• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Sans Digital RAID 5 for FCPRO editors

  Posted by Dave Beaty on October 29, 2010 at 3:12 pm

  Hi, I am an end user editor and in no way benefit from any of what I am about to say…just wanted to make that clear, as the internet is sometimes rife with sale-speak.

  I wanted to post some results of my purchase of a new RAID system for my FCPRO suite. In the past I had been an early adopter of some of the new hard drive RAID systems. In fact, I was on of the first to use SATA hard drives to create RAID’s – moving away from Ultra SCSI-2.

  Up until this point our facility had been using RAID 0 for all our editing – DVCProHD, Apple Prores 422. Which works great. We just back up everything constantly.

  I had not purchased any of the popular videocentric hardware RAID 5 systems.

  Last month I took a chance on a very very inexpensive RAID 5 system by Sans Digital called the TowerRAID TR5MP. I purchased this through Newegg with 5 1.5TB Seagate Drives.

  Initially I struggled with the install manual and drivers required to make the RocketRaid 622 hardware controller work in my 2008 8 core MacPro. Another issue cropped up with the proper PCIe Slot. I had to move the card to a free PCIe 2.0 Slot, this resolved any issues and it began working just great.

  Be warned the stripping of a 7.5TB RAID 5 unit took about 20 hours. But after that it came right up! I get about 5.5TB out of this with this RAID level – a trade of for the redundancy and protection. I have been very pleased with it so far. Sans Digital TS has been helpful and responsive. (no so much with RocketRAID).

  Here are the numbers from Quickbench (this is real world cause I have about 5 apps open and paused a big compressor batch) :

  Test Size: 20 MB Read: 129.291 MB/sec Write: 167.484 MB/sec
  Test Size: 30 MB Read: 148.921 MB/sec Write: 119.201 MB/sec
  Test Size: 40 MB Read: 158.806 MB/sec Write: 142.420 MB/sec
  Test Size: 50 MB Read: 159.936 MB/sec Write: 139.361 MB/sec
  Test Size: 60 MB Read: 158.830 MB/sec Write: 143.729 MB/sec
  Test Size: 70 MB Read: 166.169 MB/sec Write: 156.029 MB/sec
  Test Size: 80 MB Read: 160.665 MB/sec Write: 143.128 MB/sec
  Test Size: 90 MB Read: 167.067 MB/sec Write: 148.802 MB/sec
  Test Size: 100 MB Read: 165.798 MB/sec Write: 146.386 MB/sec

  And AJA System Test
  I/O Transactions
  Frame MB/sec
  Read Write
  00.0 102.7 244.3
  01.0 124.2 60.2
  02.0 141.7 181.9
  03.0 185.9 172.3
  04.0 189.0 166.9
  05.0 176.0 155.3
  06.0 186.0 170.2
  07.0 182.1 156.9
  08.0 194.4 145.1
  09.0 183.2 151.7
  10.0 181.2 148.0
  11.0 187.5 145.4
  12.0 184.7 162.5
  13.0 182.8 179.0
  14.0 188.2 169.0
  15.0 184.3 169.0
  16.0 188.2 169.0
  17.0 181.9 169.1
  18.0 189.9 169.1
  19.0 185.7 177.9
  20.0 187.0 169.4
  21.0 184.2 158.2
  22.0 190.2 165.1
  23.0 188.2 143.2
  24.0 196.3 146.2
  25.0 182.5 158.8
  26.0 193.9 145.9
  27.0 191.2 149.0
  28.0 188.7 149.9
  29.0 183.5 147.9
  30.0 187.2 150.6
  31.0 182.4 159.4
  32.0 184.4 150.6
  33.0 181.6 151.5
  34.0 186.8 151.2
  35.0 187.1 151.8
  36.0 186.9 151.7
  37.0 177.1 160.6
  38.0 187.6 151.1
  39.0 185.6 166.9
  40.0 192.6 176.5
  41.0 187.7 155.7
  42.0 188.0 172.3
  43.0 185.5 165.3
  44.0 180.8 167.8
  45.0 181.2 166.8
  46.0 186.4 166.5
  47.0 186.7 169.2
  48.0 188.6 178.1
  49.0 188.3 169.0
  50.0 187.6 169.0
  51.0 180.1 170.4
  52.0 189.4 170.8
  53.0 187.6 168.8
  54.0 182.5 179.2
  55.0 182.9 169.0
  56.0 190.4 169.6
  57.0 177.9 167.0
  58.0 187.1 167.1
  59.0 182.3 167.0
  60.0 183.0 176.9
  61.0 188.1 167.4
  62.0 181.7 166.6
  63.0 183.4 167.2
  64.0 190.8 166.9
  65.0 182.9 167.3
  66.0 184.4 178.3
  67.0 180.8 167.4
  68.0 181.9 167.1
  69.0 186.6 162.8
  70.0 188.6 153.8
  71.0 179.5 176.9
  72.0 199.4 150.8
  73.0 186.8 145.7
  74.0 185.7 146.4
  75.0 184.8 145.6
  76.0 188.4 117.3
  77.0 185.6 181.0
  78.0 186.3 154.9
  79.0 185.5 145.0
  80.0 185.2 141.6
  81.0 184.9 142.5
  82.0 187.6 142.6
  83.0 187.5 150.8
  84.0 188.6 142.1
  85.0 183.6 145.4
  86.0 183.5 142.0
  87.0 185.8 142.3
  88.0 198.6 142.4
  89.0 185.7 181.0
  90.0 187.4 141.8
  91.0 180.3 139.8
  92.0 166.7 140.0
  93.0 163.1 140.2
  94.0 188.0 136.8
  95.0 185.9 148.3
  96.0 187.7 140.0
  97.0 181.1 139.3
  98.0 184.8 139.5
  99.0 186.3 140.9
  100.0 187.2 140.2
  101.0 186.1 147.8
  102.0 186.6 139.8
  103.0 179.5 140.1
  104.0 193.9 149.1
  105.0 185.1 133.2
  106.0 189.0 149.6
  107.0 189.5 139.5
  108.0 187.9 142.0
  109.0 180.1 140.1
  110.0 185.4 142.6
  111.0 185.7 142.1
  112.0 182.5 148.6
  113.0 188.9 139.6
  114.0 185.1 151.3
  115.0 180.5 155.8
  116.0 186.3 157.2
  117.0 187.9 156.8
  118.0 185.7 166.1
  119.0 193.4 157.2
  120.0 195.1 156.7
  121.0 188.2 156.5
  122.0 188.7 156.2
  123.0 189.0 156.5
  124.0 185.5 166.7
  125.0 188.0 157.1
  126.0 157.8 144.2
  127.0 23.0 139.9
  128.0 93.2 140.3

  Cheers!

  Dave

  Dave Beaty
  Dreamtime Entertainment
  1625 SE 46th St
  Cape Coral FL 33904
  239-549-4081
  800-446-7575
  dave@dreamtimeentertainment.com
  http://www.dreamtimeentertainment.com

  Dave Beaty replied 15 years, 9 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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