Confused! Help, raptor, maxline III, hitachi ..??

Optimal would be a Raptor for work and then a larger/slower drive for storage. Do you have some old IDE drives that you can use as storage drives for your system?

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If smaller is better in this case would two hitachi's be better (still $160 vs $200 for the raptor)?

Maybe 74Gb would be enough? I have a 40Gb unit on my computer at home and have not filled it (mind you I have not tried my unit as a PVR either ... this may take a lot of store ... or maybe not??).

Again, I'm just trying to get the most I can for my $'s.

Thanks .... Mike

With video editing you're going to want/appreciate the speed of the Raptor. Use the 40GB for storage right now and save up some money to get a larger 7200RPM drive. Monitor <A HREF="http://bensbargains.net/" target="_new">Bensbargains.net</A> for some deals on HDDs. This site compiles/lists good tech deals, but they are not a retailer. Another good site like Bens is <A HREF="http://www.techbargains.com" target="_new">Techbargains.com</A>.

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I'd pick up a PCI TV-Tuner card with hardware compression, such as the Hauppauge WinPVR 150 or the ATI TV-Wonder Elite. Standard PCI slots should last through 2 more generations of motherboard, so that's 2 systems you could use it in, the one you're building now and the one that follows it.

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<i>>What to do for a hard drive?</i>

Depends on your priorities.

If priority = SPEED; then hard drive = Raptor
elseif priority = CHEAP; then hard drive = 80G ATA IDE drive
else priority = BIG; and hard drive = 250GB WD Caviar

<i>>Will I really see any differency in any of the above?</i>

Yes, the question is, what differences will you use effectively?

<i>> Which is more important, high PRM's, large buffer or high transfer rate?</i>

Again, it depends on your priorities.

high RPMs = low seek time / fast random READ / fast continuous READ/WRITE

large buffer = fast reads for frequently accessed items, buffered writes

transfer rate = irrelevant, the speed of the bus (1.5Gb/s) far exceeds the rate of the drive (~0.5Gb/s).

<i>>(they could have made it easy for me and combined all three into one drive)</i>

Yeah they did that, it's a 15,000rpm 300GB, 16MB cache SCSI drive and costs about $1,200.

<i>>I would preciate any advice</i>

Get a 250GB Western Digital Caviar, the speed will be fine for you and it will have plenty of storage space.

That raptor drive will deliver a much faster boot and install times than the other 2. Unless those 2 are a prime then I would suggest the Hitachi drive.

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