Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 224)

Types of Hard Disk Drives
Disk drive technologies have advanced quickly over recent years, making terabytes of
storage available at reasonable cost. When researching the type of hard disk storage
system appropriate for your needs, keep in mind the format and data rate of the video
you’re capturing. Depending on whether you work as an independent video editor or
collaborate with others, the amount of storage you require and the bit rate of data transfer
will be important factors to match up with your storage needs. Outlining all of the hard
disk storage technologies is beyond the scope of this documentation, but four common
choices include:
• ATA
• FireWire
• SCSI
• RAID and Fibre Channel
ATA Disk Drives
There are two kinds of ATA disks:
• Parallel (Ultra) ATA disks: These are found in Power Mac G4 computers.
• Serial ATA disks: These come with Power Mac G5 computers.
ATA disks do not offer as high a level of performance as LVD or Ultra160 SCSI disks. If you
plan to use Ultra ATA disks, make sure that:
• The sustained transfer speed is 8 MB/sec. or faster
• The average seek time is below 9 ms
• The spindle speed is at least 5400 rpm, although 7200 rpm is better
Parallel (Ultra) ATA Disks
Many editors use parallel ATA (PATA) disks (also called Ultra DMA, Ultra EIDE, and
ATA-33/66/100/133) with DV equipment. Parallel ATA disks are disks that you install
internally. Because imported DV material has a fixed data rate of approximately 3.6 MB/sec.,
high-performance parallel ATA disks typically can capture and output these streams
without difficulty. The numbers following the ATA designation indicate the maximum
data transfer rate possible for the ATA interface, not the disk drive itself. For example, an
ATA-100 interface can theoretically handle 100 MB/sec., but most disk drives do not spin
fast enough to reach this limit.
224 Chapter 13 Determining Your Hard Disk Storage Options