Hello and thanks in advance for any and all help. I am trying to do some video editing and like everyone else I am getting a bogging down/freezing when trying to use MM2. The advice I've got so far is to up my RAM (from 512Mb to 2GB which is the max on my Dell 3100) and get a faster hard drive. I am buying the RAM today. Question is what will be the best workable hard drive configuration: I do not have a SATA capable machine (unless I get a card to provide for it), so I was going to use the Seagate 300GB Ultra/ATA 100 drive, 7200RPM, 16MB cache. Is this going to be fast enough? Will a SATA card and drive better/faster?
Hard drive advice..
- Thread starter pete-o
- Start date
First you need a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html and the reminder given to new members to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html
Seeing more then 512mb of ram would certainly be the first step there. Video capturing and editing likes memory and cpu time. Going from 7200rpm ide drives to 7200rpm sata models doesn't actually see any big gain there. For a larger ide drive for the capacity and reliability Western Digital has a 500gb model available seen at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136111
The main problem often seen is not the drive but software used and lack of available ram for a more demanding program. On the Dell there you could simply increase the drive capacity for working with video files since those chew up drive much faster then other file type quite often. The Seagate model you mentioned there is about twice the size of a WD Raptor 10,000rpm sata drive where you would have to sacrifice any real capacity to see some gain for the OS there.
Seeing more then 512mb of ram would certainly be the first step there. Video capturing and editing likes memory and cpu time. Going from 7200rpm ide drives to 7200rpm sata models doesn't actually see any big gain there. For a larger ide drive for the capacity and reliability Western Digital has a 500gb model available seen at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136111
The main problem often seen is not the drive but software used and lack of available ram for a more demanding program. On the Dell there you could simply increase the drive capacity for working with video files since those chew up drive much faster then other file type quite often. The Seagate model you mentioned there is about twice the size of a WD Raptor 10,000rpm sata drive where you would have to sacrifice any real capacity to see some gain for the OS there.
PC Eye, I would be using the new hard drive as a slave drive. My present OEM hard drive of 80GB is only 25% full so I would keep this as my OS drive and use the 300 GB drive as a "scratch pad" for my editing work and some file storage. Also FYI, my OEM hard drive probably a 5400 rpm model, I did not order anything fancy when I bought the PC. What is your opinion on my idea of this proposed setup? What would you do for video editing? I'm looking for other ideas. This is just for home videos using Windows Movie Maker 2.
I have two 250gb ide and two 500gb sata models in the build here. Do I know anything about having drive space? The new build will lose one of the two 250gb ide drives and see a 750gb sata model added maybe two for an array later! While the board still needs to be decided on the capacity for video captures and storage as well as backing files for both XP and Vista do like to chew drive space fast!
Having a large second drive does work for storage and backup along with creating temp folders for projects without interfering with the OS drive. You will wish you had a larger drive when you see how fast a 300bg fills up. That will see about 280gb available after it is partitioned and formatted. The 500gb WD model looks more inviting for the 465gb approximate there over the 300gb model if you can afford the slightly higher price seen. For a 320gb Seagate model OEM you can grab one for $79,99 at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148139
Having a large second drive does work for storage and backup along with creating temp folders for projects without interfering with the OS drive. You will wish you had a larger drive when you see how fast a 300bg fills up. That will see about 280gb available after it is partitioned and formatted. The 500gb WD model looks more inviting for the 465gb approximate there over the 300gb model if you can afford the slightly higher price seen. For a 320gb Seagate model OEM you can grab one for $79,99 at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148139
Increasing your ram will help alot, if your using the newer faster drive as a storage drive and your OS and programs are running on your old 5400 drive then the faster drive wont help the programs run faster, but the increase in ram will help since you only have 512mbs now.
I was thinking that the sole purpose of getting the faster new hard drive was to facilitate faster access to the video files I will be using to compile the finished product. I was on the track that my lack of ram and slow disc speed were my reasons MM2 wouldn't work.
Most likely the simple lack of available memory is the main reason there. To speed things overall the main problem is having a preinstalled OS on a slower boot device where you would need to buy a full install copy of Windows to put a newer and faster host drive in addition to adding a large capacity storage drive. Working with video chews up drive space fast enough.
thesilverlink
New Member
u can invest some money and buy raptor hdd or even 2 and put it on RAID 
Ditch the 5400 drive, install windows and all your programs on the newer faster drive. Reason is, if your operating system and your authoring program are on a slower drive, it will only be as fast as the slower drive will work. No matter if your video files are on a faster drive.
That make sense?
Oh yeah, 2 gigs ram will do the most good for you. 512 ram on xp is a joke. 1 gig is minimum for xp with 2 gigs being much better.
That make sense?
Oh yeah, 2 gigs ram will do the most good for you. 512 ram on xp is a joke. 1 gig is minimum for xp with 2 gigs being much better.
Actually the minimum for Vista is 1gb to see the basics run without complaint. XP isn't anywhere near as demanding as the newer version. The increse in ram, a faster 7200 rpm larger capacity drive, and planning on a dual core cpu over a single cpu model(like seen here until a new build goes together soon) will offer far more for handling the demands not only on drive speed or memory but cpu time as well. With 7200 ide and sata drives alike here and 2gb of ram to work with the single cpu does get loaded down quickly.
PCeye, I know XP will run on 512 of ram, but it needs 1 gig to run well. Anything lower and I think it's a joke. Along those same lines, Vista needs 2 gigs to run well. And for video editing? Well take it as far as you can. 3 gigs max for XP, since if your running the 32 bit system thats all you can use anyways
Last edited:
XP and Vista alike can still run on a system with a 4gb total. The problem is simply not seeing the full amount. That's the drawback there. I run video capture/editing here with XP quite well with just 2gb of Kingston Value Ram installed. The largest demand for video is on cpu time. See how long it takes and how much cpu time is grabbed when going to burn a dvd.
I run XP on both sata and ide drives here and see no big improvement between the two drive types. For storage and data retrieval like simply when going to browse folders on a sata drive and/or copy files you then see a slightly faster access and copy time. For gaming and Windows in general the boost in memory and simply adding a larger, faster ide drive will be the item there. For a truely faster system build a new one! 
(Gee? that's what I'm in the process of doing.)
(Gee? that's what I'm in the process of doing.)