WIN 7 PRO or HOME

[Al Bergstein]

Good point, if you are running multiple o.s.’s on the same machine. I like the simplicity of os based raid 1 or 0, but if i was running two or more, i would also get a raid card. Microsoft raid seems to work pretty well, as does Apple’s, for that matter. Which raid card do you use?

Alf

[John Rofrano]

[Al Bergstein] “Which raid card do you use?”

I use the RAID that’s built into my Intel motherboard. During boot, you press Ctrl+I to open the controller interface and define any RAID arrays you want. Then everything that runs on the computer sees these arrays just like any other disk.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ted Snow]

John, just so I understand you correctly…say you have a fatal HD crash or your MB goes bad and you need to do a fresh install of the OS (still only using one PC)…this is allowed? I have had this happen with my WIN XP and reinstalled it but then again it was the retail version.

Here is what I copied and pasted from a major software reseller in there description between OEM, full retail, etc.

“OEM does not come in a retail box, it does not include printed manuals, cannot be transferred to another computer (even if the original computer breaks), and is not eligible for free technical support from the manufacturer. Help files can usually be found on the disc and printed out. OEM software is the same software as the Full Retail and can be upgraded, it just comes in different packing”.

I am aware of all the other things as far as no box, no manual, no support, etc. but the part I have highlighted in bold had me concerned. Sometimes when you change out components of a computer it looks like a different PC when it comes to registering software.

As long as I am covered if I have a fatal crash and need to reinstall the OS I would much rather go with the OEM version.

Thanks again everyone for all your help.

[John Rofrano]

[Ted Snow] “John, just so I understand you correctly…say you have a fatal HD crash or your MB goes bad and you need to do a fresh install of the OS (still only using one PC)…this is allowed? I have had this happen with my WIN XP and reinstalled it but then again it was the retail version.”

Let’s put it this way… I’ve done it and it works fine.

[Ted Snow] “…cannot be transferred to another computer (even if the original computer breaks)”

Define “another computer”? If I replace my motherboard or processor, to me, it’s the same computer with a new part to replace the old part. Who is to say it’s not? What they are really saying is that you cannot buy a new computer and install an OEM version from a previous computer because it’s not transferable. This is a “legal” statement not a “technical” statement.

[Ted Snow] “As long as I am covered if I have a fatal crash and need to reinstall the OS I would much rather go with the OEM version.”

All I can tell you is what I have experienced. I’ve upgraded the motherboard on my computer and installed the same OEM OS and it installed and authorized fine. Upgrading parts is upgrading parts, even if that part is as big as a motherboard.

If you need to be 100% sure, you need to call a lawyer or Microsoft. I can only tell you what works for me. I have never purchased a retail version of any MS OS and I constantly upgrade my computer builds, including motherboard and processor upgrades, without incident.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ken Mitchell]

I just bought Windows 7 home premium family pack from amazon for $120.
3 Full licenses .. you just need an os on the disc to load windows 7 home premium 32 or 64 on the drive.. It is the full version and the old os is called old windows.So it is from scratch.. Microsoft sells it for $140 for 3 licenses on their site..

[Ken Mitchell]

I was running a 3 drive raid with windows7 home premium 64 set up in disc management. Raid 0 only… 3 drives 350 read 360 write. But now I am running windows 7 64 home premium with a 4 drive motherboard raid.(Asus P8P67 Premium.. raid 5… 270 read 280 write.

[Ted Snow]

Thanks for the in depth reply John. That’s good enough for me.

[Al Bergstein]

So i guess that both of us are right.my motherboard only supports a two drive raid. If i want to setup external raid arrays, like i did, to put my new two year documentery project onto i needed to add a two sata card, and either use a third party driver or use windows pro, not home. Or am i still missing something?

Alf

[Dave Haynie]

Right.

Microsoft in the past was fairly draconic about the definition of “same computer”. These days, a little less so.

With that, some honesty from the other side. Back in 1994, I did a consulting project for a company in Germany. They wanted PCBs done in a specific PC CAD tool, and I only had an Amiga 3000 (I was one of the main hardware engineers on that computer). So they sent me a PC.

My PC today has not a single component in common with that first PC. On the other hand, there’s a clear line of upgrades going back to 1994.. I never started completely over. I would upgrade a motherboard, power supply, case, graphic card, HDDs, etc. but never all at once. It’s kind of understandable that, through all of that, Microsoft would like to have a way to claim there’s a new computer in there. But ultimately, that kind of behavior is fringe enough for them to not care about it. Win7 seems to have gone more that way… when my Intel Q9550-based main board died last fall, it was a no-brainer to get the same system working on the AMD 1090T replacement. Much easier than back in the XP days, if not quite as easy as Win2K or NT.

MS’s original idea was that they could kind of define the crossover, based on some notion of rate-of-change of your PC within a certain timeframe. But they rarely enforced it — if you got rejected for changing too many things, and called MS on it, they would pretty much ok it.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah.. I used to have Windows-managed volume sets (their name for RAID). In XP, they offered RAID0 at one spec level, RAID1 at another. These days, you get no filesystem-level RAID for Home, levels 0/1 for Pro, and up to 5 for server.

The problem with this is that only Windows understands those RAID volumes. That makes things really evil if you need to examine that volume in another OS, or even from a disc recovery tool auto-booted from a CD. It’s a much better idea, for a “software” RAID, to handle this at the BIOS level, so everything that boots on the PC will see the same volume, not just Windows.

And I’m kind of against RAID for video work anyway. There’s no question that, for a single video stream, a RAID drive (well, RAID0 or RAID1) can nearly double that single-stream throughput. On the other hand, put all your assets on a RAID, and you have lots of activity. The killer for NLE performance from disc is nearly always seek times, not streaming perfornance. In short, while you might see 100MB/s from a single data stream, if you have 10 assets in a project, you won’t see 10MB/s per asset.. you might not even see 5MB/s per asset.

The deal with the HDD is simple.. it’s a muscle car. It’s very fast in a straight line — one file. When you have a half dozen or more, all loading into your NLE at one time, the fast loads will eventually be dwarfed by the track-to-rack seek times.

A RAID is worse for this, since every seek’s effective time is the greater of the seek times for the N drives. For very large transfers, that’s not a problem, since you have slightly slower seeks, but effectively Nx larger tracks. But eventually, the seek times takes over, and a RAID will prove slower than if you strategically spread assets across multiple independent drives.

-Dave