Should I invest in buying a real RAID card?

[Dadrewster569]

Lately, I've been working a lot with raw game footage. Usually, these files are about 500GB/Hour of footage. I've been working off of 2 2TB in RAID 0, courtesy of Windows 7. I've been thinking of throwing in 2 more 2TB drives and adding them to the array. Should I get a RAID card considering that I will be working with 4 drives in RAID 0? Or will setting them as stripped through Disk Management in Windows be fine enough?

My build:
i7 875k @3.8Ghz
Radeon 7970
16GB DDR3
120GB boot SSD
2x 2TB drives for footage
2x 300GB drives (IDE, will be removing these if upgrading)
1TB drive for misc files
700w OCZ PSU

 

[dow_phoenix]

Hi, Sorry I can't help you.
I am interested, what do you do with the raw game footage?

I've been working a lot with raw game footage

This is the first time I have seen this. sooo, was just wondering if you felt like a small snapshot reply clueing me in?

Thanks.
Good luck on that RAID answer. i would be leaning toward a good name mother board would have a RAID that would fit your needs close to equally too a dedicated RAID controll. I used to do that scuzy stuff long time ago. Age and illnesses have cause most of that info to be lost.

 

[popatim]

if you have room for 2 more sata drive with that motherboard then use it but keep in mind those onboard solutions use cpu cycles to do the 'work'. A real raid card will have its own processor leaving your cpu to do whatever you tell it too.

As for working with game footage you want to install the next two drive as its own raid so that you read from 1 raid and write to the other. Otherwise you have 1 drive trying to read and write at the same time which will just slow you up.

I assume you are using raid 0 for performance. Going to a 4 drive raid5 will only slow you down over a 2 drive raid0

 

[Dadrewster569]

Hi, Sorry I can't help you.
I am interested, what do you do with the raw game footage?

I've been working a lot with raw game footage

This is the first time I have seen this. sooo, was just wondering if you felt like a small snapshot reply clueing me in?

Thanks.
Good luck on that RAID answer. i would be leaning toward a good name mother board would have a RAID that would fit your needs close to equally too a dedicated RAID controll. I used to do that scuzy stuff long time ago. Age and illnesses have cause most of that info to be lost.

I'm an growing Youtube Partner specializing in game playthrough/walkthroughs. The footage itself is enormous, ranging from 1GB/min to 1GB/3sec, which is why I need a setup with fantastic writes.

 

[Dadrewster569]

if you have room for 2 more sata drive with that motherboard then use it but keep in mind those onboard solutions use cpu cycles to do the 'work'. A real raid card will have its own processor leaving your cpu to do whatever you tell it too.

As for working with game footage you want to install the next two drive as its own raid so that you read from 1 raid and write to the other. Otherwise you have 1 drive trying to read and write at the same time which will just slow you up.

I assume you are using raid 0 for performance. Going to a 4 drive raid5 will only slow you down over a 2 drive raid0

And yes, I'll be putting all 4 of them into RAID0. Would heavy read/writes tax an i7 enough to be noticeable?

 

[Temile]

I'd research what your motherboard and chipset support. My guess is a dedicated RAID card will be faster, but I think the main limitation is in the controller, not cpu usage.

 

[dow_phoenix]

Hi,
Game walk throughs!!
I have used them once or twice.

Thanks !!

Your question and some of these replies had me thinking.
Caught one of the hospital tech guys as he walked by.
A good dedicated Raid drive does save CPU some work according to him.

I Started some googleing.


(sorry link button would not make this a clickable link. sigh.

Just thought I would link this small info.
I am sure you have some more research to do.

I am going to do some myself.
Thanks for inspiring me to read!

 

[GhislainG]

And yes, I'll be putting all 4 of them into RAID0. Would heavy read/writes tax an i7 enough to be noticeable?

CPU utilization in RAID 0 is low enough that you won't notice it. A RAID controller won't necessarily be faster that the ICH10R.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ich10r-sb750-780a,2374.html

 

[popatim]

a 4 drive raid 0 would be faster than a 2 drive raid 0 but with all 4 drives in a raid 0 they act as one drive so all your editing will be reading & writing to one drive and basically cutting your performance in half. Think about it. what happens when you read & write... the drive reads part of yuor file then the heads have to move to write part of your file, then the heads have to move back again to read & move again to write. Head movement is the largest delay in a hard drive and you want to double the amount they move.

If you dont beleive me, just visit the forum of your video editing software and look for a proper hard drive configuration post. Almost all of them recommend a 3 drive/raid setup for best performance: 1 system, 1 data, 1 scratch/work