Building a DV capture/render EIDE RAID. I have a budget for 3 80GB drives, and was wondering which brand to go with. I'm not up to snuff enough on my tech to know what would be most beneficial for a video RAID: Seagate's superior sustained read/write transfers, or the Western Digital Caviar Special Edition's 8MB buffers. Does being in a RAID affect the drive logic's use of its cache? ATA/133 may be a marketing gimmick, but maybe Maxtor is somehow best suited for RAID?

Each drive will get its own channel on an Abit IT7's onboard HPT374 EIDE RAID controller, btw.

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*Best striping size for the intended purpose/configuration?

*The system (OS) drive will be on a separate, single EIDE drive. Best drive in THAT situation (60-80GB range)?

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WD all the way.

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Hmm, I have a RAID 0 w/ 2 D740X's, and I get some sick results- over 80MB/S sustained transfer rate. The D740x's are really nice on a raid. I know they are also very reliable.

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Best by far would be the special edition drives from Western Digital, but they cost a bit more. Second choice would be the Maxtors. But whatever you do stay away from the Seagate Barracuda IVs in a RAID array, they have known problems when used in RAID!!

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They do? What sorts of problems? I built a computer for my parents with a Seagate RAID, and it seems to function. I was thinking that perhaps the Special Edition's fat cache might outweigh the Barracuda’s higher sustained transfer rate in a RAID. Any opinions on that?

And they aren't that much more... 10 extra dollars per drive in an array that's already going to cost ~$350 would be well worth it if there were a definite performance advantage.

Which drive would you recommend for the stand-alone system drive? Why?

I would say WD special Edition.

The Barracuda IVs have notorious slow speeds when in RAID setups, not much faster then a single drive. Other Seagates seem ok, and they may have fixed this bug but I have not heard about it if they did. Either way the Western Digitals would be the best choice IMHO....

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