Which of my existing Hard drive/s should I use for OS upgrade install?

[Sportsshooter]

I am updating a family PC for my daughter to use for photo and video editing.

Since Premier Pro CS5 requires a 64 bit OS I will be upgrading the OS from XP to W7 64. How should I configure the hard drives?

The OS is currently installed on a Raptor 150G I purchased in 2006. Due to its age I was thinking of replacing it with a new Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s I purchased for my main system, haven’t installed, and don’t really need.

For encoding and scratch performance I am also considering configuring the two existing WD3200YS RE16 drives in RAID O and adding an extra WD640 I have sitting around for misc. storage.

I also plan on adding 4 GB of RAM for a total of 8 GB.

Suggestions are welcome.

Thank you.

The system today is CPU Q9550, DP45SG, CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX, Plextor PX-850SA, Antec P182, EVGA 896-P3-1170-AR GeForce GTX 275 896MB, ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT, 1 ea. HD 150G|WD 10K, 2 ea. Cav WD3200YS 320GB, Kingston ValueRAM (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600).

 

[ElenaP]

If you can get any speed improvement specifically in Premier by having two separate scratch/encoding locations, consider using the Raptor for a scratch storage in addtion to the RAID0 of 2x WD3200YS.

However, remember not to store anything of value without a backup. The Raptor is kinda old, and the RAID0 array is more prone to disk failures than a standalone drive.

 

[rootaxs]

I am updating a family PC for my daughter to use for photo and video editing.

I do this for a living, too. The best upgrade i've ever done was use an SSD for OS, App and cache drive. My 2x640, 750 and 1TB black drives are acting as data1, data2 and back-up drives.

I'm still unsure of the 8gb memory upgrade. Currently at 4 and even with heavy Premiere Pro encoding it's the CPU that's taxed most. The memory usage never hits the limit.

 

[Sportsshooter]

If you can get any speed improvement specifically in Premier by having two separate scratch/encoding locations, consider using the Raptor for a scratch storage in addtion to the RAID0 of 2x WD3200YS.

However, remember not to store anything of value without a backup. The Raptor is kinda old, and the RAID0 array is more prone to disk failures than a standalone drive.

Are you suggesting the WD 1TB black for the OS then?

Thanks for the response.

 

[Sportsshooter]

I do this for a living, too. The best upgrade i've ever done was use an SSD for OS, App and cache drive. My 2x640, 750 and 1TB black drives are acting as data1, data2 and back-up drives.

I'm still unsure of the 8gb memory upgrade. Currently at 4 and even with heavy Premiere Pro encoding it's the CPU that's taxed most. The memory usage never hits the limit.

I can't disagree with that but will be getting an SSD for my own build before I get one for my daughter's 🙂. She will have to slum with her meager system and the drives I have on hand until she proves she is really committed and wants to make a business out of it.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[ElenaP]

If the Premier could use two drives for scratch, or it can be explicitly arranged that the source stays on one drive, target output goes for another drive, and the scratch/whatever is on the third drive, then that's the best setup for the video encoding. It does not really matter exactly how you arrange the drives, the important thing is that each data stream goes to a separate drive. This significantly reduces head seeks which are slow. Naturally in your setup the OS goes to 1TB WD then.