2 HDD's + fraps = better performance?

[Rodpad]

It's great isn't it?

Make sure you install http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

That's unanimously the best codec in conjunction with Dxtory.

[Mythricia]

Frapsing to a 2nd HDD should offer significant improvements in recording performance, and more stable recording as well.

The problem with HDD's is not the write/read speeds, it's the fact they cannot physically do 2 things at the same time. They have to physically move between areas on the disk. So if you are Frapsing to the disk, which is a demanding task, and the system tries to read/write something else at the same time, which it will often do, then the disk has to move around and do stuff frantically. The buffer kicks in and tries to mitigate this, but really, at the data rates Fraps recording requires, the buffer will just stop mattering.

On the other hand if you record to a separate HDD, it can focus on saving the footage and doesn't have to frantically swap around trying to do 2 things at once.

An SSD can do multiple things at any one time, which is a large part of why they're so fast - not so much their read/write speeds.

[DeltrusDisc]

Best results - game on one drive, Frapsing on another, it needs to be a 7200RPM HDD though, otherwise there can be issues.

I personally have my games installed on an SSD, Fraps writes to a 7200RPM HDD, and then my rendering/compressing later on writes to yet another HDD, which is 5900RPM.

The more things dedicated to each task, the more streamlined your computing experience will be.

[Mythricia]

Best results - game on one drive, Frapsing on another, it needs to be a 7200RPM HDD though, otherwise there can be issues.

I personally have my games installed on an SSD, Fraps writes to a 7200RPM HDD, and then my rendering/compressing later on writes to yet another HDD, which is 5900RPM.

The more things dedicated to each task, the more streamlined your computing experience will be.

Truth. Although SSD's should work fine while rendering from / to the same disk, most of the bottleneck is the CPU anyway when transcoding. But yeah generally, having several drives is beneficial in a lot of ways if you do video work.

Rendering to/from the same HDD is a recipe for hysterical disk trashing, for instance...

[DeltrusDisc]

You should never be frapsing/rendering TO an SSD.... that's just asking for the SSD to die soon. They have very limited writes.

Plus 16GB of RAM and an OC'd i5-2500K helps a bit. ;p

[Mythricia]

I've used the same 60gb SSD as main system drive for over 3 years now, and I move very large amounts of data on it daily. And by that I mean many gigabytes of raw image files (I'm a photographer), and also quite often I do video rendering/processing running from the SSD, since, well, I have an SSD for speed, so that's what I use it for. It's still perfectly healthy. Which admittedly sort of surprises me - 60gb doesn't leave a lot of room for "spare" sectors, and it's a cheap Corsair Nova, so it's not top of the line and never was.

So that's honestly a bit of a myth - for most people an SSD will outstay their welcome, so to speak. Sure an SSD will fail a lot faster than a HDD - but a HDD can live for 10 years. Ditto with my Games drive, probably moves a pretty large amount of data what with Steam downloads and such, and it still works great.

I'm not saying one shouldn't try to avoid unnecessary bashing of an SSD, especially with writes, but if you can't use it for it's speed then there's no real point in it, is there

Safe to use SSD's heavily, as long as it's not just reckless write-benchmarking 24/7 or something like that.

[Deleted]

You should never be frapsing/rendering TO an SSD.... that's just asking for the SSD to die soon. They have very limited writes.

Plus 16GB of RAM and an OC'd i5-2500K helps a bit. ;p

SSDs don't have "very limited writes", they have somewhat limited cycles. I have seen an SSD (and not that new either, Intel X25) that has been used as the OS drive (continuosly reading and writing) for a system that has been on for over 1,5 years, over 13000 hours, and it still isn't near its cycle limit.

[DeltrusDisc]

SSDs don't have "very limited writes", they have somewhat limited cycles. I have seen an SSD (and not that new either, Intel X25) that has been used as the OS drive (continuosly reading and writing) for a system that has been on for over 1,5 years, over 13000 hours, and it still isn't near its cycle limit.

Uhhh... last I checked there are write cycles and read cycles.... Also being used as just the OS drive and having the computer constantly on for 1.5 years is actually less writing than turning it on and off all the time. Sooooo, your point is null and void.

[Xuvial]

What the hell is a read cycle?

[DeltrusDisc]

What the hell is a read cycle?

Now that I think about it I don't even know anymore. /gives up

Writing to an SSD is still, regardless, the surest way to kill it, especially using it to write to with Fraps, of all things!

[mojo6912]

Few things I would like to chime in on here.

Yes you should record to a separate HD.

Caviar Blacks are great read speed but not the best write. I have a couple in raid0 as well as a couple SSD in raid0. I wish I would have bought a couple Barracudas with the 1TB platters or a couple spinpoint f3's. I think they have faster writes.

Dxtory is less intensive on your system than fraps. Fraps has this vsync issue where it will lock your fps if it dips too low. With Dxtory you can adjust quality settings. At max setting it looks as good as fraps but the file sizes are WAY bigger. I would even say double size. But you can lower the quality and the sizes get smaller. If you had 2 clips same length and size the fraps would look a little better but not by too much. Dxtory also seems to be able to play and record on the same HD MUCH easier than fraps can.

[Raphtheone]

A separate HDD is the biggest performance/price hardware upgrade you can do when frapsing. A stronger CPU would be the second biggest upgrade, but a 2,8Ghz Ahtlon II x4 (620) is enough to raid 10-man in WoW and record full 1080p HD, at max graphical settings in-game (one or two CPU intensive things turned down though). Proof is found in my youtube channel. I haven't done any WoW footage since I upgraded the (PoS ^^) CPU. Dragon Soul is recorded with a 560Ti, anything prior with a 240GT, graphical settings set accordingly ("min" -> "max"). I wouldn't recommend an Athlon 620 + 240GT on 1920x1080 when frapsing, however. But even with that hardware, a second HDD would be the biggest upgrade/price.

There's no point in frapsing to an SSD (which has been said in this thread already), if you have an alternative. There's no great harm in doing it, if all you have is an SSD. I personally wouldn't do it though. Just the thought makes me cringe.

And what's this talk about 7,2k RPM drives and general displeasure about write speeds on certain HDD's? 2 minutes of FRAPS footage (for me, probably has to be noted) is 4gb. That's 1gb every 30 seconds, or roughly 34Mb/s. Any drive in existence can handle 34Mb/s, assuming it's not broken. My 10 year old system drive can handle that (close call, but still!).

The HDD doesn't have to be of Caviar Black / F3 class, or even a 7,2k RPM. It can be a low RPM green labeled, cheapest piece of junk you can find, and you'll still have enough performance to run laps around what FRAPS requires. My old Fraps drive died (or well, causing immense 30+ sec computer freezes when tasked with a heavy workload, but works fine outside that), and I just installed its replacement. It's a Barracuda Green 5,9k RPM. They don't even make those anymore. The line's discontinued. Seagate said that the performance hit the green line took wasn't worth it. I bought one anyway. Maybe not the best tool to use for a mechanical drive, but out of sheer convenience, AS SSD Benchmark reports a 127,74Mb/s Sequential Write. It is many times faster than what Fraps will *ever* throw at it.

With all said and done, you CAN successfully fraps to the same drive as your system/WoW installation. I've done so myself. Back in vanilla. Once I went dual-HDD's, I never looked back. Same with when I got an SSD for my game installs. I would put those two in direct comparison, the difference in performance is that big.

Even taking a 2,5" from your old laptop and voodoo-link it to your gaming computer and using THAT as a fraps drive is highly recommended over the alternative of using one HDD for everything. Honestly.