Raid w/ vid editing perfomance issues

[Timmyotule]

My main problem is that I cannot get video to transfer from my computer back on to my camcorder. I get constant freeze ups and every few seconds or minute. I use to be able to do it without much of a problem (pre Raid). After getting setting up the Raid setup it worked and the performance transfering to the camcorder has gone down hill. At first it transfered with few pauses then more and more until now where it has become completely unusable.

Just saw where my CPU utilization is for the Raid system, 56%, that doesn't seem right at all.

Other issues the computer is having:

With XP installed on the Raid drives, it would 'hang' on the black loading screen with the bar at the bottome for a few minutes, the fly through the rest of the load. I'm assuming this was from loading the Raid controller, but my friend has a similar setup (mobo, raid) and it doesn't do this.

Seachers take what seems to be an abnormally high amount of time to go through. I could nearly go through and search folders myself in the time it takes, well ok not really but it does go slow.

Also, in exiting from WWIIOnline it takes a few minutes. My dad's comp with WinME (I know I've tried to get him to change) exits in a few seconds.

I have swapped firewire cards thinking this could be it. Didn't help. I've gotten the card on it's own IRQ, no help. I've run it with only the HDs and a vid card installed, didn't help.

WinXP
AMD Athlon 900
ABIT KT7-Raid (highpoint Raid controller)
512 Micron PC133 Ram (cheap micron)
6.4gig WD 7200rpm (operating sys HD)
2 60gig WD 7200rpm HDs in RAID 0
GeForce DDR
250W King Star PS
SB Live Value

Using HD Tach:

Raid performance:
Random Access Time - 14ms
Read Burst Speed - 33mbps
Sequential Speed - 20143kps average

CPU util: 56%

6.4 HD performance:
Random Access Time - 15.3ms
Read Burst Speed - 28.4mbps
Sequential Speed - 8512kps average

CPU util: 8%

It seems to me that both drives are well under spec of where they should be. Any ideas? All are on seperate cables so I wouldn't think they could all be bad. Do I need more power and is there any way to check for this? Bad motherboard or Ram?

It does seem to load up some stuff pretty quick, it loads Adobe Premiere around 40% faster than when I had it on the 6.4gig drive.

Any and all help is very appreciated. Thanks.

 

[LiLithTecH]

There are a lot of factors to take in to consideration when working with video.

As much as you would like to believe it, the IDE channel just does not cut it
in terms of performance. If you need performance, SCSI or Firewire is the way to go.

As far as I know, Western Digital never produced 2.6 gig 7200 rpm or 6.4 7200 rpm drives. Only 5200/5400 rpm drives.
5400 rpm drives would cause a performance hit.

Do you have DMA Transfer mode enabled for the drives?

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: LiLithTecH
As far as I know, Western Digital never produced 2.6 gig 7200 rpm or 6.4 7200 rpm drives. Only 5200/5400 rpm drives.
5400 rpm drives would cause a performance hit.

He has 2 WD 60gb 7200RPM drives, not a 2.6GB 😉

 

[Timmyotule]

Roger on that one, it's 2 60gig drives in a Raid 0 setup.

Also, it does look like that 6.4gig one is a 5400rpm

Does anyone know if there are driver conflicts with the Highpoint 370 raid controller and XP?

 

[JustinLerner]

Are you using your RAID 0 array dedicated for video only?

Your OS (boot/system) and virtual memory drive cache should be on a primary IDE controller while your array for video editing should only be used for video editing. The array should not be partitioned or shared with other programs that can run at the same time as video editing.

Check with the mfgs of your OS and hardware if you are unsure if there are comptability issues.

 

[Timmyotule]

 

[Timmyotule]

Don't really know what went on with that no post, anyway here is the update:

Installed the latest highpoing raid drivers and that has boosted the drive speed up to where it should be around however it still is getting around 20% CPU utilization which seems real high. Now the sequential speed is nearly 40000kps on the Raid setup. However, I was still getting the stutters in the playback window in premiere, and then I remember I had dropped the audio acceleration in the dxdiag tool down to 0 (it was suppose to give a performance boost to WWIIOnline) I returned that to the 'standard' setting and now it plays back fine in the window but still freezes every now and then when trying to put the video back to a DV tape. I think I need to free up some space on the 120 gig Raid setup (yah it's nearly full, damn video....) and get one of the partitions completely free of fragments and then have a go at it.