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Affordable Storage Option – happy customer
Recently I was looking for an affordable storage option and I examined all the regular favorites. I’m generally shooting HDV but wanted the option of having enough storage to do HDCAM or DVCPROHD on occasion. I determined that I really needed a storage requirement of around a gig or so for a modest project. I also wanted to be sure that I had enough i/o speed for a project like that as well. I had already purchased a 400 GB SATA drive directly from Apple so I needed around 6-800 GB of additional storage
I’ve been very happy with my purchase and particularly the service I received. I purchased a group of three, 300 GB SATA drives with a PCX controller card from Maxupgrades.com. The TOTAL COST for 900 Gb of storage was only $675. VERY AFFORDABLE INDEED! These are stripped as RAID ZERO. My speeds vary but tests show that I’m getting minimum sustained rates of the following:
Offset Gb – Minimum read – Minimum write
0 Gb – 180 mbps – 230 mbps
83 Gb – 140 mbps – 228 mbps
335 Gb – 135 mbps – 210 mbps
670 Gb – 106 mbps -180 mbps
838 Gb – 80 Mbps – 130 mbpsIf you are not familar with the offset GB column…As drives fill up with data they tend to slow down so I/O rates will fall dramatically as the drive approaches it’s capacity. Mine formatted to 838 GB so the last column shows my worst case scenario. In practice I would never completely fill a drive on a project.
Comments anyone?
If you are interested in getting these you can e-mail the pleasant folks at Maxupgrades.com Oh yeah, there are some limitations and this will not be a perfect solution for everyone. The drives mount INSIDE your MAC G5 near the CPU bay so they take no space on your desktop (for many of us that is not exactly a limitation). However in a practical sense these are not hot-swappable but can be replaced pretty easily. It took me about 30 minutes to install these and I’m a total klutz when it comes to computers. Two calls to Sayed (pronounced Sy-ed) at MaxUpgrades.com fixed all my problems and everything came ready to plug and play. Sayed called me back several times to be sure I had everything installed correctly and that everything was working right – imagine outstanding customer service – is this a great country or what?
One of the first things I did was to name my drives after my favorite cartoon characters – Spongebob, Squidward, and Patrick.
Have a fabulous day!
Richard Martz
MagicMartz Media
rm****@********ng.com
770-598-6509USA
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7 Replies
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[Richard Martz] “If you are not familar with the offset GB column…As drives fill up with data they tend to slow down so I/O rates will fall dramatically as the drive approaches it’s capacity.”
Medea with their zone striping technology are the only arrays that hold their speed for the maximum amount of storage on an array. Generally they hold their speeds here up to about 90% full. Most arrays really start to drop in speeds at 75% full. It’s one of the reasons why I only use Medea for large storage arrays. That and the fact that in over 8 years of running their products, I’ve never missed a deadline due to a drive related failure.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Walter Biscardi] “That and the fact that in over 8 years of running their products, I’ve never missed a deadline due to a drive related failure.”
Fast Drives are the key to having a stable system. In this case, overkill is a good thang…;-)
Wouldn’t mind having a Medea Array. An Xserve RAID would also be cool, but a bit on the pricey side.Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
I understand that Medea really makes some fabulous products and they have an edge over the competition with zone striping. However on a purely price/performance basis, it might make more sense to purchase around 50 percent more storage than you actually need but do that with cheaper SATA drives in a RAID configuration. That way the cost per usable GB is still pretty low and will preserve relatively fast speeds and maintain stability.
What do you think of that Walter?
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[Richard Martz] ”
What do you think of that Walter?”
You’re welcome to do that, but I never skimp on my Storage Solutions. I gladly pay the extra money to purchase the peace of mind that Medea’s research and engineering brings me.
I have completed at least two projects with drives going down in Medea arrays in the past, but they keep working enough to allow me to finish the project. In both cases, Medea shipped a new array immediately. I finished the project, transferred the media and sent the old array back.
I’ll save money elsewhere in the suite, but storage isn’t one of those places. I pay for reliability and support and Medea is a bargain for both.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Thanks Walter. I’ll see how this works and if there seem to be compromises I still have enough dough left to purchase a Medea Drive as well.
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Thought I would chime in here- I too bought the Max Upgrades product and have been very happy.
At my old gig we used all Medeas (about 20 of them) and they went down often. You can’t beat the simplicity but if you know what you are doing you can acheive the same performance and uptime (if not better) by using the Max Connect product. I like being able to choose what drive to use as manufacturers seem to double performance and capacity each year. When bigger better drives come out you can swap the drives out without fuss. With the medeas you are stuck having to purchase a new unit.
Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the EIDE drives filling up my closet!
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I threw all my old ide drives in the trash during my last spring cleaning, including a 6 megabyte drive, (my first hard drive ever). Now, my closet is full of 3 to 6 year old scsi drives and arrays. I’ve been thinking about listing them on ebay, but don’t really know if it’ll be worth messing with. I’ve got several 18GB and 36 GB cheetahs, mostly in arrays or single drive external cases.
I’ve used Medea, Rorke Data, and CTI arrays, but always scsi. Now I’m working in DV so I have the G-Tech G-Raid 500GB FW800. For what I’m currently doing, I love it. I just added a G-Tech G-Drive 250GB for pics, music, sfx, and misc. I’ll probably stay with this for another 3 or 4 projects, then switch to a SATA array and upgrade my capture card and TV to HD.
I read about the Max Upgrades deal and it looks interesting to me, but for some reason, I like the idea of going external. I have one case that has 8 swappable drive bays. I’ve never swapped them, but it sure would make it easy if I needed to.
BTW, my drive failures in the past have always been in the top position in an external, multiple drive case. I learned quickly, it’s very important for the case to have proper cooling. I’d almost put more priority on that than on the brand of drive. The swappable Rorke Data case that I have, has very good airflow via multiple fans, and it has dual power supplies, very nice.
My 2 cents,
Gary
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