Hard Drive brand

[Shane Ross]

http://www.caldigit.com

I highly recommend the S2VR HD 5 bay units. You can get one 3.5TB model for $4000, and then another 1.25TB model for $1300. Controller card included. A touch above your $5k limit, but great devices.

Buy them here:

https://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/CalDigit_S2VR.php
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home;?ci=1&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=RootPage.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t&shs=caldigit&image.x=0&image.y=0

Great review for them here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/920481?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Roth weiss]

I have always been a Maxtor and Seagate kinda guy. Maxtor’s Maxline drives are quieter than Seagates, a little cheaper, and a little faster, so I prefer them, but other folks swear by Seagate. I did buy (6) 500gb Hitachi SATAs late last year and they’re just fine, though very slightly slower than Maxtor’s Maxline SATAs. The big thing is the warranty, just make certain that you buy drives with a three or five year warranty, don’t buy the consumer drives with a one year warranty or you’ll be sorry. BTW, keep in mind that Hitachi is releasing their new 1gb SATA drives at the end of the month.

DRW

[Michael Sacci]

Shane, what would the CalDigit get me for twice the money of a Sonnet P500 and 750GB Seagate drives? I can put that together for under $2200. Since I already have the card.

David, thanks for the reminder about the 1 TB drives, I normally buy second to the top capacity drives to get the best value, so many the 750’s will drop by mid Feb. And yes I’m look at top of the line drives. MaXline or Barracuda.

[Shane Ross]

[msacci] “Shane, what would the CalDigit get me for twice the money of a Sonnet P500 and 750GB Seagate drives? I can put that together for under $2200. Since I already have the card.”

So you can get 3.75 TB for $2200, while the same unit from CalDigit runs $4k? Well, part of the $4k includes the card. You can order it without the card for less…$3800. And they use Seagate drives.

If you already have the card, and you want to save money then go that route. I don’t blame you…I think the exact same way. I built my own 2.5TB unit for under $1650 using a $90 PC case (dang the thing is QUIET). Yes, this unit runs a bit more. What you get from that is speed and reliablility. The card and the case are designed to work together, and the drives have the firmware updated to work well with the equipment. And one vendor to call when something goes wrong, instead of multiple vendors (drive, card, case, cable) pointing fingers at the other guy. AND…just to add to their sales pitch…their controller card is currently the ONLY ONE that is FULLY compatible with the Mac Pro. Other companies can get 2 of the 4 ports working…CalDigit has all 4 ports fully functional.

I just mention them as a possibility. I am in your boat when it comes to saving a buck. But if I had the money, I’d get the reliable system. Not to say that Sonnet isn’t reliable, they are a good company. I just think that CalDigit is more so.

But this is what I did…my “roll your own” system:

https://lfhd.blogspot.com/2006/12/dark-tower-sata-raid.html
Modified here
https://lfhd.blogspot.com/2007/01/modified-quiet-tower.html

So yeah, I understand the want to save a buck. If I weren’t in debt over my system now, I’d own a CalDigit unit. As it stands I am reviewing two of their smaller units, and I like them. A LOT.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Garchow]

[msacci] “Shane, what would the CalDigit get me for twice the money of a Sonnet P500 and 750GB Seagate drives?”

I am not a fan of unprotected raids, that being said the caldigits offer support. Your Raid goes funky and something’s not quite right, you call them up and ask them what the deal is. You have to pay for that somehow.

other DIY raids, the only person to call is yourself.

Jeremy

[Michael Sacci]

how much speed do you lose if you set them up in protected mode vs performance mode?

[Jeremy Garchow]

I don’t know, but it’s raid1 which will significantly bring the speed way way down. Raid 1 works in pairs, for each drive you have, you need to pair it to another drive (creating a redundant or mirrored pair). Extremely safe, but slow.

Don’t let me sway you though, those units have been getting nothing but rave reviews.

Jeremy

[Michael Sacci]

Protection is good but my question would be will they perform well enough to pull 6-8 streams of DVCProHD, like I can using RAID 0, Don’t know of anyone that can afford RAID 1 in the video world, especially us small video houses.

I really like the idea of some of the features of Caldigit but I don’t understand why putting in 8 750GB drives vs 8 500 GB drives should cost $2000 extra (looking at the HD444) seems like they are taking advantage of their closed system.

I appreciate the push to CalDigit and I’m reading up on it but back to my original post, between hard drive manufactures – Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, WD (there top of the line drives) is there any that people want had a lot of problems with, Maxtor and $45 cheaper than Seagate in the 500GB Sata II 16MB cache flavor. I want to stay away from anything that people have bad experiences with.

[David Roth weiss]

Maxtor drives are just fine. Apple ships most of its computers with Maxtor SATAs inside and I personally have (20) Maxline SATA drives that are all working perfectly after about 18-months of service. And, as you already figured, throughput is probably more important than anything unless you have a unlimited budget.

DRW

[Jeremy Garchow]

[msacci] “Protection is good but my question would be will they perform well enough to pull 6-8 streams of DVCProHD,”

Raid1? Highly doubtful, unless you had 4 raid1 sets striped together or something crazy. That’d be 8 drives @ raid 1+0. I don’t know about your drive situation, I always use Hitachi, but that’s just me. Caldigit is charging a premium because you have to buy the drives from them. I am sure they test them or something before they send them out.

Jeremy