Final bit of project 4xMatrix Raid

Well i finally got round to completing the final phase of the
c2d upgrade.

Been a long time planning & a bit bumpy getting here , on 2nd commando & CPU (though it may be that cPU was issue all along). But i'm 24/7 stable @ 3465(9x385) 4:5

So anyway got an extra 2 of these babies 80 Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) 0A30356 Deskstar 7K80, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache giving me 4.

2x Raid 0 Performance
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...x80gbRaid0.JPG

Have now started using Matrix raid with 2 raid volumes. Theidea is best explained here Bling - Enter The Matrix:shocked2:
Downside is u can only set up the Matrix arrays from xp using Intel Matrix array software.

Slow Array(Volume_0001
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...aid_HDTune.JPG

Fast Array
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...aid_HDTune.JPG 1st shot at sizing may have it 2 large 72GB rather than 80Gb may get rid of the dip in the 80~100% zone, that should increase the slow array.

Comparison eclipses the oc i've got with the rest of the rig:woowoo: Only slight adverse impact is on cpu load which i think i can live with.
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...Comparison.JPG

for the £ i think it's a damn fine performance return. There may be slight improvements i can get.

I would be keen to know how much if anything, this shaved off vid encoding times.

Good work though :)

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I would be keen to know how much if anything, this shaved off vid encoding times.

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:mrgreen: sorry about the only thing i don't do with any regularity:Oops:

I may have mis-read something, but why couldn't you use the RAID util from the BIOS? Different hard drives across each individual array?

Clunk, it depends on what you're encoding, or more importantly from what. I've got 2x 76gb Raptors (RAID0) and a 36gb Raptor for dumping temporary cuts and the likes, and unless you're working with uncompressed media, there'll be little difference. 2 hours of uncompressed video makes one hell of a big file (think tens of gigabytes rather than 4gb), and obviously that all has to be written to and read from the drive/array at some point, and that'll be the only real time when the hard drive will slow things down in any significant way - if you're editing that media, then it has to read it at that point too, but that's perhaps of less importance.

To be honest, the only other time (for what I do) when the hard drive has any real load on it is when you're muxing for a DVD or something - even then the hard drive access is somewhat limited here.

If you're working with uncompressed media, then even software RAID volumes can make one hell of a difference (think 1/3 faster, which is a major time difference when you're waiting hours), but otherwise, there's limited use for RAID in video editing in my experience.

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I may have mis-read something, but why couldn't you use the RAID util from the BIOS? Different hard drives across each individual array?

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Yep but each array would onl be x2 drives not x4.

The addition of these drives has definately helped overall performance responsiveness is much faster & smoother, virtual memory is of course much faster.