Is a RAID array the next step up from multiple FW800 Lacies?

[Bob Zelin]

Astrid –
a single internal eSATA drive in your MAC Pro (from Hitachi, Seagate or Western Digital) will be a HUGE step up from the horrible Lacie FW800 drives. Your failures with Lacies come from cases with no cooling, poor power supplies, and interfaces that die (and the internal Samsung drives).

A crappy $75 internal SATA drive will be more reliable.

Raid protected arrays (like RAID 5) cost a LOT more money. Until you can afford to buy the correct product (which is not cheap), my advice is to use internal SATA drives, or ANY BRAND that offers a cooling fan in their case style for FW800.

If your Lacie drives have eSATA ports, a simple setup would be to add an eSATA card to your computer, to increase your drive speed.

Bob Zelin

[Terry Mikkelsen]

If you can answer this, it would go a long ways to getting the “correct” solution to you.

What is your budget for this upgrade?

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com

[Neil Hurwitz]

I StoragePro IT MIS08T 8TB 1644.50
Atto 380 Raid Controller 984.75
Mini Sas Cable 125.00
Total 2754.25
From Burly Storage
Navigate there from the Istorage Add you see flashing on the
COW
I don’t have any experience with this distributor so due deligence
would be advised
I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW CHEAP THIS STUFF IS GETTING
2,750 for 8TB of Raid 5 from a known manufacture
If this is too much cash for you, then you would be well
advised to think of something else to do

Neil Hurwitz

[Don Wilson]

My 2 cents…

I just put together a 16 Bay SAS Expander iStorage unit with Areca 1680ix-12, increased the controller Ram to 2 gigs and this thing is topping speeds over 950 MB/s…new 6-core Westmere with 16 gigs ram. Chassis is very good build quality and Patrick at CI Design/iStorage is near AJA support in responsiveness. And listen to Bob about those LaCie dogs… And again he is correct about the internal drives. We put three 1.5TB Satas in each computer stripped together and get over 350 MB/s from them, perfect for most workflows. We’re pushing lots of 3D multicam and big fat 3D files and nary a cough on the iStorage…yet!

Now when the hell is Apple gonna catch up to the rest of us with an FCP update??

Don Wilson
donwilson.tv
AmericanaMediaInc.com
MississippiSon.com
818.660.2915 studio
818.207.6924 cell
818.760.1828 fax

[Lucy Moon]

Great tips all. Thank you.

I’m keen on the internal SATAs now. This was an affordable improvement I hadn’t been aware of.

Also I couldn’t agree more, Don, about the FCP update!