I'd like to upgrade this system for it to be faster. It seems that it takes anywhere between 4 to 6 hours to create DVDs from DV Tapes.The videos are about half an hour long. I use Premiere Pro 1.5, edit audio using Audition 1.5 and do some minor adjustments for image quality ( levels, curves ). Aside from that I dont touch the video much. Here are the specs


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P4 2.8C Northwood ( does 3.4ghz during render time )
2x512 DDR400
Asus P4c800 Deluxe
GF4 Ti 4200 128MB
Linksys PCI Wireless Card
SB Audigy Platinum
Winfast TV XP2000 Tv Tuner
Promise Raid Card

Storage
1x7200.7 Seagate 7200 200GB 8MB ( PATA/IDE )
Boot/OS/Data Drive

2xWD1200 WD Caviar 7200 120 GB 8MB - ( SATA RAID on MB )
Raid 0 Drive
Used to Store Captured Videos for premiere

2xBarracuda Vs 7200 80GB 2MB - Raid 0 Drive ( IDE RAID on Card )
Raid 0 Drive
Used to store large 30minute wav files for use in premiere
Also houses mp3s, digital images ( photoshop editing )

1x120gb Barracuda IV ( PATA/IDE )
Archieve Drive ( just died, needing replacement )


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I feel that my storage system is pretty messed up. I read about separate Video Input and Output drives. Since i dont know how use Adobe Premiere to output to AVI and then write and DVD from that avi, i just use export to DVD.

Do you have any recommendations on overhauling the storage system for it to perform faster? Will that mean i will have three drives for video editing including my dedicated raid audio drive? I already have 6 drives,and im willing to replace any of them although it id like to retain some if possible. My only options are Seagates 7200.7s upto 300gb, Maxtor IIIs ( the new 300gb drive with 16mb cache ) and WD Raptors, the 36GB versions.

i was thinking
2x36 raptors in raid 0 for OS/Apps
1 video source drive
1 video output drive
2 audio drives/mp3/pictures ( for editing ) in RAID since Photoshop seems to love it
1 Archieve Drive ( just used to store data never accessed much )

for a total of 7 drives...is there a better setup?

Thanks for the help

PS
if I can get a substantial increase in DVD enconding performance in premiere i would consider upgrading the whole thing. Start over. Which makes it difficult since new Motherboards dont seem to have more than 2 PCI slots.

Encoding to MPEG2 takes a long time. My system is bloody fast and the key to it's speed is the disks but it still takes a while to encode.

the separate drives issue is as follows. One drive for applications and one for media. so if you gonna get the 36Gb raptors make sure they the 10krpm ones then get another 2 identical sata drives and raid them also. - Its the raid that makes it fast and you want your media raid to be as fast as possible. I'd also recommedn getting a single backup drive that's as large as ur media raid. Raids can fail and if you cant rebuild the raid set you loose all the media on the drives.

You dont need separate input output drives for video as you will never be inputing/otputting simoltainously -at least you should never di that but i cant imagine why you would need to.

Keep all the other drives the same also - separate drives for mp3's adn other stuff. - By throwing your photos on the media raid photoshop will benefit from the raid structure so you dont need a 3rd raid system but if you wanna do it there's nothing stopping you.

You could always run a media raid made of 4 drives - ooooooh now that will be a very fast disk.!! - just remember a big backup disk and backup regularly as you dont want that raid fauiling and loosing your data.

Motherboards - 2pci slots? - not true dude - u gotta look for em. If you look at my signature my board will do everything you want. - It will take an impressive 12disks in total (4x ide and 8 x sata)

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