Seeking advice on Video Editing Laptop

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Shawn R. Britton] “What minimum RAID would you suggest with this beast for a new PPro user?”

Hi Shawn,

The most common RAID for laptop editing is a dual-drive RAID1 or RAID0 like G-RAID (mini).

Another common solution is 4-5 four drives in an external box that can be connected to the laptop via eSATA or USB3.0, set up in RAID5. It’s fast enough for most compressed editing workflows, and protects from a single drive failure as well. E.g.:

ProAvio EB400FR (eSATA and USB 2.0 – not 3.0).

I might be able to give a better answer if you give me a few details about the type of editing you do or plan to do.

With heavily compressed files from most dSLRs and flash camcorders, and relatively simple timelines (up to, say, 3 video layers) – a single 7200rpm disk or a RAID1 are enough. (As long as they’re dedicated to media files and not used for OS or apps.)

If you work with Red, DNG, dSLR time lapses, other high-bandwidth files and/or multiple video layers on your timeline (e.g. multicam) – you would usually need something faster than a single disk – e.g. a dual- or quad-bay box set up in RAID0.

HTH.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA