[Kristoff]

Ok, I am just getting in to DV.
I got my Sony handy cam, my dual 800 with superdrive, and now I realize just how slow hard disks are. I mean, I always knew that was by far the worst bottle neck in a computer, but until you start messing around with files that are over 10 GB, you don't really appreciate just how slow they are.
So, under 10.1, what are the IDE RAID options available that would allow better throughput? Would I be able to buy an exact duplicate of my 80 GB drive and do a RAID 0? would it be smart to keep the OS on a separate (third) 10GB drive, and use the dual 80 GB drives as a RAID 0 setup for my DV files?

[scottiB]

Kristoff,

What are you doing that you feel the drives are slow? The drives on the G4 should br more than adequate for handling DV in iMovie and Final Cut Pro.

I use an iMac 400 with an external Maxtor 80GB FW drive, which runs only at 5400 RPM, and it performs well.

What you'd want to do is keep all system and apps on one drive and have a second drive just for DV files and projects.

My girlfriend has a dual-800 and we added a second, slave, IDE drive for her FCP and Premiere projects.

[Kristoff]

When I click "Export to iDVD" from iMovie, it takes like 12 minutes to write a 7 minute clip to the disk.
I figure if I do a RAID0 array, I could cut that time in half if not more.
The CPUs are not even 30% used at this point. The hard drive is just grinding away.

If the source material is on the same disk as the destination you're gonna get lots of thrashing. The poor disk heads are constatntly jumping back and forth. A second disk would certainly speed things up a lot.

[scottiB]

Following nubits, I'd add a slave IDE drive to yours, use that for iMovie, then export the iDVD file to the master. See how that picks up speed.

Check out http://www.2-pop.com . It has plenty o' info on stuff like this.

[Kristoff]

Thanks guys.