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Hard Drive brand
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I was hoping to get some clarity by reading this entire thread, I am happy to say that I’m more confused then ever. I am in the process of setting up my FCP system to handle DVCPro HD. I have posted before asking a similar question as to what storage solutions would be optimum for a steady workflow. Walter Biscardi, in my initial post had some great things to say regarding the Caldigits system, I researched them and they do seem to be making a strong case with their units and their Mac compatibility. In turn I went to my FCP system reseller and they didn’t have great things to say about Caldigits. I’m not sure if that’s because they dont sell their systems, or what. They recommend that I use the G-speed as a better and safer alternate. I’m going all tapeless acquistion on my shows, I need the space, the speed and the backup protection. I am trying to be cost effective but I do have an adequete budget to dedicate towards a storage solution, $7-12K. Just when I decide on a system, I read a seperate thread on CC that discourages me about that system and it causes me to go back to square one, in search of the perfect storage solution. Can someone please shine a light of clarity as to what system is optimum with FCP to be able to handle P2 DVCPROHD. By the way I’m a Producer and i’m not as technologically literate as some of you, I’m am eager to learn, but if we can keep it simple in lamemens terms I would greatly appreciate it.
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Thank you Jeremy, for both the explaination and the example. That helps my understanding a lot.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
For DVCPRO HD all you need is a Firewire 800 drive. When I started I had two G-Raid 500GB drives and I was off editing my network show. With the P2 footage thrown in, what I do is back the cards up to external hard drives, then import the footage into FCP onto the FW800 drive, and edit. If the drive dies, all I have to do is reimport and reconnect and away I go.
But I am paranoid. I have the P2 footage backed up to two sets of drives. When HD DVD or BLUE RAY storage comes out, and is inexpensive, I’ll most likely go that route.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
This thread has been great. I do have to side with JeremyG on this issue however. A little more then a year ago, we built our first FCP system to start the transition from Avid. I moved our Huge (Ciprico) U320RX array, which we’ve had for over 2 years now, from our Adrenaline HD system to the FCP system. We had no problems with the Huge array on the the Avid and none on the FCP system. Performance has been great and it handles uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 HD without a problem. Well about 3 months ago I started an overnight render on a long form project. When I came in the next morning, there was the loud annoying beep, which Jeremy described, coming from the huge array. A drive had gone down during the night, but final cut was still rendering away as though nothing had happened. I stopped the render, saved everything and made sure everything was there. It was and everything played back fine, just as it should. I called Ciprico tech support and they said swap out the drive. We had originally bought an extra drive to keep on hand in case of situations like this. I followed the easy instructions, swapped out the drive and started the rebuild and Ciprico dropped another replacement drive in the mail. In the mean time I was able to continue working while all this was going on in the background. As far as the Mac knew, there was nothing wrong, everything worked just as it always had. Now had I had this array setup in a Raid 0, I would have been screwed.
In the end, it really comes down to your work-flown and what you work with. We do a lot of long-form, uncompressed HD work. We constantly have long overnight renders. If our drives go down and they are not protected, we can loose days, if not weeks of rendering for a single project. So to have the Raid 3 protection is absolutely worth it for us.
Now if you are like Walter, you might not need it. Because he is working primarily in DVCProHD. So he has a system where he can easily back-up to firewire drives and feel confident that if his Raid 0 array goes down, he wont loose much time and can continue working.
What we are lacking from a Mac point of view is SATA controller cards that offer protection other then Raid 1. For our PC based Adrenaline, since I took the Huge system from it, I was able to build a cheap 2.5TB array with protection, using a 5-bay Burley box from MacGurus and a AMCC 3Ware sata card that let me set it up in Raid 5. This has given us a nice size, protected array with enough performance to easily handle the DNxHD workflows on the Avid. Which is all I need since it doesn’t have uncompressed HD capability, which Avid originally promised, but don’t get me started. So in the end it is just a matter of what works for you and what you feel comfortable with.
Personally, for all our uncompressed HD work, I would not feel comfortable working with unprotected storage. We are looking into building another FCP suite at the moment and as of now, I’m pushing for another Ciprico system, yes they cost more, but you buy a rock-solid product, with fantastic support as well as piece of mind knowing that your chances of loosing time and work are very slim. It’ll be interesting to see what types of new storage solutions we see for the Mac come NAB. As always things change quickly in this industry. Just my 2 cents.
Best Regards,
Jeremy
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For a bit I was thinking this is getting out of hand and they are not seeing what I need, now I’m beginning to think I”M not seeing what I need. This has been very helpful (and yes a bit confusing) but I really need to think through redundancy.
Thanks everyone for their 2 cents. I have a few weeks to gear up for this project so I will have to research this more fully.
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BTW – what does a 3.75TB setup accually format to? With some of the systems mentioned here (Caldigit and Ciprico) what the the reasonable capcity limit, is it still 80-85% of the drive or are people pulling them closer to 90-95%?
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No problem, Shane. I always hate to be the ‘bad guy’ and say that RAID 0 is risky and that $4,000 bomb you just spent is unwise, but you just don’t know what it feels like until it happens to you as with anything else in life I guess. You learn with experience. I understand that different people have different needs and budgets. I am constantly budget constrained and spending the 6 or so grand I spent on my raid with HBA was a huge expense for me, but it has definitely allowed me to make the money back and keep my client relationships happy. If I had my way I would have gotten the full blown 4210, instead I got the middle capacity 4105 that still does over 200MB second through most of the array. Uncompressed 720p10 bit @ 23.98 is a cinch throughout the whole entire array. Now, if I could just get the thing to hook into my laptop for mobile gigs I’d be farting though silk, as my mom is fond of saying.
Jeremy
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[msacci] “BTW – what does a 3.75TB setup accually format to?”
I’m pretty sure it was 3.4TB after format. It has material on it now but I’m pretty sure that’s where it started.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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just look at High point technologies… the DR Group in Los Angeles puts together an 8 bay solution that can come raid 5 through the High point utility… this 8bay raid 5 can run 10bit HD all day, or until you start pushing the drive past 80% capacity. Last I heard they are working on a eSAS connection that may produce higher speeds still at raid 5.
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[JeremyG] “No problem, Shane. I always hate to be the ‘bad guy’ and say that RAID 0 is risky and that $4,000 bomb you just spent is unwise, but you just don’t know what it feels like until it happens to you as with anything else in life I guess. You learn with experience.”
As someone who has experienced a complete loss of a RAID 3 unit, yes I do understand the risks involved in RAID 0. Yes, I did say I lost a complete RAID 3 unit a few years ago where the entire array went down and it could not be repaired either remotely on the phone or when it was shipped back to the manufacturer.
Since then I have sought out cheap Firewire drives as backups for the most critical components and media that are needed to finish a project and it’s something that I’ve carried on to this day. Now that even the FW drives are huge I can back up entire projects and arrays. All arrays will fail some time, it’s just what have you done to prepare yourself for that moment that will really matter.
This has been a fantastic thread and should be required reading for anyone purchasing a new hard drive array. Lots of pros and cons here where nobody is wrong and nobody is right, just different workflows for different people.
All I can say is NAB will be a very interesting event this year. That’s definitely the one place where you can see everything and truly learn what all the differences are. I’d get your tickets now. 🙂
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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