-
What drive is best to install Sony Vegas Pro 10 on?
So I finally built my own desktop! And this time I want to install eveything on the right drive. For now I will be using this desktop mainly for video editing. What drive do you suggest I install the Software(Sony Vegas Pro 10) and video files or anything else. Thanks Guys! (btw I have an AVCHD camcorder)
Desktop Specs:
Motherboard: [SLI] ASUS Sabertooth X58 ATX1366
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 950
Memory: Corsair 6 GB [2 GB X3] DDR3-1600
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Primary Hard Drive: 1 TB 7200 RPM, 16M Cache
Optical Drive: BLU-RAY Read/Write
Power Supply: 775 Watt – Thermaltake
Monitor: 22″ LCD 1920×1080 Acer -
6 Replies
-
I’m not sure what you mean by “what drive”. Your specs show only a primary hard drive? I would place all applications on the primary hard drive (C:) and all video project and data files on a secondary hard drive.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
You list one primary hard drive only. I’d put it there, otherwise, it’s going to be a DVD or CD somewhere, not too useful 🙂
But seriously.. your main drive is the proper place for applications. Though it’s not terribly critical, it can still make a small difference. Every hard drive (not SSDs, which of course, are not hard drives) is kind of like a muscle car… very fast in a straightaway (one large file), not so good on twisty mountain switchbacks (many files).
The idea of keeping your data and programs separate goes back to the days of digital audio. When you load an application, you don’t necessarily get the whole application in memory. Some of it may be a kind of “software virtual memory”, where DLLs (libraries) are only getting loaded when needed — only when you run that plug-in or whatever. Others are real virtual memory… your application may have chunks that are not actually loaded, but just entered in the system memory tables… the OS will load them automatically, only when used. And of course, particularly in the days before everyone had enough memory, your application might toss some code or data out of main memory in order to fit something else in.
In short, in the old days, you might expect some odd and random disc activity from your C: drive at any time. And in particular, when working digital audio, you were already dealing with multiple small files in any multitracking situation. And perhaps realtime recording as well… I can grab 16 tracks at once with my audio device, but if something slows the PC down enough to glitch even one track, the take is trash.
Most of these things are not a huge problem in digital video, since you rarely do anything that’s of the nature of a performance, other than maybe capturing DV via Firewire. But Vegas, or another program, might well be hitting your C: drive while you’re doing work, and that will have some effect on performance, even a small one. So keeping data on a second drive certainly has its place.
You’ll also find that, once you add enough assets to a single project from that data drive, things slow down. At that point, you can get more performance directing the render to your C: drive, or even a relatively slow USB drive. The bottom line for rendering performance momitoring is looking at your CPU… even on a fast computer, CPU ought to be the bottleneck. If you see your performance monitor around 95%-100% CPU, Vegas is going as fast as it can. If not, you have somehow made your render I/O bound (Vegas is waiting on a hard drive or something) rather than CPU bound. That can usually be fixed.
-Dave
-
yea sorry! thats what I meant.. So thats what Ill do I need to pick up an external hardrive for the video files. Thanks I was just making sure
-
Thanks so much for the extra info.. Im ready to put this desktop to work!
-
[Stephen Millet] “So thats what Ill do I need to pick up an external hardrive for the video files. “
How do you plan to connect the externakl drive? USB? Firewire? eSATA? I would get an INTERNAL hard drive for video files at least 1TB in size. Unless you are going to connect an external drive via eSATA, an internal will be better for editing.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
ok thanks.. I have all those options.. Im still not comfortable taking apart my PC myself, so for the meantime I would probably pick up an external hard drive.. Do you recommend eSATA or usb.. Also what brand is moderatley inexpensive that can handle hd videos.. The videos I make are usally 5-8min in length (out of about a half hour of footage). Ive read about the G-raids but I dont feel like spending that much more money.
thanks,
Steve
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up