2 drive striped sata

[Marcray]

I have tried that already too:) I am emailing them now to see if they have any advice.

thanks
marc

[Bob Zelin]

you have diagnosed the problem yourself. TWO Sata drives striped RAID 0 is more than enough to do uncompressed 10 bit SDI capture. However, you are using the MAC Book Pro, and I guess the new Firmtek card for the laptop. You are using AJA Kona System Test, and only getting 80mb/sec on write speed which is NOT ENOUGH SPEED to do uncomressed 10 bit SDI capture. One SATA drive is about 68mb/sec, so you have POOR PERFORMANCE. I can assure you that the OLD Firmtek SATA 1 two port card could easily do 120mb/sec with 2 SATA I drives, so this is ABSOLUTELY a problem with your MAC Book Pro or the new Firmtek card. You MUST contact Firmtek to discuss this.
No one else on this list can help you with this problem, including AJA and Apple (and me). I do not know if this is a limitation of the card, or the buss speed of the MAC Book Pro PCMCIA slot.

I have had a similar recent experience with a new Sonnet X4P and a Sonnet Fusion 500P with 5 SATA II drives in an OLD MAC G5 dual 1.8 computer. This card/array combo in a MAC Quad does 178mb/sec write and 220mb/sec read in the new MAC G5 Quad (using the Sonnet E4P), but to my shock, this fantastic combo will only do about 76mb/sec write speed in the dual 1.8, even though the write speed was about 170mb/sed in the dual 1.8. I thought that I had a bad drive, and I tried one drive at a time, adding one drive at a time RAID 0. I discovered that as I added drives to the RAID 0, the read speed increased, but the write speed stayed below 80mb/sec. Of course, there is NO PROBLEM with this combo on newer dual 2.7 Gig MAC G5 PCI-X, and the new MAC Quad PCI-Express dual 2.5 with the Sonnet E4P.

This is what the term “QUALIFIED” means. If no one tests it, and you are the first one, you get to be the guinea pig.

All of my tests have been done with conventional MAC G5’s, not the Mac Book Pro. And when you hear about a “new card” (like when you do a google search), I don’t want to be the rocket scientist for this. I get my preliminary info from http://www.barefeats.com, or http://www.amug.org – THEN I test the products with AJA stuff.

Bob Zelin

[Marcray]

I must be confused because the AJA docs say that 10bit uncompressed is 30mb per second well within the 80-120mb per second my drives are capturing at. 99% of the time the drives are fine but for a few frames they drop to about 80mb per second capture. This is done by looking at the graph and text readout on the Kona system test tool. I do agree that it could be a problem with the firmtek card, the macbook express bus, or a needed fix for OS-X. However I am trying to feel out what should be possible if everything were working fine given my system specs. This helps me to diagnose issues. I have found out I can do 8-bit fine but 10-bit seems to be the issue.

Thanks
Marc

[Marcray]

Forgot to mention that I also did check out the barefeats article on this before purchasing which shows 146mb sustained, close to my 120mb sustained:

https://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html

[Bob Zelin]

I want to reinforce that you are getting 80mb/sec write speed with your two drives stripped together. THIS IS WRONG – you MUST contact Firmtek to discuss why this is happening.

I don’t give a crap if the AJA doc says that 30mb/sec is enough to do 10 bit uncompressed SD – this is misleading info, as a single SATA drive in optimum conditions (empty) that can do 68mb/sec CANNOT reliably capture 10 bit uncompressed SD video. I have never seen this doc, but if AJA published it, it is WRONG INFO and misleading – I am basing my tests strictly with AJA Kona System test results, and various drives.

Please contact Firmtek and discuss your problem. I suggest that you email them with simple info – tell them the write speed you are getting with both drives stripped together, and ask them if this is the correct results.

bob Zelin

[Jeremy Garchow]

I think what he is saying here, Bob, is that in the AJA system test report (the text button), he’s getting a few frames that drop to 80MB, but he is getting 122MB/sec overall. This is normal (at least for my system). I have a Huge Fibre drive and when I run a long system test on it, there are times where it drops to 100 but peaks at 300 thus creating an average of around 200. This is what the cache is for, to account for these differences in speed, at least that’s the way I understand it.

Marcray, i wouldn’t worry about the few low numbers, and focus more on the average speed which what you have is good, especially out of a laptop. There is something wonky with your card, laptop, or drives. Start with the card. It’s a new product and is not quite battle tested. Call Firmtek. Also, are you sure those are the right drives for your enclosure?

Jeremy

[Marcray]

I have emailed firmtek and have tried the setup on 2 different macbook computers. Also they are the same drives that barefeats used to test on their review of the firmtek card. I am still not sure how Bob thinks 80mb is not enough four 10bit SD uncompressed. Even AJA has documented how to capture this to two striped firewire drives using a PowerBook. I will wait and see what firmtek says.

[Jus10case]

Just as a point of order for some reason, with my aja lo, I am able to capture uncompressed 10bit sdi to a single 200GB sata drive that with the kona tests gets around 45mb/sec. But with my Raid 0 two 500GB drive that tests out over 100mb/sec, I cannot capture. Also I am talking about 90minute captures, which almost fill the 200GB drive. I wish I could figure out why I can’t capture to the raid…

[Marcray]

What type of sata drives are you using?

[Bob Zelin]

listen Marc –
you are listening to too much noise, and this thread has gone on long enough. Don’t worry about what kind of drives this guy is using. If you have modern Hitachi or Seagate SATA drives, you will have no problems. If you have two drives stripped together RAID 0, you will have no problems in a MAC G5 tower. I just can’t answer you about your MAC Book Pro – but you can get this info from Firmtek, and it would be nice if you would post back what Firmtek tells you.

This is not rocket science. SATA drives plug in and work. Firmtek and Sonnet host cards do not require any drivers on tower MAC G5s. They just work. Apple Disk Utility is all you need for great performance, and AJA Kona System test is all you need to do your drive speed testing. If this guy has 2 500 Gig drives, and he can’t do uncompressed 10 bit SDI, he has other issues, that will just confuse your issue. Make it simple – just contact Firmtek about your MAC Book Pro. There are NO PROBLEMS with the MAC G5 towers – even the older 2 Gig computers.

Bob Zelin