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Looking for a way to centralize studio’s footage
We have a studio of 6 Macs (5 PowerMac G5s and 1 PowerBook) all running Final Cut Pro 5. Currently all the workstations capture onto their internal hard drives with no back up. What would be the best way to either set up a file server that all the computers would work off of (editing SD video, the occasional Motion project, and a DVD Studio Pro project once every few weeks)?
Two ways I have looked at this are to buy a Mac Pro and load it full of 1TB (need 2TB of storage, the extra is for RAID) drives, setup file sharing, a gigabit ethernet switch, and hook all the computers together on a network; making the Mac Pro a giant hard drive that the workstations would edit off of. But with this I don’t know if the 7200RPM drives would be fast enough (pretty sure gigabit ethernet is fine… opinions?) or if Mac OS X’s file sharing would be able to handle all this load.
The other way would be to set up a 7th computer (preferably a PC for cost reasons) that would connect to the Macs’ FTP connections and keep it’s hard drive synced up with the Projects folders on the Macs as well as capture scratch and maybe render scratch. Once all the FCP data is on the PC the Macs would have to be able to connect to the PC and access (download?) the data so projects can be worked on from any computer. But with this option I would have no idea where to start (other than finding a powerful PC with a ton of hard drive space). What software would I have to use? What gigabit ethernet card (for the PC) and switches would you recommend for this set up?
–Thanks!
All help is appreciated.PS… I’m thinking I’d like to use some kind of Linux for the PC rather than Windows, but Windows will be fine if it will be easier to setup / work better.
PPS.. All Macs are running Tiger
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2 Replies
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Benjamin,
What you’re asking for is called “Shared Storage”. There are two forums here on the cow devoted exclusively to that topic. One is ” Apple X-SAN”, the other is “SANetworks”. I suggest that you ask this question there.
Quick answer: You need to consult someone who knows about this stuff. I’d suggest Mr. Zelin.
mark
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Thank you, I will go post there.
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