-
Aja Io with G-RAID
I am planning to use AJA Io along with the G-Raid in a new G5. Is there a performance issue regarding both using a firewire port? I know that the G-RAID uses the Firewire 800 and the AJA Io the firewire 400, but I read somewhere that you can
-
5 Replies
-
That is correct! You can’t use both on the same firewire bus. The AJA sucks up a majority of the bandwidth of the system’s firewire bus, leaving little to no room for the G-Raid. You need to purchase a separate firewire card.
The one you get from G-Technologies is a good one. We have two, one for our new G5 and one for our old dual-mirror G4 and they work great. Superior performance!Bugsy
-
I hate to contradict such a definitive-sounding post — which I agreed with up until recently.
I have been able to function using AJA IO on FW400 port [front or back] and a Lacie FW800 drive connected to the native FW800 port of my G5 2gh dual without any problems working in either DV or 8-bit UC. I use a Keyspan serial to USB converter for deck control instead of FW [default], so maybe that makes a difference, I don’t know.
The only issue I have had is when the FW drive gets more than 3/5 full, the performance declines and I will get dropped frames occasionally.
Another workaround to open up your throughput is to stripe 2 FW800 drives together, connect one 800 cable to one drive and the other end to the G5 FW800 native port, connect another FW800 cable between the two drives, and another from drive #2 to a PCI FW800 card. I might be mistaken on the connection between the two drives — it’s been about a year since I did the original test.
Nonetheless, I was able to bench some pretty fast numbers and had 10-bit UC working without a hitch, strictly as a test. Again, I cannot vouch for performance issue once the striped drives got full.
Also, in case you didn’t know, be sure to erase and reformat your G-Raid or any other FW drive into Apple HFS+ via Disk Utility the moment you take it out of the box. Drives are formatted for Mac/PC by the factory, and you should erase it exclusively to the HFS+ format. If you don’t, it will still work, but your performance will be compromised.
steve covello
double wide post -
Just get the PCI FW800 card from G-technologies, the things are cheap and you get three FW800 ports.
AJA does not certify that the Io will work correctly when you have multiple FW devices connected to same buss as the Io.
Quick note for Steve, the G-RAID is actually 2 hard drives in a hardware controlled RAID 0 config over a single FW800 bus. They can handle a single stream of UC-10bit. G-RAIDs are also set up so that one drive writes from the inside out and the other from the outside in, so you never lose performance as the drive fills up. They really are the best FW800 drives on the market right now, in my opinion.
-mark
-
Interesting insight. The Lacie FW800 is configured the same way — two drives striped RAID 0. I can’t say whether they spin in opposite directions as you mentioned, but it is a good point of cistinction if true.
Here’a a good link showing the guts:
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-lacie-big-external-disk.htm
Drives in general:
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm
steve covello
double wide post -
Quote: Interesting insight. The Lacie FW800 is configured the same way — two drives striped RAID 0. I can’t say whether they spin in opposite directions as you mentioned, but it is a good point of cistinction if true.
No, they’re not. The LaCie doesn’t do the opposite writing scheme. There’s an arrticle on barefeats.com comparing the two. The laCie was a little faster when empty, but the G-RAID maintained better performance as they filled up. I bought a laCie because I could get it a bit cheaper. If I had the extra bucks, I’d get a G-RAID.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up