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.

SPECIAL BONUS QUESTIONS!!!

*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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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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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?

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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