How about an installing and maintaining Raid storage forum?

[Archie Cruz]

One of the ‘problems’ is that several members here have vested interests in companies that either market SW or HW for off the shelf RAID. To protect their interests, there’s a tendency to not do the brilliant thing that you are suggesting, because it would empower the end user customer.
We can’t have that now can we?

[Ron Lindeboom]

Archie,

For years there have been people creating their own arrays and talking about them all over the COW. I even wrote an article about doing some of the steps, myself. It is still online in our library, though it is pretty long in the tooth by now.

We have never tried to stop anyone from doing their own set-ups and if we are against it (and do things that push our advertising interests), then why did we launch a Blender 3D forum when it’s an Open Source initiative program and will never advertise with us? We’ve had plenty of 3D software publishers that have bought ads from us both here online and in our magazine, over the years. Using your conspiracy theory, that would seem pretty stupid on our part, wouldn’t it?

Archie: It isn’t a conspiracy. (But you can find plenty of them on the net, just visit Google, if you need some to keep you company.)

Ron Lindeboom

[Bob Zelin]

well, I for one, think that it is an excellent idea to have a RAID or storage forum. I think that the “Media Formats” forum was supposed to draw the disk drive crowd, but never really did. Sadly, companies like Active Storage, who has their own forum on Creative Cow, is punished by having people who have no interest in their products, ask general disk drive questions on their forum, because it is a name that sound like a “disk drive forum” or RAID forum.

Currently, Creative Cow has dedicated forums for Cal Digit, Maxx Digital, Active Storage, Small Tree, Firmtek, G-Tech, and a few others, but those wanting to enquire about Sonnet, JMR, Lacie, Highpoint, and cheapies from Other World Computing and Newegg have no place to go, and wind up – incorrectly – on unrelated forums (like Active Storage, or dare I say it – the Final Cut Pro forum !).

So yes, I think that there is a definate need for a RAID or storage forum.

Bob Zelin

[Fred Jodry]

Gosh, if I knew more about moderating posts I`d host my picture above this forum. In the mean time, endless producers are crippled by hard drive hook- ups that don`t push the juice. Last night, I noticed that one of my computers was making it`s hard drive light get dimmer instead of brighter whenever the only hard drive`s arms got noisier. Those who are waiting for SSD to pass this stuff by, can be disappointed by my news straight from the front. The cheapest passable SCSi SSD, which is the only kind I`d use, costs $5,000 and the price is rising a bit. A week ago I found a company that sells theirs for $1,700 apiece, still too high. Most people who buy a SSD find out they`ve bought a unit that`s the large size cousin of high- density memory. Terrible. For those of you who are still busy building the computers that are to be hooked- up to the high quality Raid storage, here`s a tip in that area. Build a deluxe one that can be varied in speed, and under- clocked to do the off- peak jobs. Keyboard and Mouse manufacturers should make models with a clock- faster, clock- slower rocker switch. I already have a keyboard with a turbo button and lights on it. My favorite SCSi controller series used to be Adaptec. That was before they decided to drop Macintosh compatibility lately. SO FOOLISH. Their advantage was that the C-MOS on their card knew how to detect, adjust, manually type- in override adustments, bit- test, and format hard drives and other storage, all without the maintainer reaching for utility software for the purpose. Less electricity, less time, less software to thumb through. My hint to the rest of the controller manufacturers, the number one physics quote in the nineteenth century was, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. Fred Jodry

[Fred Jodry]

Fred`s rule of logic in the matter:

If, your hard drive setups draw mentionably less electricity than your editing room CRTs then you`ve got a problem in priority and inefficiency.

If your editors sit in front of the same slow moving panoramas hour after hour while your editing machines and their one or two hard drives run and run, then you still have the same problem.

If your camera teams shoot for their lives then can`t unload yet because the editors are all in the middle of their projects then this is all too familiar but is not good. Shoot slow, edit fast.

Some of us as we solder new condensers in the power supply to kill the hum problem rolling into the LTC cards are reminded by the smell of this slow moving dust that we`re the Owner.

Adaptec didn`t realize how badly they cut off an area of their business and usability when they dumped Mac compatibilty lately. See, their cards are still good, really? In my case my small operation can run in a good sneakernet fashion, openning up some possibilities. I tossed a favorite Adaptec card in my “pentium 1 PC”, it doesn`t even need an operating system, now wait. I just gave away a Mac G4 that had only one PCI-x slot. It`s after I just got one that has all it`s PCI slots as PCI-x`s, openning up some new usability. So, it`s going to get maybe a nice Atto card from a friend and I get to do this: I`ll set up the Operating System on the only ide drive. My scsi box gets prepared on the pentium then it`s cable goes right onto the G4 to get it`s editing software and the rest of the software, and can do a fresh job. After the editing work is done, the work is tranferred to a folder on the ide drive, the scsi box gets removed and can go back to the pentium if needed, and the now back to low power G4 can burn the sendoffs off the burner software then delete the folder. Some of you have much more setup and operations than this, and some, less, but this should describe the story well. Fred