On Mon, 31 Jan 2000 22:55:16 +0100, "Gøsta Thommesen" wrote:

>Could anyone please explain the use of raid technology. The only thing I
>remember to have heard, is that it could be used to mirror disks as a
>security measure. However, it is mentioned in this NG, as sw raid, hw raid,
>video raid, fast track raid and so on in connection with dv editing -
>possibly on SCSI disks only? Is this perhaps a way of making more than one
>disk behave like one?
>
>I am about to by a new Dell PC with to disks, one of them a 36Gb SCSI with
>160Mb (Mbit?) transfer rate (very latest SCSI technology) - for use with the
>DV500. Is the raid technology of interest to me, if the other disk is also
>a SCSI disk mostly intended for Windows2000 and other applications?

(See David Winter's post below for info on RAID...)
If you are doing nothing but mini-DV and are using recent
UDMA drives (with dedicated program and video drives), and
if you attend to keeping the video drives defragmented
(best done by using care in removing/adding material
during projects, or by moving files between drives to
"clean" the drives, rather than by using the defragmention
utility...), then there is little need for RAID. With
excellent IBM (and others) 5400rpm IDE drives up around
37-gigs, one heck of a lot of recorded video footage can
be stored on 2-3 of these for relatively modest cost...