Disk arrangement in new setup

[bogart]

Having now got all the bits for my new PC am in a bit of a quandry as to how to set the disks up.
I have 6 disks available 2 x Hitachi 160GB deskstars (used), 2 x Samsung 250GB spinpoints (new) and 2 x Samsung 500GB spinpoints (new).
Now I was thinking of setting them up as follows:

Hitachis set as RAID 0 with operating system and programs.

250Gb spinpoints set as RAID 1 purely reserved for HD video editing and storage of edited files.

500GB spinpoints set as RAID 1 for data.

Is this a sensible setup? Would it be prudent to have an external drive to back up the Hitachis?
Would it also be more prudent to just leave the OS on the Hitachis and have the programs on the 500GB with the data?

Thanks in anticipation.

[staffsMike]

I'd have anything that can be easily replaced, like an OS or program on the most likely drive to fail, such as you have now (imo )

That said one of the newer drives could be faster at certain things that your older raid 0 setup, not sure tbh.

As for backup's, I'd much rather have an external drive than a Raid 1 setup, both is nice though

[peterb]

I wouldn't bother with the RAID0 setup. You need some form of backup - RAID1 is not a backup solution - it is best when uptime and server resiliance is an issue.

[bogart]

Okay how about this.

The two Hitachis in RAID 0 doing the OS. One 250GB Samsung doing the video editing and storage, and one 500GB Samsung doing everything else. The other Samsungs 1x 250GB and 1x 500GB installed in something like this

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=836595

Each backing up the other in the PC

If this meets with approval would I be better off putting the programs with the OS or putting them on the 500GB drive?

[CaptainCrash]

If video editing (particularly HD) plays a big part in your future plans, you'll want as much speed and capacity as you can possibly get - I don't think a single 250GB drive will really cut it in either respect. Ideally, you want two drives devoted purely to video, working independently - one as source, for preprocessed material, the other as destination, for postprocessed. That way, you can minimise seeking and maximise their STR by having them read and write concurrently (not possible with a single drive or RAID volume).

If I were you, I'd do it this way:

1. 2x160GB drives for OS and apps, in RAID0 - I wouldn't normally recommend RAID0, but in this case it will maximise the performance of the older drives (at least as much as RAID0 actually does in practice), consolidate their capacity, and if something goes wrong it won't be a disaster as they're not being used for user data.

2. 2x500 Samsungs as source/destination video drives (you may need to add more capacity at a later date for archived material).

3. 2x250 Samsungs for other stuff.

As for backup, I'd seriously look at getting a 1TB external drive - it'll backup all your data drives in one gulp, provided you don't fill them to capacity (undesirable anyway from a performance POV). You can get them for less than £100 these days, or a little more than twice the cost of the IcyBox enclosure you're considering, which doesn't actually give you any more disk space... given the time and effort which goes into video production I'd say it was money very well spent.

[bogart]

What I was additionally thinking was on the two Hitachis in RAID 0 was to partion it with C having only 100GB ie 50GB on each drive so minimising disk seeks.
Thought about same for video editing disks in same manner. There will be some HD video editing but not the main use of the PC. Currently around 64GB of HD material to edit at this moment, can't ever see me having more to work on at any date. Not convinced I will need to use the 500Gb disks for the video the 250Gb being ample.

[dmuz]

Not sure it's sensible having 6 HDs, thats a heck of a lot of noise & heat nevermind the load on your PSU. Also Raid0 is more of a pain than a benefit in my experience - and I certainly wouldn't be using 2 old Deathstars. I personally wouldn't use them at all, just the 2x250 (one for OS, one for general)+2x500 (for video) to give you 1.5TB. As CC says, you'll need the space for the video editing.

[arthurleung]

I would recommend selling the 160GB and 250GB drives, and swapping them with a 640G/750G/1T drive.

If you want to do backup then perhaps use the 640/750/1T drive for backing up the 2x500GB instead.

So I would imagine the following partitioning:
500G Disk1: 20GB OS / 100GB Program / 180GB Data / 200GB HD Editing Output
500G Disk2: 200GB HD Editing Source / 300GB Data
640G Disk3 (External): All your data that needs backup

Judging from how small (no offence) your harddrives are, you are unlikely to be using insanely fast computer that will tax your harddrive when transcoding/encoding, nor you will be processing uncompressed HDTV source. I guess the maximum transfer rate you will ever need for HD processing is 10MB/s.

I also do a small bit of HD Transcoding and that only read the files at <1MB/s (the speed is like 0.8FPS). Even if you're transcoding at 200&#37; speed (very unlikely) you will still only need 12MB/s which even a laptop harddrive will handle fine.

[bogart]

Fancy saying I have a 'small' hardrive

[sjbuck]

Well that's just about every option covered ! lol

For what it's work I'd raid0 your D: and E: drives and use them as destination/source disks for editing. You can still use them to store your stuff on as well, there will be enough space. Get an external 1TB or so disk for proper backups.