Is there a sticky or previous post that explains the reasons for/ benefits of having two hard drives for the purposes of video editing? I would think this has already been covered and I thought I might have even read a post pertaining to this but I can't find it again. Also, if it had a "How to" on setting it up that would be swell. I would like to slightly beef up my WallyWorld computer for some small editing until I save money enough to build my own.

My rule of thumb, is for the C drive make it a smaller faster one with loads of cache
the second HD at lest 250 gig, use it to put the edited film onto.

But needles to say, the larger HDs are very fast now.

depends on how much you want to spend.

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Sony PC1000E ( Stopped working after 13months)
Sony HDR-HC3 4Mega Pixels High Def Mini DV
4 channel Mic
Wide conversion Lens
Pinnacle studio plus 10, XP Pro, 3.2 GHz Intel, 1 GIG memory, SLI graphics, twin display,250gig Maxtor internal, 4 X 250gig Maxtor USB2, Terrabyte backup on the server.

BBW: yes, it's been covered before. A dedicated hard drive is preferred for capturing so that the write to the drive is completely uninterrupted. If you use the same drive for capturing as you do for everything else, chances are, the operating system or some background process will want to access the hard drive periodically, interrupting your capture - and introducing the possibility of dropped frames. For the same reason, it's always recommended that you regularly defrag the hard drive you use for capture - just to make life easier for your disk heads, writing to one contiguous area rather than jumping around looking for free space. Nothing special about setting the aditional drive up. I have a 40GB C: drive, an 80GB video capture drive - and, as of this weekend, a nice external 250GB drive for archiving old viditing projects to.

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Premiere Pro, Encore, Photoshop, Ulead VS6, WXP Pro, Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 2 x 250GB SATA3 drives, 2 x 250GB USB 2 external drive, DVD writer, GeForce 7300 GS 256MB

The biggest fool can ask questions that the wisest man cannot answer...

So nothing special setup-wise, just making sure I use the bigger drive for capturing and storing the video (and nothing else)?

Nope, I don't believe so. When I added my 80GB drive, I did nothing out of the ordinary - just plugged it in. Given a choice between a big/slow drive and a small/fast drive, opinion might be divided as to which was the better capture disk. That said, my 80GB disk is, IIRC, only a 5400rpm disk and I've not dropped a frame yet...

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Premiere Pro, Encore, Photoshop, Ulead VS6, WXP Pro, Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 2 x 250GB SATA3 drives, 2 x 250GB USB 2 external drive, DVD writer, GeForce 7300 GS 256MB

The biggest fool can ask questions that the wisest man cannot answer...

Ok, thanks for your help, guys.

Ian, you really like those chills everytime you capture, don'cha?

Livin' on the edge - that's where it's at... :lol: Other symptoms: a) not backing up, b) not bothering with a firewall, c) trusting Windows. I could go on...

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Premiere Pro, Encore, Photoshop, Ulead VS6, WXP Pro, Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 2 x 250GB SATA3 drives, 2 x 250GB USB 2 external drive, DVD writer, GeForce 7300 GS 256MB

The biggest fool can ask questions that the wisest man cannot answer...

So what is considered "loads of cache"? As I look around on the internet I can find 40gig drives with 8mb of cache but the smallest I can find (so far) with 16mb of cache is 200gig. Can I not find anything smaller with 16mb?

yep spot on mate

a 200 gig with 1 meg of cache is a no - no

__________________
Live from Norwich !

Sony PC1000E ( Stopped working after 13months)
Sony HDR-HC3 4Mega Pixels High Def Mini DV
4 channel Mic
Wide conversion Lens
Pinnacle studio plus 10, XP Pro, 3.2 GHz Intel, 1 GIG memory, SLI graphics, twin display,250gig Maxtor internal, 4 X 250gig Maxtor USB2, Terrabyte backup on the server.