2 smaller or 1 big HD for video editing?

[luap.h]

would there be much performance difference between having 2x 250gb SATA drives or 1x 500gb SATA?

You record to one HD, then when you're done editing, you render it out to the other HD, so while one is reading, the other is writing - saving a lot of extra disk movement? Right?!?

Any ideas?

[arthurleung]

Depends on what you mean by renter it out.
If you mean uncompressed -> uncompressed, then 2x250GB is a better choice.
If you mean uncompressed -> compressed (i.e. Xvid/WMV), then 1x500GB is a better choice since 250GB might not be enough for your footage.

The 500GB should be about as fast as 250GB single disk. Buying the 500GB disk gives you the option of adding another 500GB (or bigger, your choice) assuming you use a shuttle.

[luap.h]

I'm going to be importing video via analogue, editing with Adobe, then rendering out to a DVD

[Funkstar]

what codecs are you going to be using for the capture?

The capture and edit will be the most demanding on the disks, assumig you are using a lossless (or relatively low compression lossy) codec. Outputing to MPEG-2/DVD will be more reliant on processor rather than disk throughput. Especially if the MPEG-2 encoder is more concerned about quality over speed.

[Blitzen]

Get the 2 smaller drives and RAID them up.

You will then get a performance increase.

[kalniel]

Both 2 drives on RAID 0 or two individual disks (read from one, write to other) will be faster than a single disk, but as mentioned if your rendering is particularly intensive then your processing will be the bottleneck anyway and hard drives won't make a difference.

[Nemeliza]

As above, RAID for rendering

[fuddam]

2 x 250 - as you said, being able to read from one while writing to 2nd is def a good way to go

Raid 0 also be very tasty, esp if editing HDV

edit: just make sure they aren't Lacie drives if using externals - most of their models are NOT built for editing, just storage.

[Steve B]

depends how vital your data is. a mirrored formation would be better if the data is important.

[luap.h]

thanks for the help guys

[cv65user]

if 500gb is all u need and u dont intend to upgrade for a while then 250 * 2 will be ur best bet since u will get performance incrase slightly otherwise if u wnat to upgrade in the future then 500 will do for now and another 500 in the future = 1tb = WOW = :O