(a good) laptop/RAID question.

[continuity-B]

I'm about to spend just under £1000 on a laptop (with RAID controller) which will be used only for Resolume, plus maybe Premier, AE and flash for occasional mobile content creation.

The spec of the machine (which is customisable) will be such that I imagine the limiting factor for Resolume performance will be the discs.

So...

P4 2.8 1024kb, 800FSB
256MB DDR 400 (will upgrade later)
2x 'X'GB 7200rpm

Will I get better performance if i install Resolume et al on one drive leaving the other solely for my clips (like I do with my desktop)

or...

Will i get better performance with RAID-ing the drive (much faster data transfer in theory BUT Resolume and my clips will effectively be on the same drive)? Plus the greater chance of drive failure (literarily double).

To summarise - In a laptop with two RAIDable drives, is it faster to raid?

If so, is the performance increase worth it safety wise?

If it matters I'll be using QT-MJPEG-A at 320x240 (maybe higher).

Any answers?

Thanks
Continuity-B

[continuity-B]

BECAUSE..... (forgot to say) it will cost me more to get 2x 'X' MB7200rpms needed to RAID, when I only need one really fast one for my clips if I do not RAID.

[MtB]

in theory raid gives you a better data throughput put, i assume that you are using microsoft windows os familiy, os also need diskread and write. so it is better to keep them separate.

think about buying a 1394b control card and a 1394b compatible external hard disk box so you can achive a speed like 800Mbits per second in theory. also you can daisy chain (aah good old scsi days ) the drives if you need more storage, you can even stripe them bla bla...

best part is, you can plug any size of harddrive to that sort of boxes.

also, one system disk sata and 1 7200rpm disk, if you can find sata will give you enough performance I guess...

bw

[Edited on 17-3-2005 by MtB]