Need advice on HD set up for video editing

btboy

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Oct 14, 2010
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Hello all. Finally after 5 years of suffering with my painfully slow laptop, I'm about to take the plunge in getting a new one and would really appreciate some advice about the set up. Mostly I'm looking for advice about drive configuration but other comments are welcome.

Here is my set up (minus all the less useful details)

Clevo P170HM3DE
17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) 120Hz Matte LED Backlit LCD
Intel Core i7-2720QM 2.20GHz, 1600MHz DDR3, 6MB Cache, Socket G1 Mobile Processor
16GB (4 x 4GB) , PC3-12800, 1600MHz SODIMM (Patriot)
NVIDIA GTX 580M 2048MB GDDR5 DX11 Compliant Video Card
Optical Swap Out Optical drive for additional Hard Drive
Hard Drive 1 Crucial 128GB M4 Series SATA III 6.0GB/sec Solid State Drive
Hard Drive 2 500GB 7200 16MB Cache SATA Notebook Hard Drive WD Black
Hard Drive 3 500GB 7200 16MB Cache SATA Notebook Hard Drive WD Black
Windows 7 Professional

My application is mostly video editing (may play a few games), and extraneous things, plus photoshop, etc. I have a Sony HDR XR-520V to edit 1080p videos. I may want to upgrade to a 3D camcorder and at some point edit 3D video. Applications currently are both Adobe Primiere Pro and Cyberlink Powerdirector 9 Ultra 64.

DEFAULT SET UP
C: SSD as OS/program files (NO media work)
D: with RAID 0 with two 7200rpm HDs with ALL of media work

Anyone know how much better or worse (please try to give me an idea of % or some kind of scale of little, moderate, or a lot as I need to decide on price/benefit ratio) the following set ups would be:

SET UP # 1
C: SSD as OS/program files (NO media work)
D: with single 7200rpm HD for SOME media work
E: with single 7200rpm HD for SOME media work
(Trying to split media b/t D & E)


SET UP # 2
C: SSD as OS/program files and SOME media work - in this case I would opt for a larger SSD.
D: with RAID 0 with two 7200rpm HDs for rest of media work


SET UP # 3
C: SSD as OS/program files (NO media work)
D: with a single 7200rpm HD for some media work
E: with esata with RAID 0 with two 7200 HDs for some media work
(Trying to split media b/t D & E)


I had read against using SSD for media due to the constant writes and rewrites potentially slowing down SSD performance and also accelerating degredation. Are people having sustained success using SSDs this way?

Thanks!

Charles