Caldigit or Not – Walter, Bob et. al

[Dan Riley]

I might be wrong about this but I believe Ciprico is only a fiber channel solution.
And that usually only makes sense if you are accessing media from a server
to multiple workstations. Maybe Walter’s operation is moving to that model.

I spend some time a CalDigit and I liked what I heard and saw. But of course,
I haven’t lived with one of their units so I can’t speak to that issue.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sam] “After reading great reviews about the Caldigit Products primarily S2VRHD 5 Drive, we were starting lean towards that. Read Walter’s raving recommendation on Caldigit’s website about the 3.75TB. Read Bob’s review, which gave us the green light all the way.”

That raving review came before I killed two of them and then killed an array of S2VR Duos. I don’t run those units anymore.

We’re preparing to purchase a shared Fibre solution from Ciprico to be our primary storage in the shop. CalDigit has requested that we test their new HD Pro unit and we’ll do that, but I don’t recommend the S2VR HD’s any longer and actually haven’t for a while. I didn’t realize they left my testimonial on their site.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Sam]

Wow! So even the 5drive HD array is out? “Killed” hmmm.. Were you using them as “shared” storage or pure independent storage on each computer. We’ll be using purely DVCPRO HD codec and thought we hit the jackpot with the SVRHD 2.5 TB solution and were going to place our order this week 🙁
So any other recommendations other than Ciprico Fibre Channel? We’re pretty small shop mostly using the DVCPRO HD DV50 codecs.

Anyone else using Caldigit? Particulary the S2VRHD 5 Drive Arrays? Any feedback
Thanks
Sammy

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sam] “Wow! So even the 5drive HD array is out? “Killed” hmmm.. Were you using them as “shared” storage or pure independent storage on each computer”

You can’t share SATA, they were used as independent units running DVCPro HD. Each unit worked for a time and then suddenly would not mount. Apple Disk Utility would show a failed drive even though both the CalDigit Manager software and the unit itself showed 5 good drives. They replaced our first unit and the second failed in about a month. Then they shipped us four Duos to stripe together and those failed in about two weeks. Running a single Duo works fine, but striping them together (for the storage I need) they failed.

[Sam] “So any other recommendations other than Ciprico Fibre Channel? We’re pretty small shop mostly using the DVCPRO HD DV50 codecs.”

We currently run the LaCie S2S Biggest 1.25TB SATA array in both suites in the interim until we replace that with shared storage. One unit has been running over a year and the other over 6 months with no hiccups.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Walter Biscardi]

[walter biscardi] “[Sam] “So any other recommendations other than Ciprico Fibre Channel? We’re pretty small shop mostly using the DVCPRO HD DV50 codecs.”

We currently run the LaCie S2S Biggest 1.25TB SATA array in both suites in the interim until we replace that with shared storage. One unit has been running over a year and the other over 6 months with no hiccups.”

Forgot to mention, LaCie has a 2TB FW800 unit for under $800 that can edit DVCPro HD all day long. We run one of those as a backup device to our S2S because we’re running RAID 0 here at the moment.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sam] “Read Walter’s raving recommendation on Caldigit’s website about the 3.75TB.”

FYI, I did put a request in to CalDigit today to remove that testimonial. Thanks for letting me know it was still up there.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Sam]

Thanks Walter,
Do you or anyone else have experience with the G-Technology devices?
I guess we’re over to looking at G-Raid and Lacie for now. Just finished discussing with the team, we’re now primarily aiming for DV50, DVCPROHD and the ProRes 422 (when it ships). Would having 3 internal 750GB drives in the MacPro at RAID 0 beneficial and/or sufficient over the Lacie/GRaid solution?

Walter, on the S2S plus the MacPro 3.0, how much “realtime” are you getting and what are the real-life Read/Write rates please.

Thank You
Sammy

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sam] “Do you or anyone else have experience with the G-Technology devices?”

I love the original G-RAID models and run the 500 and 800GB versions here. We purchased a G-RAID 1000 (2) model and it just did not work correctly at all. Speeds were incredibly slow once you daisy chained another FW800 drive. These slowdowns do not occur with the older G-RAID’s or the LaCie FW800 units we run.

[Sam] “Walter, on the S2S plus the MacPro 3.0, how much “realtime” are you getting and what are the real-life Read/Write rates please.”

What do you mean by realtime? Most people want to know how many streams I can get and I really don’t give a crap about streams because I’m not cutting a Brady Bunch open anytime soon. If you’re asking about transitions, filters and such, I get plenty of that running DVCPro HD. Blurs, Color Correction, etc… can get me realtime easily. Speeds are approx. 110 – 125MB/s on these units and they ship with either PCIe or PCI-X cards depending on your machine.

We run these units on my Mac Pro Quad 3.0 and our G5 Quad 2.5.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Shane Ross]

I’ll say that the 5 drive HD unit does have issues. But the 2 drive Duo is a solid drive. Unstriped that one worked for Walter…striped, it didn’t. I have been running it for 4 months now without a hitch.

But I also worked in the CalDigit booth at NAB, just to let you know.

Other drive solutions: Firmtek, Sonnet

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Shane Ross] “Unstriped that one worked for Walter…striped, it didn’t. I have been running it for 4 months now without a hitch.”

Absolutely, that’s a nice little unit by itself.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi