Hard drive for video editing - what spec?

[richardblack]

Hello,
I am new to this forum so please forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask this or I haven't searched the right place for answers.
I have been video editing for a couple of years now with some success (and many failures) and would like to know if anyone can tell me what is the best sort of hard drive to use for editing (ide not scssi)? I read somewhere that there are drives specific to the task but can't find anything more. I assume the drives with the biggest cache are the ones to go for, is this true? Are some manufacturers better than others?
Any advise would be welcomed.
For information, I am mainly using an AMD 2500 Barton oveclocked to 3200, on a Gigabyte GA-7400 pro board, 1GB of Elixir 3200 ram, 128MB ATI 9550, various hard drives (using the excellent Vipower caddy system).

Thank you,
Richard.

[MarkE19]

TBH just about any new IDE HDD should be fine for video editing. The only real exception to this is the 2.5" laptop drives as they have a slow spin speed that can cause dropped frames etc. Your best bet IMO is to go with any HDD with a spin speed of 7200rpm and with the best/longest warrenty on offer.

Mark.

[richardblack]

Hello Mark,
Thank you for the response. Do you know what, if any, advantage there is with using a drive with a larger cache? The ones i am using at the moment have 2MB cache and was wondering whether to go for 8 or 16MB cache. Any ideas?
thank you,
Richard.

[tdodd]

FWIW I've successfully edited many hours of DV on a laptop with a 30GB 5,400 rpm drive with no dropped frames. I think a 4,200 rpm laptop drive might be a risk but I've never tried it. I can't see any desktop drive having a problem with video editing.

[MarkE19]

Laptop drives are normally fine for video editing as long as they have plenty of space left on them, are defragmented and the laptop is idle apart from the capture software. Any additional HDD access can and often does cause dropped frames.

HDD cache speeds up the access times of data being read off the drive by predicting what data will be required next and then loading it into faster RAM. AFAIK it has no affect on write speeds and therefore will be of no advantage for video capture.

Mark.

[richardblack]

Thank you both for the information. I will press on with using the drives I have and replace with similar as there seems no advantage in spending more.
I think I will save and go for raid as the next expense.
Thanks again,
Richard.

[drummerjohn]

Get any 8mb 7200rpm drive and you will be fine. Yes 5400 rpm does work but compared to a 7200rpm with 2mb of cache its a dog. Been there, done that, wrote the book.

[toadoftoadhall]

Philips USB 2.0 250GB Hard Drive £69.99
As advertsed in Saturdays Mail.

Staples in store only for the next 4 days. be quick. If not in stock, you can order one and have it for the same price

[MarkE19]

If getting an external HDD I would advise anybody to get a firewire drive for video editing as USB2.0 is not good enough for full quality .AVI video capture.

Mark.