Recomendations for Hard Drive Configurations

I bought a rather basic computer a couple months ago to learn Premier on because I did not have the cash for the NLE machine I really wanted with the expectation I would upgrade it as needed. I knew when I started the 250gb hard drive free space would diminish but I did not think it would happen so quickly. Stock footage and completed projects have depleted my 250gb hard drive free space to 17gb and the hard drive is overdue for an upgrade already.
Any suggestions for hard drive specs and set up configurations that will compliment production with CS3 would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Mike
Computer specs: XFX 680i LT SLI MB; Q6600; 2gb ram; Vista 32 bit.

Personally, I'd keep the 250GB with System & Programs. It is over-sized for that purpose, but I'm not one who enjoys uninstalling and re-installing either their OS, or their programs. If you've got it set up that way already, you do not have to do a mirror/image/Ghost and hope that you get everything over to the new drive. Chalk this up to my laziness. You can also use some of this space for seldom used Assets, like SFX, or music, that you want to keep handy, but will not be accessing that often. I do this on one storage HDD, and then copy over these Assets to the Project, as they are used, on the big, fast Media HDD, when needed.
Add 2 new HDDs, if you have the controller connections. You will be limited, with this choice, to what controller you have in your system. Right now, the 750GB units are selling at some low prices, as the 1TBs are really coming on line. Two 500GBs would be cheaper, still.
If you have an open PCI/PCIe slot, you could get a speed boost by adding a good SATA II controller card and going that route with the HDDs. The SATA's are running a bit more expensive, than ATA-100/ATA-300s, but you will get a little I/O boost.
There are several good threads already, on how best to use your new HDDs with PP. The ideas may vary a bit, but the folk responding are stating how they find it best to configure Scratch Disks, etc., for their particular workflow. I'd search these forums (do not exclude the PP2 forum in your search, even though you have CS3).
Last considerations will be the cooling of your case and the capability of your power supply. Within *practical* terms, you cannot run your system too cool, and can never have too beefy a PS. If you have minimal cooling, look for more efficient fans, or more fans. If your case is close to you, and you edit with the speakers, quiet cooling will be a benefit. Do check the output from your PS, to make sure it can handle additional HDDs, or you may have to upgrade that, as well. When I'm commissioning a new system, I go with the most powerful and coolest (I'm talking thermal here, not flashing LEDs) PS, that I can get. If I can get it up to about 2.5x my immediate needs, I know that I can add "stuff," and not have to worry. Overheating systems and inadequate PS's are a big reason for system crashes, especially while rendering.
Hunt

Similar Messages

Recomendations for Hard Drive recovery tool

Does any one have a recommendation for a Hard Drive recovery tool?
My brothers external Lacie 200MB Firewire drive has crapped out. He has all his family movies (iMovie projects) stored on it so he really needs to recover the files if possible.
I have the drive now and have hooked it up to my machines and it is definitely in bad shape. At this point I can see the drive in the finder, but it doesn't appear to contain any files or folders. It also shows up in Disk Utilities, but a Verify Disk doesn't reveal any problems (and running "Repair Disk" returned "No repairs were necessary, the volume seems to be OK").
At this point the disk just appears to be empty. I am running a deep scan with Stellar Phoenix right now. Any suggestions on the best OS X recovery tools.
Thanks
EDIT:
oh, and the disk appears to be formatted HFS+
I was thinking about yanking the drive and installing it internally to the ide bus - don't know if this would make a difference.

Well, that’s a lot of interesting advice.
The first thing to do is NOTHING! Don’t try heroic efforts until you’ve explored all the demonstrably non-destructive ones.
First of all, if the drive mounts, gives no errors from the Finder or from Disk Utility but appears to contain no files, then the likelihood that this is a symptom of a hardware error is very small. Moving the drive to different enclosures or trying to connect it internally is probably not advisable.
Are you cerrtain the drive was not simply re-initialized? That would be the simplest explanation for there being no files apparent. If that’s the case, then surely a majority of the contents are recoverable, BUT NOT IF YOU DO ANYTHING FURTHER WITH THE DRIVE.
If you have recovery software that’s specifically designed to recover files from a re-initialized volume, use that. If not and you cannot acquire such software, and if the data is valuable enough, then I strongly recommend that you use a commercial data recovery service.
Unfortunately, I cannot give you any specific recommendations for diagnostic and repair software—I’ve been away from Mac OS too long.
I know this is not very specific, and I’m sorry for that. I’ll keep an eye out in case you have other questions that I might be able to answer.
Good luck.
RRS
iMac 20" Core Duo; MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hard Drive Configure for MacBook Pro HD Editing

Can someone give me some advice on a two hard drive configuration that could be hot swappable.
I was told that I need two hard drives together to maximize speed for Proress 10 bit hd editing. Can you explain how configuring two hard drives gives me more speed to give me more real time cap.
I have seen a Lacie 2big swappable ext hard drive system and if I get the e sata connection. would that be fast enough if so what Raid system would be best.
Thanks for any input.

www.caldigit.com
FirewireVR
S2VR Duo
Explaination of the various RAID levels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StandardRAIDlevels
what Raid system would be best.
For...? What type of footage are you trying to work with? RAID 5 is the best...Protection and speed. Look at the HDone for that. And look at www.maxxdigtial.com, sonnettech.com, g-technology.com...
LaCie? Consumer level...bad rep.
Shane

Hard Drive configuration for speed

I've got a question regarding the best hard drive configuration for my mac pro. I'm looking to increase the boot speed, application load speed and particularly the speed with which hard drive intensive photoshop processes complete. Right now I'm just using some normal SATA II drives. I'd appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on the various options I am currently considering.
-2x 64GB SSD in a RAID 0 for OS X and applications with some large SATA drives for storage
-4x 300GB VelociRaptor 10k RPM SATA HDD in a RAID 0
-2x 147GB SAS 15k RPM HDD in RAID 0 with some large SATA drives for storage
I am particularly in the dark about the controllers I'd use for each solution. Clearly, I would absolutely require a PCIe card for the SAS drives, but would there be a marked advantage to using a hardware RAID card for the SATA drives over the software RAID in OS X? Also, how easy is it to get the mac pro to boot off drives connected to a controller card rather than the standard setup? And lastly, if there is good reason to use a card, are there any in particular that you would recommend?
Thanks a lot!

2. No. Do not make two partitions unless you do not plan to use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on that partition. If you plan to create a Boot Camp partition then you must partition the drive as one Mac OS X volume. Boot Camp Assistant will then create the Windows volume.
3. This drive must be repartitioned and reformatted as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to two. Use the graphic resizer to set the desired sizes for each volume as you want. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the first volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. Select the second volume you created and repeat Steps 4-6.
4. Now here I don't know what you think is your best option. You can buy any two hard drives you want. The ones I identified were only an example of what you could purchase for under $300. There are others, slightly more expensive, that would work, and you would still be under your $300 budget. The Samsung drives are good drives and reasonably priced, but they are just one of several alternatives. You should do some checking on your own before making your decision. I'm just giving some guidance, not trying to tell you what you should do. I've provided three sites where you can read reviews and benchmarks before you decide. You need to "own" your decision.
As for how you configure these two drives that's a secondary issue. I would recommend using them for backup. Two possible arrangements are a Mirrored or a Striped RAID array. A mirrored RAID array would create one volume that has a 1 TB capacity. Everything saved to that volume is essentially saved twice - once on one drive then a copy is mirrored to the other drive. This is not what you described in your Item 4. That's not how it works. Anything saved to the mirrored RAID array is saved the way I described it just above. It makes no difference where the files come from.
Now you can use the mirrored RAID array as a Time Machine backup drive if you want, but then you should not use it for other data storage. You would need the entire capacity as backup for both of the 500 GB drives you currently have. A mirrored RAID provides some data redundancy by having a copy of everything one each drive. Thus, if one drive fails the other drive still functions and your data backup is intact. Mirrored RAIDs are generally no faster than an individual drive that makes up the array.
The second suggestion was to make a Striped RAID array. This type of array produces one volume that is twice the size of the the two drives that make up the array. Thus, you would have a single volume that is 2 TBs in size. You can use this volume for your Time Machine backups also. Striped RAIDs do not provide any data redundancy. If one drive fails all the data stored on the RAID will be lost. However, Striped RAIDs are nearly twice as fast as either drive that makes up the array. This would give you very fast storage and backup.
You could also just leave the two drives to operate independently. Use on for Time Machine backups, use the other for more storage space.
Other possibilities abound. It's pretty much up to you to decide what will fit best into your needs today and in the future. Don't feel obliged to do what one person tells you. Five different users on the Discussions will give five different opinions.
I suggest you educate yourself a bit on backup and restore by reading the FAQ about backup and restore at The XLab FAQs.
Following is more information on RAIDs:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?
OS X has software for creating RAIDs by using Disk Utility. Open Disk Utility and select DU Help from the Help menu. Search for "raid" without quotes. You will find information on how to set up mirrored and striped RAIDs using Disk Utility.

Which is the optimal hard drive configuration for Logic Pro ?

hello people
i would like to ask your advices about possible hard drive configurations for Logic Pro
I have a Mac Pro and thinking to buy 4 x 500GB drives .
there are several combinations in my mind to configure , but first of all i would like to ask which is the best for an optimal system for Logic Pro
model 1 :
1 stripe Raid 0 array drive for ''System'' (500+500 = 1000)
1 stripe Raid 0 array drive for ''recording + sound banks'' (500 + 500 = 1000)
which means to using 4 hard drives as 2 drives
model 2 :
1 stripe Raid 0 array drive for ''System'' (500+500 = 1000)
1 Single drive for Sound banks (500)
1 Single drive for Recording (500)
which means to using 4 hard drives as 3 drives
Or , it is more healthy to use the drives as single , without raid , stripe sets but with its own capacity instead of combining .
and also if someone has an idea regarding to compare of Seagate and Westerndigital drives (which is the best for audio recording) , would be really helpfull
I am kinda rookie for these subjects :/
thanks in advance

heelo blayzay
thanks for the reply and assistance.
1) how can i create a back up set for the 4th HD to be make back up of the 2nd and 3rd HD
2) what about to make 1st HD for system and 2nd3rd4th (1.5TB) for audio recording, and an external drive for backups ?
For the back ups , is there a special process for the backing up HD (internal or external) ? Or should i just need a Clone software to make the back up
thank you again.

Hard drive configuration is not set to factory default. Refurbished Acer Iconia W3-810

This tablet was purchased refurbished. As soon as I got it, I went to create my backup and message is "Hard drive configuration is not set to the factory default. Backup aborted. I had already sent it in once to the seller for repair services and it was sent back not repaired. They now say I can send it in again but seems a waste of time. I called Acer and they said I would need to purchase the recovery disk which should have already been provided to me. It does have a valid SNID number. I checked.   If there is anyone else who came up against this problem, I would love to know what you did to resolve it. Second problem. Large font had been created where is overscans the entire page so reading the Control Panel is impossible. The warranty dept created a new user account with new settings as they were unable to fix the font problem so they ignored it. This is another reason I wanted to do a factory reset. Hoping Acer will be kind enough to just send me the disk.   I've learned alot about refurbished products. Never again.

Hard drive configuration is not set to factory default (I had this problem but mine was caused by some third party partitioning software easeus. I am not pretty entirely sure what was your cause for the error, but I believe this workaround can be useful, even to some of the users)  I learnt a tough lesson and I am now careful on what third party soft wares one must use especially for partitioning related events using windows 8 GPT structure. This article specifically relates to windows 8 (which I was using) although similar steps may work as well in windows 7 Points note:Most newer windows devices now use the GPT partitioning system compared to the traditional MBR system.It can be very difficult to reinstall windows on a partition with GPT format.One must be careful on what 3rd party portioning tools they use. It is not recommend to use some 3rd party tools to resize partitions as these may mess the hard drive configuration in such a way that it will be very difficult to restore to factory settings (especially for devices pre-loaded with OEM-Windows 8)It is recommended to use the in-built Disk management utility to shrink/resize partitions.First and foremost, it is recommended to use system file scanner to check any files that may be corrupted (and most of these are normally fixed by sfc)Press Windows key + X, select ‘Command prompt (Admin)’. Enter the following command “sfc /scannow” (without quotes) and the system will start scanning the system. Wait until it finishes.Now we will proceed to the main fix; here are the set of steps I performed,Run CMD (Admin)Type diskpartType list diskDisk 0 Online 465 GB 19 GB * (an example of how the disk will present)
Disk 1 Online 22 GB 0 B * Select diskDISKPART> select disk 0 list partitionDISKPART> list partition (Note you see recovery partitions flagged as OEM) So what we do is to set the id according to the GUID (Global Unique Identifier) system.Selected every partition with a OEM typeI changed their ID's to DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC (see below)Partition 1 OEM 1000 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 System 260 MB 1001 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 128 MB 1261 MB
Partition 4 Primary 224 GB 1389 MB
Partition 5 OEM 350 MB 226 GB
Partition 6 Unknown 3913 MB 226 GB
Partition 7 Primary 200 GB 230 GB
Partition 8 Unknown 7813 MB 430 GB
Partition 9 OEM 7948 MB 458 GBDISKPART> select part 1Partition 1 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> set id = "de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"DiskPart successfully set the partition ID.DISKPART> select part 5Partition 5 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> set id = "de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"DiskPart successfully set the partition ID.DISKPART> select part 9Partition 9 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> set id = "de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"DiskPart successfully set the partition ID.  Here is a screenshot (please note this is not a screenshot I made, I downloaded it online and I give thanks to the uploader) is just for education purposes. The issue should be solved. Now you can try system refresh/reinstall to factory settings (or create a recovery media)*In my case and others I researched on internet, it turns EASEUS partition master was the culprit, please don’t use that software if you don’t know what you are doing. (With all respect to EASEUS) I think this tool is still not configured well to work with the GPT partition format.

June-July 2013 Video Editing Hard Drive Configuration - ideas welcome!

Greetings Adobe Community,
I am a new member and this is my first question. I appreciate any knowledgable and experienced advice for my Hard Drive Setup.
My new system:
CPU: Intel i7 3930k
MOBO: Asus P9X79 DELUXE
CPU Cooler: CM TPC 812 (Starting with Air cooling, hestitant to use liquid for now)
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance (1600MHz) (8GB ea. obviously)
GPU: GTX 650 Ti Boost (went slim here with plan to sell & upgrade as needed or suggested)
Case/Tower: CM Storm Stryker
PSU: Seasonic 80+ Platinum 860W (currently overkill)
OS: WIndows 7 Pro (with option to upgrade to 8)
Optical Drives: Pioneer BD writer & LG DVD writer (excited about and anticipating a commercial version of new Petabyte optical technology
--> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159245-new-optical-laser-can-increase-dvd-storage-up- to-one-petabyte
Now, I am open to any suggestions that might be a bottleneck above, but my main question is about my my Hard Drive Configuration:
I have the following hard drives:
2 x Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
2 x 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD (7200RPM)
2 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (7200RPM)
I am looking for the best speed, performance and usage of these drives for cs6 Master Collection, with special consideration given to Premiere Pro, AE, and Photoshop.
(FYI: I will be backing up all important files to an external HHD and burning final projects to BD)
My plan inspired by suggestions on AF and elsewhere:
1.) C: 1 x Samsung SSD: OS & Programs
2.) D: 1 x Samsung SSD: Media Cache & Previews
3.) E: 1 x Seagate 3TB HDD for Exports (Should I buy another and raid it?)
4.) F: 2 x WD 1TBs in Raid 0 for Projects
5.) G: 1 x Seagate 3TB HHD for Media (should I add buy another and raid it?)
6.)))<BONUS Drive> I am planning on running some tests to see how much max RAM I can use, and whatever is not being used, I am hoping to hear some positive feedback on making a RAMdisk or a couple of them. (I have seen unbelievable benchmarks for them.) If it is recommended, could I use a RAMdisk for {2.- Media Cache & Preview} or should I just use it for Pagefiles and other Caches and temporary files? (or forgo it altogether?)
I know this is a loaded question, and I am open to other suggestions that might include buying ~$300 in additional drives if it will increase speed and performance tremendously.
Thank you all for reading & I am really looking foward to learning from your knowledge and experience in this area!

Mike,
Check. SATA 6G port. Add a static pagefile of 1 or 2 GB here.
Check. SATA 6G port.
Check. SATA 3G port. No sense in raiding this and doubling the risk of data loss. Even a 25 GB export will only need ± 3 minutes or less to write.The time for export is spent on encoding, not on writing. Why take the risk and spend the money for a potential 80 - 90 second gain on each export of 25 GB? How often do you do that?
Check. SATA 6G ports on Marvell. Make regular backups of your projects.
Check. SATA 3G port. I would be very hesitant to raid0 the original media because of the risk of data loss.The X79 platform is designed for dedicated raid controllers and parity raids. If you need more speed, go that route.
Forget about it. It is not practical. Windows does not allow booting without a pagefile, so it will always create a dynamic pagefile on C: if it does not find it. With 64 GB memory the pagefile will hardly be used if at all. A static pagefile of 1 GB is enough. Everytime you turn off your machine, the RAM disk gets erased and upon booting must be newly created. That means that the media cache must be newly created, indexing, conforming and creation of peakfiles must be done every time you open a project. That time lost far outweighs the potential gain of a faster RAM disk.
Just my $ 0.02

External Hard Drive Configuration

Hi All,
Recently bought my first mac and am trying to get my WD external hard drive to connect.
At first it at least registered the device and I changed the format of it to exFAT as according to another discussion forum, but now the device wont register at all.
It will however come up in disk utility, but whenever I try to change anything on it I get a messge saying it could not configure the drive.
Any suggestions/solutions would be much appreciated.
Cheers!

Exactly what model WD drive do you have, and is this the first time you are trying to use it? How are you connecting it to your computer? USB, FW, etc. Do you have any other external devices connected at the same time?
Does the WD drive have its own power supply or is it a portable drive that uses the USB cable for power? I have seen quite a few "portable" USB powered HDs that don't really work - the drive spins but the computer acts as if there is no HD connected; it seems to be a power issue.
Also, if both your Mac and your pc can't "see" the drive, then maybe your drive is bad, or perhaps it's the cable.
And while I appreciate the convenience of using ExFAT, just be aware that ExFAT wasn't really designed for hard drives and you are not alone in having difficulty using it. If it were me, I wouldn't even consider it. There are other ways to use an external HD with Macs & pc's.

Broken part - cover for hard drive

I am trying to buy a broken part, it is a cover for hard drive for Thinkpad T400 type7417. Please give me an idea where?
Picture of it: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109298789000338710152/albums/posts
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi janman,
You can buy it from eBay or IBM maintenance parts. The FRU no. is 43Y9654.
Hope this helps.
Maliha (I don't work for lenovo)
ThinkPads:- T400[Win 7], T60[Win 7], IBM 240[Win XP]
IdeaPad: U350
Apple:- Macbook Air [Snow Leopard]
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Why doesn't macbook pro 2.3GHz Retina display have hard drive configuration?

When I'm about to order the macbook pro 2.3Ghz Retina display in the apple.com website. there are no hard drive configuration. the hardware configuration are only memory, apple usb super drive and apple thunderbolt. but no hardrive. why?

Because that is the base model of the Retina Edition.
The Retina Edition doesn't come with a Hard Drive. It uses a Flash Drive.
If you want a larger flash drive, you have to step up to the next model.

AirPortExtreme and Hard Drive Configuration...

Okay this question is two fold...
Does OSX come with a Partitioning Software for Hard drives?
And if so How would you go about telling Time Machine to Back up your computer to only 200G of a 1TB hard Drive?
((All while the Hard Drive is hooked up threw a AirPort Extreme))
I know this is an in-depth question... let see how much you guys really know!

The TM backups can be on the same partition. TM will create a separate sparsebundle for each machine. This would help you avoid having to shift your free space to accommodate the backups as they grow. As a side note, Apple Time Capsule isn't even partitionable without removing the HDD. Another note: the video or any files on the HDD connected to Extreme will NOT be backed up by TM. TM can back up local drives (direct USB/FW), but not a NAS (TC and USB HDD on the Extreme). If you want to have a separate backup drive for your video, it would need to be connected directly to your Mac for TM to back it up.

Hard drive configuration is not set to the factory default

When I go into Acer Recovery Management to try to create a factory default backup I get a pop up that says Hard Drive configuration is not set to the factory default - back up aborted. How do I get my hard drive set back to factory default?

Create recovery backup or recovery media and resetting to default are 2 different things. you can create the recovery backup even without resetting to factory default; you just need to start Acer erecovery and follow instructions. it will copy the recovery partition to DVDs or USB flash media.if Acer erecovery is not working and you have Windows 8.x, you can follow this guide:http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-usb-recovery-drive about resetting to factory default, the easiest way is to press ALT+F10 at boot and then follow onscreen instructions.

What is the other category on my mac book pro for hard drive space on how do I improve on it

What is the "other" category on my mac book pro for hard drive space? I found out that it is taking a whole lot of my computer's space...how do I find what it is and optimize it?

If you need to remove files for space see The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing space on your hard drive. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
Under no circumstances should you try deleting files outside of your Home folder.

Optimal Hard Drive Configuration for Premiere Pro CS5 and Pro Tools

I am in the process of upgrading a workstation that is used primarily for multi-track audio recording in Pro Tools to use the following Adobe CS5 products for production of promotional videos in HDV (and AVCHD for the web) as well as printed marketing materials for bands and musicians: Premiere Pro, Encore, Photoshop, Illustrator and Soundbooth.
Since Premiere Pro is probably the most demanding application of the group, I have been studying the suggested hardware configurations on this forum with great interest, particularly HARM's suggestions (including his Generic Guideline for Disk Setup) to determine which hard drives to purchase and the optimal manner in which to configure them.
I am upgrading an HP Z800 with dual quad core 2.44 GhZ processors with hyperthreading (16 virtual cores), 12 GB of memory and an overclocked GeForce GTX 470. Without setting up a RAID configuration (which I cannot afford at the moment), I would like to use the 4 available HDD bays in the Z800 in the optimal manner for Premier Pro, using currently available drives. I am currently considering purchasing a 300GB VelociRaptor to use as my C drive because of the extended load times and demands placed on the drive by ProTools and the associated Waves plug-ins.
I would appreciate suggestions to improve my following plan: C (300GB WD VelociRaptor) for OS and Programs; D (1 TB WD Black Caviar) for Media and Projects; E (1 250 GB WD Black Caviar) for Pagefile (approx. 18 GB) and Media Cache; and E (2 TB WD Black Caviar) for Previews, Exports and Pro Tools audio files.
I have great respect for the knowledge of the members of this forum and eagerly await your suggestions.
/Bill

I very much appreciate the responses to my email because I know that all of your time is valuable and that you have chosen to use some of that valuable time to help an unknown individual. This forum is remarkable because of the wealth of knowledge available and the willingness of so many to assist others.
I now wish to narrow my questions to save you time and so that I can get specific advice. I may not have not been clear that I have already upgraded to the HP Z800 with dual quad core processors and overclocked GTX 470, primarily for the improved performance it will provide in ProTools. My question now is how to optimize its performance for Premiere Pro CS5. Based upon my research, I am considering the following two upgrades, but I am open to other suggestions if they would provide better results at a similar cost
1. I am considering purchasing a 600GB WD VelociRaptor ( WD6000HLXH) for my C drive on which I would place OS (Windows 7, 64 Bit) and programs in an effort to reduce loading times of large programs. I have two questions: (1) Are members of the forum seeing a significant improvment in program loading times with the VelociRaptor because I am still not convinced that the price performance of SSD's justifies their use; and (2) There are so many models of VelociRaptors now that I want to be certain that I am purchasing the best version for my needs. In addition to the usual 10000 RPM speed, this model has 32MB Cache and a 3.5" form factor as well as a SATA 6.0GB/s interface (which I doubt my motherboard can take advantage of but it might extend the useful life of the drive with future configurations).
2. I currently have available for installation in the Z800 the following drives: (1) WD 2TB Black Caviar; (1) WD 1TB Black Caviar; (2) Hitachi 1TB. I believe that the Z800 can accept up to 5 SATA hard drives which I will have if I purchase the Velociraptor. Although I am reasonably knowledeable when it comes to hardware, I have never set up a RAID configuration. Therefore, it would be helpful if someone could recommend one of the various RAID configurations and brieflyexplain why it would seem to be best for my needs. I can then focus my research on understanding that one configuration.
I was planning to follow Scott's suggestion for my current 3 drives: OS and programs on C (WD 600 GBVelociRaptor), media and projects on D (WD 1TB Black Caviar), export files and Pro Tools files (all live musician tracks, no samples) on E (WD 2TB Black Caviar). However, I have been reading about the benefits of a RAID configuration so I am interested in further suggestions now that I have clarified my questions.
Thank you all for your help.
Bill

Distant hard drive configuration for CrashPlan

Hi,
Lets assume that me and my son (distant) have each an Intel iMac 2.6Ghz. If we want to use CrashPlan (online backup software) with a distant hard drive, what would be the fastest setup for the distant hard drive?
1. a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme base station
2. a FireWire 800 hard drive directly connected to my computer
I first wondered if both configuration will work. If they both do, probably the FW800 would be the fastest but is there any other technical limitations that I should consider ? And finally is there other alternatives to our setup ?
Thanks in advance.
Robert Lespérance

Ignoring if what you want to do is possible, that's a query for the CrashPlan people, FW 400 is 40-50% faster than USB 2 and FW 800 is twice as fast as FW 400. However, that only applies from computer directly to HD, not computer to HD via Internet where transferring speeds are dictated by what your ISP provides.

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