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Value of raid 0 for video editing

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Anonymous   08-22-2009 at 06:27:55 PM

After Windows 7 is released, I would like to buy a desktop with an i7 quad-core and 6GB of memory for video editing using Camtasia Studio.

According to some experts, it is better to keep your video files on a Raid 0 configuration for faster transcoding.

If I configure two 500GB drives in raid 0 will it be much faster than a single 1TB when transcoding and therefore worth the cost and effort?

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Bronze Storage badge sminlal   08-22-2009 at 07:22:46 PM
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I'm not an expert in video transcoding, but the basic operation is to read one big file, do a lot of CPU crunching, and write a second big file all in parallel, correct? You might get results just as good or better if you buy two separate drives, don't use RAID, and arrange for the input and output files to be on different disks. And you won't get the increased risk of loosing everything that RAID 0 brings (with 2 separate disks you have just as much chance of a disk failure as two disks in a RAID 0 set, but if one fails you'll ONLY loose the stuff on that one drive).

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440bx   08-23-2009 at 02:21:01 PM
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Anonymous wrote :

After Windows 7 is released, I would like to buy a desktop with an i7 quad-core and 6GB of memory for video editing using Camtasia Studio.

According to some experts, it is better to keep your video files on a Raid 0 configuration for faster transcoding.

If I configure two 500GB drives in raid 0 will it be much faster than a single 1TB when transcoding and therefore worth the cost and effort?



sminlal's suggestion is very good. Significantly better than using a RAID 0.

For video editing in particular you would benefit greatly from using SSDs. They are expensive but if you do video editing as a business, you'll find the cost of SSDs easy to justify. If you choose to go that route, stick with the intel SSDs, particularly the new ones that came out only about a month ago, if that.

Again, if you do this as a business, I would get two 500GB drives but I'd configure them in RAID 1. That way you have a quick online backup along with a large storage area. I'd move the video(s) I'd need to work on from the RAID 1 to the SSDs, and move the result back onto the RAID 1 once I'm done. This setup costs quite a bit more than what you suggested at first but, it will be much faster and much more reliable in addition to giving you a backup facility which you should probably have anyway.

HTH.

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Bronze Storage badge sminlal   08-23-2009 at 04:52:27 PM
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440bx wrote :

That way you have a quick online backup along with a large storage area.

The only thing I'd add to this is to advise that the OP doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that with RAID 1 he doesn't need to do backups. RAID only protects against disk failure, not accidental deletion, corruption, theft, damage due to power surges, etc. etc. etc. If the data is important, then you MUST back it up to offline media, preferably to TWO offline copies with one of them stored offsite (that doesn't mean you have to make two copies every time you back up - for example you could do one backup every week, have two disks, and alternate them between offsite and onsite).

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440bx   08-23-2009 at 07:46:29 PM
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sminlal wrote :

The only thing I'd add to this is to advise that the OP doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that with RAID 1 he doesn't need to do backups. RAID only protects against disk failure, not accidental deletion, corruption, theft, damage due to power surges, etc. etc. etc. If the data is important, then you MUST back it up to offline media, preferably to TWO offline copies with one of them stored offsite (that doesn't mean you have to make two copies every time you back up - for example you could do one backup every week, have two disks, and alternate them between offsite and onsite).



Good addition.

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