Just built a new pc and got some new sata hdd's was wondring what would be the best setup for the drives

meaning can i have the os,studio 12/14 and media files all on same drive or do i divide stuff out over different drives

i want to get the most out of the system speed wis.e So how do you guys/girls have your software installed?

If you just have 2 drives, then a rule of thumb of "one drive for OS, virtual memory, and program installs, and the other for Studio's capture files" seems to work well enough.

If you have 3 drives, you can experiment with moving your Auxiliary Files, your virtual memory, your "output folder", etc. to the 3rd drive, but you'll likely find that, while there are exceptions to every rule (for example, if you're doing 2-track editing, it can sometimes pay big dividends to put the master and the overlay track on separate drives), the benefits you'll get from 2-drive to 3-drive probably aren't going to be that great.  1 to 2 drive, however?  Big payoff.

BittMann

Ok, just so I understand - the studio's capture files are the files you get if you record from a video cam over to pc - or have i miss understod that? The viritual memory, is that something I need to change within the Studio software or is that controlled by the OS?

The set up Im trying at the moment is:

drive 1: 1 TB sataII
c:\ windows7 + all programs with studio 200gb
d:\ media storeage 500gb where my hd video is saved too
e:\ document folders 300gb

drive 2: 250gb sataII
g:\extra drive with render files on

With having my hd media on the same physical drive that studio is would this be slowing stuff down for me ie reading/writing of files?

Yes, the capture files are the media files that you capture from your camcorder/capture device/etc. 

Virtual memory is set by the OS.   

However, after seeing what you've created, I think that you are going to need to experiment a little more.  Usually, folks add a 2nd drive that is as large as, or bigger than, the original "primary" drive.  Since your 2nd drive is so much smaller it might not be the "best place" for all of your media files, depending upon how many files you capture etc.

That being said, If you set your target render folder and your Studio auxiliary files directory over to that drive, you may get perceptibly better performance out of Studio.

Anyone else have any other ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe you can switch them around? 250GB is plenty for a primary drive. Then keep your partitions on your 1TB drive and use that for captures and renders.

Yea thats a good idea too the reson i used the 1TB drive for os and stuff was the drive seem to be a bit faster burst speed while trying it on hdtach software which got me thinking that would be the best drive to have all software to run off. Both drives are 7200rpm's.

Having both the capture and render files on the same physical drive but in diffrent partions is it going to slow stuff down ie reading and writing info from same drive at once?

I experienced the same thing when I replaced my 60 gig primary drive with a 1 terabyte, much faster. It was explained to me that it was faster because the data was more dense and took less time to access.

If your computer has the space and your wallet has the bucks, I would add a third 1 terabyte drive for video storage. Also remember that a partition doesn't act like a seperate drive as far as speed is concerned; it's still the same physical drive. 

Don

 

Hard drives are dirt cheap nowadays so Don's suggestion gets my vote too.