I’m looking to see what’s the best storage setup for Video Editing (I'm in the process of researching what I need to build a video editing PC -- I have a decent idea on CPU, GPU, PSU, MB, RAM, etc.). When video editing, different source files will be read in and then cut-and-pasted and then a new file will be rendered. I’ll be rendering as the original source footage quality.

Questions:
1. Is the storage a bottleneck during rendering?
2. Where do you render the new file (which requires a codec)? Should it go to an SSD and then the rendered file is copied to your HD later (after rendering)? Or should it go directly to its final storage place – e.g.. 10000 RPM HD? Should the ‘rendering’ area be at least 100GB of free space with 60GB contiguous?
2a. What ports to external storage (HDs) - 6 Gb/sec SATA port?
2b. When an SSD is connected, what is the port that's used?
3. What is the best setup – where should Win 7, CyberDirector, your ‘source’ video files, and the rendering area be in terms of a setup with SSDs and/or HDs?
4. Should RAID configuration be used?
5. Should the audio and video sources (and rendered results) be separated into separate files and put onto different HDs?
6. What do you usually store the raw footage on to ensure that it’s around for a while (e.g. hard drive failures, etc.) – do you put MTS files onto DVDs?
7. How often do you defrag source files?

Thanks,
Bill