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Firewire Storage, Now SATA storage
Hi –
I wanted to start a new thread on SATA storage, and get rid of the Firewire discussion for now.Jeremy’s discription is unfortunately accurate, and Harley’s description is very innacurate –
Harley states –
First off, I have yet to see a RAID stop working due to a SATA cable coming loose. Normally, if the SATA RAID shows up on the desktop, you’re good to go.If by chance it doesn’t show up, go into the Apple RAID disk utility and you’ll quickly see which drive is missing and therefore which cable connection is the problem (you do have your cables and ports numbered, don’t you?). There is no need for restarts or powering down, from what I understand SATA and e-SATA connections can be changed hot. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
REPLY –
I have experience with Highpoint, Initio, Firmtek and Sonnet SATA host controller cards. The highest performance card today is the Sonnet Tempo series, and their 8 port card is the eSATA model with the eSATA connectors.
If Harley wants to see a RAID stop working due to a SATA cable coming loose, then he should try the Sonnet Tempo X eSATA 8 port card. No one would be discussing this issue if it were not for the ability of the Sonnet to do UNCOMPRESSED 10 bit HD with 8 SATA drives, at a price point lower than any other product on the market. This is the product that companies like ProMax provides (and demonstrated at NAB2005). If you have an AJA Kona HD or Blackmagic HD card, and want to to 10 bit uncompressed HD, the Sonnet (and Highpoint) are the 2 cheapest ways to do it, using EIGHT SATA drives, all stripped togeher as RAID 0. However, once one of the eSATA cables wiggles loose from the back of the Sonnet, your RAID does not mount, and does not appear. Because you are not using EIGHT SEPERATE DRIVES, but are creating a RAID, the individual drive will not show up as missing in the Apple Disk Utility, and because SATA drives DO NOT have drive activity lights on them, you can’t see which one is not flashing away, so you have NO IDEA of which drive has not mounted. You can OPEN UP YOUR MAC G5, and observe the port LED’s on the Sonnet, but that is a pain in the butt. When building one of these systems, I usually first get all 8 drives to mount seperately, making sure that all the cables are seated properly, and I CAN use Apple Disk Utility to see all 8 drives, AND THEN, I will go back and create the RAID (once I have the confidence that all 8 ports are up).The Highpoint Rocket Raid 1820A card uses INTERNAL CONNECTORS for the SATA connections, so to get all 8 drives hooked up (you can’t fit 8 drives inside a MAC G5), you must pass all 8 SATA cables thru an open slot in the back of your Macintosh. Once you do this, you have quite a mess of cables, and you can never move the computer again, until you unplug this cable mess. Your cabling is “permanently attached” to your MAC.
Now, Firmtek has very nice, OLD STYLE SATA 1 connectors on the back, that do not suffer this seating issue. This is the kind of stuff that G-Tech provides, etc. However, Firmtek only offers 2 port and 4 port cards, and you can’t get uncompressed HD to work with only 4 drives. You can use 2 Firmtek 4 port cards, but most people have no slots left to stick in the Kona 2, and 2 Firmtek 4 port cards. Either you have the larger AGP graphics card that eats up a slot, or you have a Firewire 800 card, or a Fibre Channel card, or something else in the G5, so the 2 SATA cards become impossible.
Remember, people put up with this crap because IT IS CHEAPER THAN SCSI OR FIBRE. If SATA wasn’t cheap, we would not be having this discussion. SATA outperforms Firewire 800, and certainly TWO SATA drives stripped as RAID zero, outperforms a single Firewire 800 drive. When money is not an issue, buying a nice HUGE Systems U320, Medea, or Apple Xserve RAID, or StorCase is teriffic. But money IS ALWAYS an issue, so you and I sit here and “suffer” a little with Firewire 800 and SATA.
Harley statements give you the impression that it is easy to diagnose SATA problems very quickly, using simple utiltiies like Apple Disk Utiltity.
This is not accurate information. Until Sonnet Firmware version 1.1 came out, the drives would not automount without a reboot. And sometimes, even with Firmware 1.2, I STILL have to occationally reboot to see the damn drives.I still continue to support Sonnet, as it’s easy to get 2-4 drives working, and for those who don’t have $12,000 for a HUGE U320-RX, I will still sit there and screw with the 8 port card (the corner ports are the tough ones to get working) to get all 8 drives mounted, and THEN I create the RAID, and then BEG my clients to NEVER move the computer, open it up, or put stress or tention on the SATA cables.
Bob Zelin
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31 Replies
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[Bob Zelin] ”
I still continue to support Sonnet, as it’s easy to get 2-4 drives working, and for those who don’t have $12,000 for a HUGE U320-RX, I will still sit there and screw with the 8 port card (the corner ports are the tough ones to get working) to get all 8 drives mounted, and THEN I create the RAID, and then BEG my clients to NEVER move the computer, open it up, or put stress or tention on the SATA cables.”Just as an FYI, the Medea FCR2X (Fibre Channel) is around $8k for 2TB and worth every penny. I’m going to be adding a second unit, probably the 3200 ($11k) by the first quarter of 2006.
Storage just simply isn’t the best place in a shop to save money if you’re working with hard deadlines. Medea costs more than creating a SATA RAID, but in 8 years of running their products, I’ve never missed a deadline due to a drive related failure.
Very good discussion points in your post Bob.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X
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I am with Walt on this one. I went with protected, fast fiber channel storage. I have nothing against SATA but the HUGE 4210 has been a nice product for me. It is peace of mind more than anything. This is the second unit from them and they have earned my loyalty, much in the same way Walter is loyal to medea (for very good reasons).
Great post bob!
David
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Bob,
Well said and exactly the “real truth” about SATA. Cheap cheap and cheap and you get what you don’t pay for.
I have experienced the pain of trying to find which drive is not mounting with the Sonnet card and disk utility is not the answer. I can’t see why Harley even mentioned this as a solution because this does not work.
The only solution is to go one by one to find out which drives are mounting.
Tony Salgado
Tony Salgado
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[tony salgado] “I can’t see why Harley even mentioned this as a solution because this does not work”
Not at the studio right now, but will post in the morning about tracing down the drive that hasn’t mounted through Disk Utility… I know it works because I’ve done it. If I was dreaming I’ll eat crow.
Best,
HarleyHarley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada -
Is the crow tasty there in SASK KA CHE WAN.? 🙂
david
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[David Battistella] “Is the crow tasty there in SASK KA CHE WAN.? :)”
Actually, don’t know how they are these days… most of them have West Nile Virus so everyone’s staying clear. 😉
Best,
HarleyHarley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada -
Just thought I’d throw something in from the other side…
I have tested the Sonnet eSATA card and Firmtek card *very* extensively, with both Sonnet’s “Fusion” drive enclosure and Firmtek’s drive enclosures. I connected four SATA 1 cables to the internal connectors of the Sonnet eSATA card and routed them out the back of my G5, connecting them to two Firmtek enclosures (the Firmteks hold two drives each). At the same time, I connected four SATA 2 cables coming off the external ports of the same Sonnet eSATA card to the Sonnet Fusion enclosure (which holds four drives). Eight drives total connected, using SATA 1 and SATA 2 cables at the same time.
I’ve swapped drives back and forth between the arrays, powered one array down and the other up, and vice-versa. I’ve done every anal over-the-top-I-have-no-life test variation you can think of, using Hitachi 250-gig drives, Hitachi 500-gig drives, and Seagate 250-gig drives — first in one set of enclosures, then swapped out in the other enclosures, shutting down the computer, powering up, keeping the enclosures powered down, then powered up, hot-swapping drives while everything is powered up, etc.
Some observations:
1. The eSATA connectors, to me, are *wonderful* compared to the standard SATA 1 connectors. They attach easier, with a reassuring “click”, and I haven’t had to bother with them at all. The SATA 1 connectors, by contrast, are a PIA to connect.
2. I have had ZERO problems regarding drives not showing up, in any combination, in any enclosure. I can power up the Sonnet or Firmtek RAIDs while the G5 is on, and they show up immediately. I’ve not had a system hang, or drives mysteriously disappearing due to loose cables. Maybe I’m lucky, and I truly regret that Bob is having issues. But these SATA raids are sailing along extremely smoothly, no matter how hard I try to trip them up with all this cross-drive, cross-enclosure, cross-cabling testing. And I’ve tried hard to trip them up.
3. Pricing out SATA solutions comes to around $1,200.00 / terabyte, which includes drives, enclosure, and SATA card if you put the pieces together yourself. Right now that sounds a *lot* better than two or three times that much with a SCSI or Xserve RAID solution. Granted, I’m talking Raid 0 formatting, so you have to figure in a backup solution too. In my case, I’ve built two 1-terabyte RAIDs. I’ve cloned them, so should one go down I’m immediately up and running with the other. I do a lot of location editing, and the Firmtek enclosures are the same size as the G-Raids (nice and small, easy transportable), but add the advantage of removable drives. The Sonnet Fusion also has removable drives.
Knocking on wood, grateful things are stable at the moment, but also thought another perspective might be useful…
Larry M
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Here’s a vote for SATA solutions, at least one that’s new enough not to be mentioned yet in this discussion…
I’ve been using a LaCIe S2S for a couple of weeks now. It’s 5 discs in an enclosure that has activity lights on the front, and comes with a four channel PCI-X adaptor, with the controller in the bottom of the array taking one so you can add three more arrays for more space/speed without adding a card. It is a SATA 2 device, and the throughput is fast enough for a stream of 10 bit HD uncompressed.
tjs
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Promax is really pushing their SATA raids and saying how stable they are, is this not true….
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Just wanted to add one comment to TJ’s post. The S2S features Port Multiplication. So while it is a 5 drive array, there is only 1 SATA II connector in the back (controller can still see/control each drive individually).
Mat
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