1 Samsung HD501LJ (500GB) or 2 WD 250 GB? Video editing...

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 1:23 am

The most demanding I use my HDD for, is video editing. Currently it's Pinnacle 9, but this will most likely be replaced with Adobe Premiere.

Soon, I'll upgrade RAM, processor and mobo, but I start out with a HDD upgrade.

I'll plan on either:

1) 1 x 500 GB disk with a dedicated partition for video.
2) 2 * 250 GB, where I could use one for OS / applications, and the other for video.

This is in a P180 case.

A dual disk setup, will probably mean no Scythe Quiet drive, at least not for both... But I might have one in a SQD, and, if possible, let the other drive enter standby mode, while not in use.

For 250 GB disks, I'm looking at WD Caviar WD2500KS, but there might be faster and/or quiter options out there.

Budget: Total should not be much above 2 x WD Caviar WD2500KS. The the Samsung HD501LJ is a cheaper solution, which wouldnt hurt... - but maybe you guys have strong arguments for something else...

To get things in perspective: Quietness is more important than performance, since I wont do video editing that often - but if the the sacrifice in terms of quietness is quite small with a dual disk setup, and there also would be a performance improvement, I tend to go that route. The dual disk setup also attracts me for backup purposes...

It many years ago since I last ran with dual-HDD, and I dont have a clue about noise impact with modern disks in a P180....

I think the single drive solution will be the quitest, but what do you guys say? And will there be a worthwhile performance increase with a dual disk setup?

Thanks

Thomas

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 2:29 am

For video editing, I'd definitely go with the two drives, but slightly differently than the way you suggest - create a relatively small partition on drive 1 for the OS and apps, and use the remainder as well as the whole of drive 2 for your content. That way you can use one drive as source (raw material), and the other as destination (post-processed), and you can keep both spindles busy reading and writing concurrently.

The noise sacrifice of two drives won't be *that* noticeable - the P180's mountings will decouple the drives from each other, as well as from the case itself, so you should avoid the dreaded "beat" effect which plagues many multi-drive setups.

If absolute quietness is the overriding priority however, one drive is better than two (all other things being equal) - fewer moving parts, less power consumed, heat generated etc...

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:41 am

Thanks alot, usefull info !

Regarding noise... If I choose a dual drive setup, I'll put them in the lower chamber. So I belive the increased heat/wattage, will only have a slight impact on my SeaSonic. From what I've read, smaller drives consume less power, than big ones, which (theoretically) should minimize that part of the problem.

It's a challenge for my P180, to decouple my current high vibrating Hitachi drive, so I look for low(er) vibrating drives... If I succeed finding such ones, that part shold be minor too...

That leaves me mainly with idle noise and seeks. If the secondary drive only is in use during video editing and backup, I can live with the addition of seek-noise. I think idle noise will be similar to one fan versus two... An addition of 3 dBA.

Alternative 1: I could use my current Hitachi drive as the second drive, and enable standby mode. That is, it would always add ekstra noise for the first 10 minutes or so, and then shut down automatically untill I access it...

However I'm in doubt if the performance of this 2 year old Hitachi SATA 160 GB. I was on StorageReview and found the Hitachi and that indicated that newer drives are approx. 20-25% faster. But they changed the sofware versions which they test with... Like newer versions of PhotoShop and the likes... So I'm in doubt if these comparisions are apples versus oranges...

Alternative 2: Place the second drive in a external HDD-box via eSATA, and only connect it while doing backup and video editing.

Any thoughts are welcome, thanks.

Thomas

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:25 am

That "alternative 1" sound like a good idea. About performance issues, 7K250 was on StorageReview's Leaderboard for a while... what it until 7K400 too it's place, followed by MaXLine III. When they imported 7K400 and ML III to newer Testbed 4, 7K400 regained first position back from ML III because Hitachi's firmware suited better for newer applications. 7K250 wasn't ported from Testbed 3 to new testbed but I think 7K250 would still have decent scores.

Here's the review of the good, old 7K250: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... A80_1.html

Sure, it has lower STR (60 MB/s max, 30 MB/s min) than new drives (which may have up to 100 MB/s max, 50 MB/s min), but it's still way better to use one new drive and one slightly aged one, than to use only one new drive with higher capacity. This is because if you copy a big file from partition to another within a physical device, you'll be copying the file in small pieces and the device will be seeking constantly. We're talking about a serious performance drop here. Using 7K250 as source or destination drive will improve performance noticeably.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:03 am

Thanks a lot

My understanding of HDD speed, is quite limited... Havent digged into that, yet.

What is STR? SOunds like ability to read/write big files, where 60 MB/s max is read and 30 MB/s min is write... true?

Actually, I need 3 drives total, of which the old Hitachi will be one of them. The third drive, which I havent mentioned so far, will be in an external box and only used for backup. It will be stored in a safe box in a bank most of the time.

So the old drive could have that task, leaving room for two new drives, of which one could be a new fast Hitachi for alternative 1. It doenst matter much if it's 160, 200, 250 or 320... But from a money pr. GB point of view, 250 seems to be the sweet spot.... Since the drive will be disabled, when not video editing or backing up, speed is the main concern...

Or will the gain in speed by upgrading the Hitachi to a newer Hitachi be so little, that I just should stick with the disk with most capasity pr. money for the external backup disk?

Any recommendations?

Thomas

CoolGav · Post by **CoolGav** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:17 am

An alternative you may not have considered is to use a 2.5" boot drive, which will be lower power, vibration and noise. Then your choice of dedicated larger drive for data.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:38 am

I'm with Nick705 on this one. Video encoding performance vastly benefits from having different source and destination drives -- reading and writing those incredible amounts of data to the same drive really slows things down. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest having 3 drives: 1 for system/swap file, and 2 for video editing purposes. That might be overkill for you, but that is the best way to go if you do alot of video work.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 12:35 pm

So far , I've decided to go with ( at least

)a dual-disk setup, where one drive will be a Hitachi for video and backup. These drive are reasonably fast AND can automatically enter stand by mode when not in use.

Further, I just found out that I can get a Hitachi T7K250 250 GB for a ridicolus low price, at my favorite shop

I dont do a lot of video-editing, but I like reasonably speed when I actually do it. So I'm not willing to pay for a third internal drive for this sole purpose.

But then the 2,5" comes into play. I like the idea of quitness, but I think it will be too slow for a dual disk setup for video. Further, I also use PhotoShop which have it's own swap file (though they call it something else) which they recommend to be on another drive or partition, than the OS. And I've already got a 10MPix camera, which can shoot in RAW... So I tend to say a 2,5" disk will be too slow... And a 2,5" dont have a lot of capasity... There are 250GB model(s), but price...

3 disks tend to stretch the budget;

A 2,5" WD Scorpio WD800BEVS is pretty cheap. Assuming it's quiet... Add in a T7K250, and we're close to my original HDD budget... If I add in a reasonably quiet 3,5" 250GB Samsung/WD for PhotoShop and all other data than video...

Hmmm...

I could also start out with a dual-disk setup: The reasonably 3,5" 250GB Samsung/WD + a Hitachi for video/backup. If the Samsung/WD aint quiet enough, I can put it in my Scythe Quiet Drive in the lower chamber of P180 and the Hitachi in the upper chamber. If I still want more quietness and/or performance and/or have money to burn (not likely) I could get a the third drive, a 2,5" drive...

Comments/thoughts are very welcome

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 2:30 pm

STR is shorted from sequential transfer rate. STR varies on position of disk you are reading or writing. Since platters revolve at constant rpm, when R/W head is over outer tracks, more bits pass under the head in the same amount of time, thus outer tracks have higher STR than inner tracks.

CD drives work the other way: they don't use constant rpm, the use constant bitrate. When you seek from track to another, you not only have to wait for laser/sensor assembly to move to the right track, you'll have to wait for rpm to match the wanted bitrate. HDDs don't change rpm, making them relatively fast seekers... still, seeking is the weakest point in HDD operation and can hurt performance.

STR is valid only for sequential transfers: reading or writing adjacent sectors (from lower LBA to higher). (LBA is a binary address of a sector.) If you have many files, to transfer, it's not completely sequential as it needs to seek between files. It may still be mostly sequential, depending on file size.

Even worse than copying multiple files, is copying just two files, no matter how big, at the same time. It will seek constantly between the two files, not transfering one file at a time. Also, if you copy a file within same physical drive (same partition or different partition on same HDD) it will do exactly the same. If it starts seeking this way, it's take a very long time to finish.

I just made an experiment with my 7K250 (250GB variant): I hashed a big movie file and while it was hashing that, I started calculating CRC check-sums for smaller files. Reading 10 MB file took about 1 minute. That's way less than 1 MB/s! (At the same time, hashing the big movie file slowed too because seeking interrupted both read operations from being sequential. But I'll make another check... this time with a drive on PATA channel (since USB is probably affected by short transfers): 2.3 MB/s. Still way slower than sequential transfers.

See, this is the reason why you need to use at least two HDDs on any video/audio/image-editing computer. Even old HDDs can provide better STR than new HDDs can provide transfer rates in non-sequential order. For example Bigfoot CY 4.3GB can provide 7MB max, 4MB min in sequantial order... and that HDD is old. Don't be fooled about the capacity as it has two platters and is the size of a CD drive. And they spin at 3600rpm. Should give some perspective of the harmfulnes of running multiple disk-operations simultaneously.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:17 pm

Thanks for enligthing me - very usefull info, cool

This makes me more interested in a 2,5" drive in combination with a Hitachi.

I read on StorageReview in the 3,5" 250 GB roundup, that more capasity often also means faster disks. I think that would also apply for 2,5" disks, right?

I searched on all the SPCR recommended 2,5", and the Western Digital WD1200BEVS are definately the most appealing; S-ATA, 120 GB and reasonably price.

Adding in a Hitachi 250 GB will stretch the budget some about 25%, but the benefits seems to be worth it.

Now, I'm confused about those Hitachi variants:

DeskStar T7K500
DeskStar T7K250
CinemaStar 7K500

Specifications seems the same: 7.200, 8 MB buffer, 250 GB, S-ATA and price.

Average searchtime differ; 8,5 MS for the DeskStars and 14 for the CinemaStar.

Hitachi says about the CinemaStar: "The CinemaStar 7K500 hard disk drive is optimized for streaming consumer electronics applications like High Definition Digital Video Recorders. Hitachi has designed CinemaStar to provide features for quiet acoustics and low power management to deliver customer satisfaction and field reliability. Advanced features include: SMART Command Transport and Thermal Flight Control to adapt error correction and environmental system conditions to improve the streaming experience and overall video quality."

This sounds good from a silence point of view, and also for video editing, and probably also for backup.

Since I'm unexperienced with this - if I change my mind and will use the Hitachi for, let's guess, photos and PhotoShop swap file... Will a CinemaStar be slow for more "normal" PC-stuff like this?

Thanks again to all for the good ideas and comments

Besides StorageReview, are there other good sites for HDD tests?

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:08 am

DeskStar T7K500
DeskStar T7K250
CinemaStar 7K500

They are pretty much the same. They all have the same density platters (125GB) and the same STR. Deskstar T7K500 is nearly identical to Cinemastar 7K500 (Cinemastar is physically the same drive, factory configured for PVR use). (Just don't mix it with Deskstar 7K500 or Deskstar E7K500 because they are whole different beasts with 5 platters.) T7K250 is an older model. While it doesn't have lower STR, it lacks Thermal Fly Height Control and thus the wider operational temperature range it provides.

Longer seek time of Cinemastar might just mean AAM is enabled by default, making seeks quieter but slower. If you manage to set up your video-editing source and destinations correctly, there will be very little seeking (and thus very little performance loss), so enabling AAM for quietness it gives may be worth it. You can enable AAM for Deskstars too: it's just not enabled by default. Deskstar also has power saving features (like APM). Cinemastar may have it enabled already, but configuring it yourself wouldn't be that hard.

With "video quality" they mean some sort of time-limited-error-recovery. If HDD cannot read a sector after a couple of retrys, it aborts, and video playback wouldn't stutter... there'd just be a corrupted pixel or something similar. Streaming feature cannot be used with data since a single flipped bit could cause your software to crash. Deskstars should be OK for you. You don't need Cinemastar for your computer.

Deskstar T7K500 320GB and 500GB variants would use 167GB platters, offering higher STR than 250GB and 400GB variants using 125GB and 133GB platters.

Deskstar T7K500 variants:
2x 125 = 250
2x 167 = 333 => (short-stroked) 320
3x 133 = 400
3x 167 = 500.

250GB is a sweet spot... but so is 320GB and 500GB. Of course 500GB may be more than what you need and 320GB will already offer most of the performance benefit.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 6:23 am

Okay, my choises are:

Western Digital WD1200BEVS, which will be the main disk. OS, apps, photos and other common data.

Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 320 GB. For video and backup.

Yes, the 500 will be faster, but I've already stretched my budget. And I'm still pretty far from having filled my 160 GB

A question remain regarding STR; Reads are faster than writes, yes? If so I'll put the video source file on the WD and the video target file on the Hitachi. Does this sounds reasonably?

I'll probably also use the Hitachi for games, since I'll accept more noise during gaming. But then agin, I'm only a casual gamer... It'll be fun to try the difference between a 3,5" and 2,5" for real

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 11:05 am

"A question remain regarding STR; Reads are faster than writes, yes?"

Actually, no. Both read and write speeds are limited by linear data density of the magnetic media multiplied by the speed media travels beneath the read/write head. Thus, STR is function of:
- linear data density
- spindle rpm
- R/W head position (because outer tracks on the platter moves faster than inner tracks).

Both reading and writing occurs at the same data density, naturally. Spindle rpm is also constant. And if you read from track X or write to track X, what ever track X is, it's a constant too. No difference between read and write.

Well, no significant difference. Usually there's a couple percent loss when writing. I don't know why, but since it's negligible, we don't need to know what causes it. We aren't HDD engineers after all.

One reason could be because seek time is a little longer for writing than seeking. Seek time can be divided to actual seek time and settling time. Writing requires longer settling, because we don't want to write off-track, where as reading off-track isn't catastrophic: it just fails error-correction code (ECC) check and it time to retry reading when platter has spun one complete revolution. Writing off-track could overwrite adjacent track and cause data loss, or write to space between tracks, making written data unreadable. But sequential writing shouldn't be affected by this. Seeks to adjacent tracks are extremely short. But like I said, we don't have to know what causes it. It's a very small difference.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 11:51 am

Okay. I re-read one of your firsts post, and now I see I didnt noticed "min" and "max"... oups !

So, if I get this right, then when we say "STR 60 MB/s max, 30 MB/s min", then 60 MB/s is when the head is at the outer side of the disk where DATA-speed maxes out, and 30 MB/s is when the head is close to the center?

Is it possible through disk partitioning to ensure I have a partition at the outer of a platter? As you probably guessed, I would like to place my swap file right here

Should be relatively easy with a single platter disk... If singlesided, it's simply in the end. Double-sided, must be close to the middle...

This about inner and outer affecting data-speed, must also be a great part of the reason for 2,5" disks are slower than 3,5"? Of course there's also RPM's and the power-usage-concern... but still...

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 3:05 am

"So, if I get this right, then when we say "STR 60 MB/s max, 30 MB/s min", then 60 MB/s is when the head is at the outer side of the disk where DATA-speed maxes out, and 30 MB/s is when the head is close to the center?"

Yes, that's it. Both read and write max out at outer edge of the disk.

"Is it possible through disk partitioning to ensure I have a partition at the outer of a platter?"

When using typical partitioning utilities (for example Win XP Disk Management) the partition created first get created at low LBA, and the next created partition starts where previous ended, etc.

It's a defacto standard that low LBA are on outer edge and progresses toward inner tracks until maximum LBA is reached. Number of sectors on a HDD = maximum capacity of the HDD divided by bytes per sector. For 320GB drive, maximum LBA is 624999999 and since there's 625000000 sectors. LBA starts from 0, so that one sector isn't lost anywhere... And of course 320GB drives don't have exactly 625000000 sectors, they have at least that many sectors, and most likely some megabytes extra. Some drives even have a couple of gigabytes more than rated capacity.

"If singlesided, it's simply in the end. Double-sided, must be close to the middle..."

Uh, oh... not even close. But I agree it's simple. It is simple for double-sided and multiple platter drives too.

Back when HDDs were low on capacity, they were accessed by the controller through C/H/S addressing, Cylinder, Head and Sector. Cylinder is not the same as track, as cylinder includes one track from all used magnetic surfaces. Head defines which surface is used from that cylinder. Thus a track is a combination of Cylinder and Head. Sector means... or rather meant where the wanted data was on that specified track. It defines how long to wait in order to allow platter revolve under the sensor before starting reading.

What we today call a "sector" isn't actually a sector. Sector is a slice of pie (or pizza) that is cut in a straight line from center point to outer edge with some angle between two cut. This "sector" as we today know it is should actually a "block". LBA is Logical Block Address. Controller just asks a block with a single address (not a combination of three addresses like with C/H/S) and HDD itself determines where it physically resides. Your computer doesn't know which platter has that block, only your HDD knows. In practice, HDDs still read from outer edge toward the inner, even though they don't use C/H/S addressing and even though they are not forced to operate the way they do any longer. The typical way of reading data back then was take some C, H and S values (where read or write starts). Increase value of S until you come to the end of track, reset S to 0, increase H by one, start increasing S until it comes to end of track, reset, increase H by one, repeat until you have read one track with each head, then reset both S and H to 0, and increase C by one, repeat the whole process. This old method of addressing was straightforward but limited the implementation of HDD. Because HDD had a constant number of sectors per track, there was the same number of data written on outer and inner edge, the same STR on both too. That was wasted capacity and wasted performance.

Also, Int13h C/H/S addressing run out of Cylinders and Sectors, because when it was designed, they had no idea of the exponential growth of data density. C, H and S had maximum values.
10 bits for the cylinder number, or a total of 1,024 cylinders.
8 bits for the head number, or a total of 256 heads.
6 bits for the sector number, or a total of 63 sectors.
The only value that was typically adequate was H, as while data densities increased, the number of platters didn't 256 head and thus 128 platters per hard drive was newer exceeded.

They postponed inevitable transition to LBA by making a C/H/S conversion: host system was led to believe HDD has more heads, cylinders or sectors than what it in reality had, and HDD made the conversion of logical C/H/S to physical C/H/S, as physical C/H/S wasn't limited by outdates interface specification. Eventually with all values of C/H/S maxed out at 1024/256/63, HDDs only had maximum capacity of 8.46 GB. (Though they did came up with Int13h Extensions which is practically yet another macgyvered solution...) Then came 28-bit LBA, which maxed out at 137GB, and now we have 48-bit LBA that will max out at 144115 terabytes.

Enough of the history. :p

Basically this means STR starts high and reduces slowly until getting to innermost track. When it gets there all data on all platters is read, it doesn't return to outer edge to read another platter.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 12:26 pm

Thanks for the indepth explanation. So 640 KB maximum wasnt the only one

well, of course not, but interesting to read...

After my previous post, it came to mind, that a fast part of the disk must be at the end or the beginning... I was in doubt if they read inside out like a CD, or outside-in like a good old long player.

I had some second thoughts about speed of the Western Digital WD1200BEVS, but according to StorageReview it have STR min of 27,8 where my current 160 Deskstar have 32,9. Should be so close, that I probably wont notice.

I'm a bit more worried about common Windows performance: My old DeskStar scored 459 in SR Office DriveMark 2002 459 and 442 in the High-End. The WD scores 403 and only 314 in the High-End test... The testbed is changed, but still... And espicially, photo and video editing is some of the testapplications...

The tough thing is to find out how much this mean in the real world... Prefeable before buying...

Anyone who have tried PhotoShop and/or Pinnacle/Premiere with 2,5" drive?

Thanks.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:49 am

"My old DeskStar scored 459 in SR Office DriveMark 2002 459 and 442 in the High-End."

Instead of using old Testbed 3 results I'd try to convert them to Testbed 4. Of course it's only an appriximation. I'll take the TB3 results for both 7K250 (250GB variant) and 7K400 because they are both based on 83GB/platter, have the same 8MB cache, and real-world performance quite close to each other (according to TB3 results). Higher capacity offers some "short-stroking" effect for 7K400, thus giving a modest amount of performance even with the same platters, seek time, cache amount and caching algorithms.

The TB3 results are here.

There's a modest 3% increase in SR Office Drivemark and a 1% increase in SR High-End Drivemark. So 7K400 and 7K250 are pretty darn close to each other in performance when using TB3. If we assume the same applied to TB4, we could directly compare 7K400 against WD1600BEVS.

Because we are talking about 160GB 7K250 variant instead of 7K400, we should take this into account in comparing them. 250GB 7K250 has slightly lower performance than 7K400, and [o]150GB[/o] 160GB 7K250 has slightly lower performance than 250GB 7K250. So, use 7K400 scores and multiply them by 0.9 (i.e reduce 10% off the score) and you'll probably have a rough guesstimate on performance of your current 160GB 7K250 would be in TB3.

Office: 690*0.9 =621
High-End: 524*0.9 =471.6

Both values are noticeably higher than using TB3 results without attempting conversion. Scores are noticeably higher than on WD's 5400rpm notebook drives. But that's pretty much what we could have expected... notebook and low-rpm. Not to mention WD's notebook drives have bad performance:
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr

5K160 is among the best 5400rpm performers. In 7200rpm category, there's the good-old 7K100 and new Momentus 7200.2. 7200.2 is slightly better in most benchmarks but surprizingly in some real-world applications (certain games) 7200.2 fall behind of most 5400rpm drives, unlike 7K100 which performance is good all around.

Of course your reason for going to a notebook drive isn't performance but silence it provides. We should remember though, that if you use 7K250 as a source/destination and WD 2.5" as destination/source, it's that WD that will bottleneck your transfer, not your old HDD. That of course assumes, it's not your CPU that bottlenecks... It all depends how CPU-heavy the applications are in relation to file size you'll be handling. I have no experience on editing big files.

Edit1: 160GB 7K250... there's no 150GB variant. That was a typo.
Edit2: [o][/o] (for overstrike/strikethrough) didn't work.

stevenkelby · Post by **stevenkelby** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:18 am

Sorry to but in, but this is a very educational thread, thanks, and I have a question. I have a 500GB HD501LJ suspended in a scythe quiet drive as my only hard disk. Would adding a WD1200BEVS improve the performance of anything?

I don't need the memory space, have plenty of external storage, only looking for a silent performance increase. I would incase the drive in foam rubber and suspend it.

Really I have 3 questions, will it make video conversion faster if I use the 2 hard drives?

Is the WD1200BEVS a good choice for this application, or would another drive suit better. Doesn't have to be 2.5, just quiet. I like the WD1200BEVS because it's only $100 AUD and quiet, but can afford whatever is best.

How would I set up the 2 drives for best performance? I guess thats really a question for when I am ready to set them up, not now. I've read a fair bit and understand that RAID 0 is best for performance, but then you need 2 identical drives, right? In my case would that mean 3 drives, 2 in RAID 0 for OS and 1 for storage or something?

Anyway, can you tell me what to buy for best performance without needing the capacity of another HD501LJ? Or should I get another HD501LJ and use them in raid 0? Is that possible, I thought the OS couldn't be on a RAID 0 set up?

Sorry for all the stupid questions!

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:15 am

Hi whiic. Wow, I'm impressed...

Thanks a lot.

whiic wrote:.....and you'll probably have a rough guesstimate on performance of your current 160GB 7K250 would be in TB3.

If I get this right, there's a typo here: When multiplying with 0,9, I should have data pretty close to what it would have been on TB4? Since my ol'n'trusty 160 gigger originally was tested on TB3... or have I mixed it up?

Anyway, the WD1600BEVS is out of the equation now...

If I go the notebook-hdd route, it'll be 5K160... And of course you're right, I'm not considering 2,5" for performance... And I'm very much in doubt if I'm willing to sacrifice performance for the last few db's...

In my current setup (see signature), CPU is part of the bottleneck. However, if I've edited let's say a video of 5 minutes total, and then generate the final DVD output, it'll take approx. 5 minutes converting. If I on the other hand make a 1 hour video, and then generate DVD... it'll take approx. 3 hours. In this case I'm very much under the impression that it's the problem with 2 big files on one physical drive... Source 14 gig, destination ends up in several usual DVD files of 7-800 meg or so...

I'm tired of Pinnacle, but I need a new processor in order to use Premiere, and probably I'll upgrade the CPU also.

Looking on STR's for 3,5" versus 2,5", I'm not THAT concerned about performance - they are close enough for me. Besides, I dont care much if it takes 30 or 60 minutes to generate the final output, but 3 hours is too much.

No, I'm more concerned about performance in every day tasks, and especially Photoshop and Pinnacle/Premiere and the likes... Regarding games, I dont mind installing them on 3,5" secondary Hitachi, and then have the performance during gaming. During a game, I dont mind sacrifice some quietness...

Maybe I can lay my hands on a laptop, and install PhotoShop - of course it's not the same as a desktop with a 2,5" disk, but if I can live with the laptop performance in Photoshop...

Another route might be finding a cheaper edition of the 5K160 - the 40 gigger is pretty cheap - is this a single platter edition of the 160 gig edition? If so, performance should be the same... If it's a cheaper version, I'm more willing to experiment... And eventually ditch the 2,5", if performance is too poor.

Hmmm. I dont get those Hitachi's... yet.

From StorageReview:

Hitachi Travelstar 5K160
5400 RPM
ATA-100 (SATA also available)
80 GB/platter
11 millisecond seek time
8-megabyte buffer
Available in (GB): 160, 120, 80, 60, 40

How the heck can they make 40 and 60 GB versions, with 80 GB/platter... Sounds pretty much like the 40/60 editions dont use 80 GB/platter... 80GB sounds like a singleplatter 80GB/Platter, and 160 like a 2 platter edition... But 120/60/40???

Looking into the datasheets from Hitachi, it seems like all models have 80 GB/Platters... http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... NAL_DS.pdf

When looking into the "Specification v1.1" sheet http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... spv1.1.pdf in "4.2 Data sheet", the 160 / 80 / 40 versions, all have same Recording/Track/Areal density. So, I tend to claim that the performance from the 40 GB is the same as the 160 GB? Except capasity, of course...

I hope I dont take too much of your time

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 2:46 pm

"If I get this right, there's a typo here: When multiplying with 0,9, I should have data pretty close to what it would have been on TB4? Since my ol'n'trusty 160 gigger originally was tested on TB3... or have I mixed it up?"

Yes, that was a typo. Should be TB4 / short-circuit in my brain.

What's your CPU utilization percentage while encoding video? Hit CRTL+ALT+DEL to pop-up taskmgr.exe and activate Performance tab. You should see CPU utilization from there. It keeps a short log of previous utilization values (decreasing refresh ratio will make the back log longer). If it spends most of the time at (or very close to) 100% improving your storage won't do any good.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:29 am

Good point !

I'm familiar with task manager, no problem here... Just havent thought of chekcing where the bottleneck is...

I'm in the process of selling some stuff, and after that I know the budget for upgrading my machine. I hope I'll find a buyer soon...

Meanwhile, I'll check wichever the CPU is the bottleneck or not for video editing... I've already checked PhotoShop, and during several operations the CPU is the bottleneck.

Regardless if I can find finacial for mobo+RAM+CPU, I'm still in a need for a HDD for external backup, which soon will be bought.

Looking for GB pr. money, it's an easy choise: 250 GB T7K500. This also happens to be one of the fastet (not interested in Raptor or similar...)

But since my current 160 GB is sufficient for my backup purposes, I might as well buy a new and more quiet disk for my desktop. Later, I can decide whichever I'm in the need for a dual disk setup.

Momentus 7200.2 is out of my budget, and it's not THAT much faster than 7K100.

So I'm looking at the 7K100 80 GB and 5K160, also 80 GB. Both S-ATA. 7K100 which is 50% more expensive, than the 5K160. According to SR, noise is very, very close.

7K100 is quite close to 7K400 (when multiplying with 0,9), and in SR High End, it's even faster than 7K400. Even 5K160 is pretty close to 7K400 in SR High End...

Noisewise, I THINK 5K160 has a more pleasant sound, due to lower RPM's...

I think I'll give either 7K100 80 GB or 5K160 80 GB a try...

But a question remains: Am I correct, when I assume the 80 GB versions, are as fast as their bigger brothers and sisters, which are tested by SR?

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:39 am

A few more thoughts: WHat's quitest, a reasonably quiet 3,5" in a Scythe Quiet Drive or a reasonably quiet 2,5" disk without Scythe Quiet Drive?

Does Hitachi 7K100 and 5K160 supports APM, so they can be set to automatic enter standby mode, if not accessed for like 10 minutes?

Thanks.

Thomas

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 2:50 am

"Am I correct, when I assume the 80 GB versions, are as fast as their bigger brothers and sisters, which are tested by SR?"

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the platters used. Lower capacity drives can be made using short-stroking or lower capacity platters. Former doesn't cause any performance decrease but latter means lower STR and some reduction in real-life application performance too (because average seek distances will increase slightly).

"Does Hitachi 7K100 and 5K160 supports APM, so they can be set to automatic enter standby mode, if not accessed for like 10 minutes?"

I don't think they support APM. But they do support ABLE (Adaptive Battery Life Extender or whatever it's called) which does pretty much the same thing. As far as I know, it's not customizable but it's enabled by default.

APM maximum power saving modes:
unload: 2 min
low-rpm: 10 min
(You can use less drastic power saving if you want, but I use the maximum saving on my Hitachis. Of course the HDD need to be perfectly idle to have any power saving.)

ABLE power saving:
unload: variable on use pattern, only a few seconds
low-rpm: probably no supported

STAND-BY mode is not part of APM. I'm not sure if it's part of ABLE. You can enable STAND-BY mode (=complete spindown of platters) for 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs, whether they support APM or not.

If you want to use laptop HDD as part of your system, make the laptop drive the one you install your system on, so that non-laptop drives can spin down (STAND-BY mode). Installing OS on 3.5" drive with laptop drive spinning down when not used is quite a non-brainer. You can't hear that 2.5" even if it was spinning 24/7. 3.5" will mask the laptop HDD noise. (That is, as long as you don't use a 12GN which is probably one of the noisiest laptop HDDs you can imagine... and beyond. 12GN cannot be masked by modern FDB drive noise. Maybe 15krpm SCSI...)

So, if you later go for 7K100, I'd suggest you clone T7K500 contents over to 7K100 and set T7K500 to maximum power saving mode. (Low-rpm mode should be almost as quiet as complete spindown.)

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 12:24 am

Thanks Whiic. I've learned a lot from your input, and I appreciate it very much

I'm really tired of Pinnacle, and Premiere require an instruction set (SSE2), which my current processor dont support

I also checked CPU load last night, and during encoding, it hits the ceiling

There's also CPU load problems in PhotoShop. So it's pretty sure I'll upgrade, but I'll have to wait with final budget decisions for a month or so

However, backup is mandatory to me, and I'm more and more leaning towards trying out a 2,5" disk and use the current 160 GB for external backup. My external HDD box arrived yesterday.

5K160 or 7K100? I'll dig into the datasheets, and also consider price and speed.

Thanks for getting me on the track, very nice

Thomas