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New System about to ordered – checking nuts and bolts
OK –
I’ve finally taken the plunge with CS4 Production Premium – it’s running acceptably well on a P4 3.2GHz system with the RAM maxed out (4GB – AE only sees 3).
I’m about to order a new system, and have decided to go 64 bit – here’s the rundown on hardware: Intel DP45SG motherboard – this is Dual Core Extreme, 8GB of fast RAM, two 500GB drives for the operating system (Vista 64, SP1), applications, and MediaCache, each with its’ own partition. The Motherboard supports Raid 0, 1, and 5 internally. The two drives will be mirrored with Raid 1.
Two 1TB drives mirrored with Raid 0 for media. I’m currently picking a video card, and am leaning toward the Nvidia Geforce GTX 260, mostly because of the upcoming capabilities with CUDA,SLI, and the one gig of onboard memory. It appears to be on the Adobe ok list, since they have the 200 series on their compatibility table, and it does OpenGL 2.0.My questions are this: Are my choices for Raid settings correct? What should the Partition sizes be on the two mirrored 500GB hard drives for Vista 64, the MediaCache, and the installed apps (I’m going to try and keep this a purely production machine, so it will have little more than CS4, possibly 3D Studio Max 8, and plugins. The motherboard also has an ESata jack – would I be better served getting a Raid card, and driving an external drive array, or using the motherboard’s onboard Raid controller to manage the local two 1TB drives? I’ve read that using the motherboard Raid can sometimes give a hit to system performance.
This is a lot of info and I appreciate any input I get. I’ve looked on several websites as well as here, and there doesn’t seem to be the level of detail that I need, other than that there needs to be partitions for OS, Apps, and MediaCache. Thanks.
Joe Bourke
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia -
6 Replies
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Why do you bother with Vista, when 7 is right around the corner?
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Les –
Purely for the upgrade path to Windows 7. Every new OS needs six months to a year to mature and get drivers written for it, and I’m sure that Windows 7 will be no exception.
Joe
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Hi Joe,
I’m curious why you’re specifying RAID 1 with multiple partitions for your boot drive. I imagine you’re interested in the redundancy, but I think it’s a false sense of security. RAID is not a backup; if you delete a file accidentally, it will be deleted on both RAID drives. If a single hard drive fails, you will be protected, but if your RAID controller fails, or if your power supply fails and damages both drives, or if there’s a fire in your facility, RAID will do you no good.
I’d probably eliminate that RAID set. If you are concerned about redundancy, think about an external hard drive and a program like Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost to create an image of your installed and configured system.
I would also recommend against partitioning. Partitioning was worthwhile a few years ago when file fragmentation was a show stopper, but modern drives are faster and modern filesystems are smarter. Partitioning will only guarantee more seeks across the disks as data from both partitions is requested without providing much benefit.
Instead, you could still get the two 500 GB drives, and use one for the OS and applications, and the other for media caches and scratch disk. I’d suspect this would actually give you a slight performance boost over a partitioned mirrored RAID set.
Most folks recommend against using OpenGL with After Effects; there are a couple threads on this below yours. OpenGL in AE only affects the user interface; you won’t get a render boost. Spec your card for Max if you will use that, where the viewport performance will make a bigger difference.
As for the striped RAID 0 for the media files — what sort of work do you do?
Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production -
Thanks for your advice, Walter. I am a Graphic Designer specializing in motion graphics for trade show exhibits and television productions. I am also a writer/producer/editor, so the system will also be used for longform (short longform – five to fifteen minute industrials and their related elements), as well as presentation loops and animations for trade shows. I also do a fair amount of spot production, 30s and 60s, which I do either in AE or Premiere (I’m just learning Premiere Pro CS4, having worked on Edit* and AVID systems for several years). I also create complete on-air packages for television programming, but that market has mostly been swallowed up by the big players.
Most of my AE projects don’t go beyond forty or fifty layers, but I do quite a bit of effects work, such as tracking (I prefer Combustion for that), keying, and other special effects. I use 3D Studio Max 8 for my 3D work, and have recently purchased the CS4 Production Premium package. My education is in music, so I also do a fair amount of audio work, mostly sound fx, voice overs, and sweetening for the projects I write and produce (these I can do on my existing P4 machine – digital audio isn’t very demanding.
The reason I was thinking about the striped Raid 0 for the media files is future proofing – most of my work is heading toward HD, or at least HDV (for acquisition), and I want to have enough headroom to edit true HD and HDV (for tradeshow booth playback) without waiting for days. It appears that 64bit is the way to go, and I was thinking Vista 64 mostly as an upgrade path to Windows 7. I don’t trust Vista from some of the things I’ve read, but I also know that no new OS is going to be bug free immediately – at least Vista has had some development time. Thanks for your input.
Joe Bourke
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia -
Hey Joe,
I do similar work—largely motion graphics for live events and custom widescreen and multi-screen displays.
The issue with RAID 0 is that a single drive failure will destroy all your data. If you will be working with HDV, you won’t really need RAID 0 for speed. The data rate is 25 mbit/s, the same as DV, so you could get away with a single SATA drive. If you will be working with uncompressed HD, a two-disk RAID 0 set won’t be fast enough. An external RAID 5 array (there are plenty advertised here) will give you both speed and redundancy.
Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production -
Thank you very much for your time Walter –
That clarified everything. I’ve already got a 750MB external drive which I can use for backup, then I’ll price out an external RAID array that will get me rolling as I get into true HD work.
Joe Bourke
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
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