User guide

10
Chapter 2, Preparing Your System
The following diagram provides an example of an improper EIDE device
configuration.
Storage information on our web site
Most hard drives and controller cards manufactured in the past year should be
suitable for use in your Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme system. For more information
on storage recommendations, and a list of any devices we’ve found to be
unsuitable for use with RT.X100 Xtreme, see the RT.X Support section of our
web site at www.matrox.com/videoweb/support.
Using ATA RAID controllers
If you are using an ATA RAID controller to create a striped volume consisting of
two or more drives, the volume can be used for both the A/V and export drives.
Please refer to your RAID controller’s documentation for information on how to
create and configure striped volumes.
¡ImportantIf you are using an ATA/133 RAID controller, make sure that you
stripe your EIDE drives using Windows Disk Management. Failure to do so may
result in erratic behavior of your RT.X100 Xtreme system.
Use the NTFS file system
Your A/V drives must be formatted using NTFS for use with Matrox RT.X100
Xtreme because NTFS overcomes FAT32 file size limitations. When a hard drive
is formatted using FAT32, files saved to this drive cannot exceed 4 gigabytes in
size. This translates to approximately 20 minutes of DV video, which poses a
serious limitation to a nonlinear editing platform like your Matrox RT.X100
Xtreme system.
With NTFS, you also have the option of creating a striped volume, which consists
of multiple hard drives formatted as a single partition. This allows you to work
with multiple drives as a single large drive, which offers more disk space and
enhances hard drive performance. NTFS also provides better audio and video
synchronization than FAT32 when you play back your clips.