate, that would imply that that RAID array achieves the full combined transfer rate of both drives, which would surprise me a lot, because my hardware SCSI RAID card doesn't get anywhere near the full combined transfer rate. I wish it did.

As for the 73 gig cheetah drive, yes those are $1000, however a 36 gig Atlas 10k is about $350, and two of them would not only outperform the 73 gig SCSI drive, but would also be significantly cheaper, that was what I had in mind when I said it would be comparably priced. I do a lot of research into SCSI pricing, since I am constantly buying more drives for my system, had you done a little research, you would've found that it would not make sense to get a 73 gig drive.

I did mention in my original post, and am re-iterating now that I don't do video editing. Because of that, my recommendation may not perfectly meet JoshRtek's needs, I originally posted not to say your recommendation was wrong, but to point out a possible alternative. Several other people, who know far more about video editing have posted in this thread stating that SCSI is a much better choice for video editing, I'm not saying that, but that does show that SCSI is something that may want to be considered, which is all I'm saying. I do think that the best configuration for video editing is definately hardware RAID SCSI, however the price tag on that puts it out of the range for consideration in this case.

 

[invasivedoc]

Flame not - burn not.