Setup for 2 HDD's

[Art Vandelay]

With DVD-RB and 2 SATA HDD. How do you set the source, work, output folders.

Source Drive 1
Work Drive 1
Output Drive 2

Or

Source drive 1
Work drive 2
Output drive 1

[UncasMS]

always across the drives reading from one drive writing to another outputting to third/first drive

[jdobbs]

I'd suggest:

Source: 1
Working: 2
Output: 2

1. The PREPARE phase reads from SOURCE and writes to WORKING
2. The ENCODE phase reads from SOURCE and writes to WORKING
3. The REBUILD phase reads from SOURCE and WORKING and writes to OUTPUT.

A little reading from working occurs in step 2 -- but nothing significant.

[ipaulo]

Let me see if I got this right. DVDRB is in drive C along with ripped files from ripping program. Make working folder and output folder in drive D. Is this correct? As of now I have the working folder in drive C and the output folder in drive D. Thanks

[jdobbs]

I'd put both working and output on drive D: and keep the source on drive C:

The way you have it now, the read/write head on drive C: is having to move a lot during PREPARE and ENCODE between the SOURCE location and the WORKING location -- and ENCODE is where the program spends most of its time. Head movement is the slowest function of a hard drive.

Also, make sure the D: drive is kept defragmented and never gets within 10-15% of full -- that can make a huge difference in speed.

By the way -- we're talking about two physical drives, right? If they are logical drives (partitions) you won't get as much of a speed increase (because the drives share the same read/write head).

[ipaulo]

Thank you jdobbs, for the explanation. Yes, these are two seperate drives, drive D is a slave and strictly for storage.

[Art Vandelay]

@UncasMS,

I thought your setup was the best way:

Source files: HD1
Work Files: HD2
Output Files: HD1

but jdobbs, says that

1. The PREPARE phase reads from SOURCE and writes to WORKING
2. The ENCODE phase reads from SOURCE and writes to WORKING
3. The REBUILD phase reads from SOURCE and WORKING and writes to OUTPUT.

A little reading from working occurs in step 2 -- but nothing significant.

he belives that the output should go to the same drive as the work folder.

Would you change your paths, assuming you don't have a 3rd HDD. Would you keep HDD1 for the output or go with HDD2?

Thanks,

[UncasMS]

i tend to work across the drives whenever i can

in case i'd have 2 drives i'd go from:

1 => 2 => 1
or
2 => 1 => 2

the work folder contains the not yet rebuilt data and thus i personally like to have them rebuild to another physical drive because a great dreal of data movement is involved here

[techreactor]

logically thinking for 2 disks wouldnt it be better like this

Disk 1 - source DVD + Temp folder
Disk 2 - Destination folder

the Prepare phase uses lots of disk activity but the duration is short, which is fine for keeping both folders on disk 1

The encode phase does not use much disk activity so it doesnt matter, but anyways its reading/Writing to Disk1

The Rebuild phase phase is most disk hungry amongst them, and needs to read from both Source and Temp folder and write to the destinations folder. Therefore disk1 is where we do all the reading from and Disk 2 is where we do all the writing to.

If the disk has to read and write simultaneously on a disk, it degrades its performance so each one is made to do either read or a write for the most disk tedious task.

[jdobbs]

No. The only time the destination folder is used is during REBUILD. That only takes about 15 minutes. So even if it cut the time in half (which it won't), the most you could save is 7.5 minutes.

You have to concentrate on the ENCODE phase -- which is where DVD-RB spends 90%+ of its time. As I said before, you need to limit head movement, and you need to do it at the point that can most effectively improve your times.

[Chewy]

I would think it was a question of bottlenecks, on some systems the encode
phase takes so long, disk I/O is not going to slow it down, however as Uncasms points out reading from one hard drive and writting to another will result in less thrashing of the disks. In low ram situations you have to consider what's the swap file doing during all this.

[jdobbs]

True, lot's of factors. I can really notice the difference when my drive gets fragmented. I can hear it thrashing around and I know I need to defrag...

[techreactor]

You have to concentrate on the ENCODE phase -- which is where DVD-RB spends 90%+ of its time. As I said before, you need to limit head movement, and you need to do it at the point that can most effectively improve your times.

I agree and had given it a thought but since the HDD activity during the encode is less as compared HDD activity during Prepare and rebuild phase I was concentrating more on the bottlenecks.

Also most of the people do not defrag after ripping the DVD, so probably a defrag after the rip and prepare phase might help, but one needs to look at the time saved in DVD-RB Vs the defrag time, depends totally on their disk condition.