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G-Tech 8TB Thunderboldt for IMAC speed and Partition questions..
I am looking into buying a 8tb G Tech Thunderboldt raid for my I MAC, to do FCP7 and Aperature Still editing. It seems from my research that the 8TB G Tech is using (2) 4TB Sata 111 drives (7200RPM) with the Thunderboldt Sata 111 controller so It should be faster than the WD 6TB Thunderboldt Raid that uses “green 5400 drives” My Question is, has anyone used this 8TB Raid 0 drive and what Read and Write speeds are you getting in the “real world” My second question is, is there any problem in “partiitioning” the 8TB drive into (4) 2 TB “drives” I wish to do this so I can “clone” each 2TB drive onto another drive for backup. I don’t want to make the drive into a raid (1) because it slows its R W speed by one half and I need 8TB of space. I really like the G Tech drive on paper for the price point $800 or less and its size. I do not care at all about the fact that you can’t swap out drives, because it will void the warranty.. Thanks for any real world info.
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3 Replies
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Hi Mark,
thunderboldt is a wonderful multi usable port. If you want to do back up then use Raid 1. With raid 0 and partition you haven’t got any back up. If one drive fails your back up has gone as well. I call this harakiri. We haven’t got one drive system on raid 0. This was 10 years ago, when we worked on raid 0 drive arrays. In terms of speed you will probably get around 100 MB/s. The speed your hard drive does (on raid 1). What you need is Raid 5 or 6 to get more out of the thunderbolt. Perhaps esata may be a choice for you.(Gspeed Q) Data rate is about 200 MB/s. It depends how full your drive is. You should look into Promise pegasus R4 or Sonnet fusion thunderbolt. They run on Raid 5 with good speed (around 300 MB/s). I would not recommend backup on the raid. I would go for back up on a seperate Harddisc USB3 or FW800.
Hard discs with eco drive are not good for usage in raids. Best hard discs (we use them with best results) to me are Ultrastars. Barracudas (enterprise) are good as well.cheers
Rainer
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another option, but the most expensive option (very fast and reliable) would be sonnet echo express and R800 SAS drive system (around 400MB/s)
The SAS card (comes with the R800) is in the echo and the thunderbolt comes out of the echo.Rainer
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Thanks for your input on thunderboldt. I am very aware of the data loss potential in using raid 0, but I need all the 8TB space and the speed of raid 0. I am looking at the G Tech 8Tb because it is only $750. I asked about “partitioning” the 8TB raid into (4) 2tb partitions so I can both organize my projects and “clone” each 2tb drive on external drives for back up. I don’t want to buy another 8tb for back up. Thanks
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