I want it all, a cheap fast external 4-Bay RAID that can swap machines..

Storage & Archiving

I want it all, a cheap fast external 4-Bay RAID that can swap machines..

Posted by Jesse, Dijifi on February 11, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Hi all,

We transfer VHS to files on our system, and then make DVDs or transfer the files to our client’s drive. It is important to have some level of data protection while maintaining fast read/write speeds. It also needs to be able to unplug and plug into another machine quickly so that we can access the files anywhere.

I have to have 4 TB of usable space, so I purchased 4 Samsung 2TB drives, and a Sans Digital 4-Bay enclosure from Newegg for about $550 total for everything. The enclosure is eSata and USB 3.0 capable, with an onboard controller for RAID 5 or 10, but I am getting inconsistent speeds with ATTO Disk Benchmark for all RAID modes, at about 15-25 MB per second. Our G-RAID systems currently in use get us 25-30 MB per second, and that’s through USB.

Maybe I have a bad controller here, but I figure it’s because I’m going cheap. Does anyone know another method that doesn’t cost a lot more and will fit my needs?

Thanks much,

Jesse

Stephanie Liskey replied 15 years, 2 months ago 5 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

David Roth weiss
February 11, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Your saying that 4 drives striped together is giving you just 25MB/s?

That’s horrible… Below will show you that a CalDigit 2-drive SATA RAID (only RAID 0, but still) gets vastly better performance. I’ll hook up my 4-drive RAID and test that, but I’m sure it gets 130 to 140MB/s. I’d think that you should be getting at least 100Mb/s minimum, even in a RAID 5 configuration.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Kyle Lodge
February 18, 2011 at 7:39 pm

Hey Jesse,

Check out the Maxx Digital EvoVR… cost effective and reliable (faster too). Just a thought…

Good luck with all your projects.

Chao,

Kyle Lodge
David Roth weiss
February 18, 2011 at 8:15 pm

Kyle,

It seems that most of your posts are attempts to hawk Maxx Digital products, which would be okay if you made it clear to readers that is what you do, but you have not identified yourself as being affiliated with a manufacturer or reseller.

The bottom line is, if you are connected to a manufacturer or reseller you really must disclose that either in your Cow profile or your signature.

Can you appreciate why that’s important?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Jesse, Dijifi
February 19, 2011 at 7:15 pm

Thanks David, I actually figured out what the problem was AFTER returning the Sans Digital tower. I had a bad disk!

For those looking for a cheap RAID 5 setup, the external Sans Digital tower would probably have done the trick, but I ended up using a $90 iStarUSA 4-drive RAID cage inside my tower for external access to the drives in the front, and paired it with a $120 HighPoint RocketRAID 2300. Filled it with 4 2TB drives from Samsung for $90 each.

Bought everything from Newegg, and I am getting ~140 MB/s now, which is more than enough for my purposes. Gives me 6 TB of usable storage and some redundancy with RAID 5. And I’m paying less than $600!

Anyway, hope this helps anyone out there on a budget.

Jesse
Jon Schilling
February 21, 2011 at 8:29 pm

Jesse,

The downside is this, Highpoint support is notoriously bad, this applies to updates, failures, incompatibility, etc. I don’t recommend them & anyone worth their salt wouldn’t either. Remember that you get what you pay for.

Jon Schilling
Stephanie Liskey
March 1, 2011 at 9:17 pm

Hi –
I have a very “newbie” question.
I looked at the EvoVR Rackmount you mentioned. Is this something we could buy and it would have all the components ready to work as a steady drive to edit video on an Avid Media composer? We have a lot of HD footage now, and noticed our little 1 TB drive was packed, so it might be time to get something actually professional that would give us some backup and speed working with video.

This may be overkill for us, as we are never needing remote access, etc. Do you have a simpler, cheaper solution idea for a basic RAID setup? Our goal is speed, efficiency, and redundancy (backup).

Also, if you or anyone can clarify – would it be bad to store other data besides video on the same drive? I was wondering if there is a reason Video needs it’s own kind of array.

Thanks,

Stephanie

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