Lower cost RAID drives and controllers

[Richard Sanchez]

A GRAID isn’t going to give you great results with 2K DPX files, even via E-Sata. You’ll want to use at least a 4 way dripe, or RAID-5.

Cal Digit makes good RAID setups. I would look into their products.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Walter Biscardi]

2k and eSATA is not going to work. Just forget eSATA completely for this.

You need a very high speed RAID running at least off SAS. Look at Maxx Digital, Sonnet, Small Tree and the like for an array running at least 300MB/s if not faster.

Maxx has 8 bay arrays running 500MB/s + and that’s what you want to be looking at. We run about 48TB of their storage here in both shared and local configurations.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

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[David Roth weiss]

Steve,

First, I’d recommend that you avoid High Point RocketRAID products completely. High Point is notorious for it’s poor and/or non-existent customer support, and since you’re clearly not a storage power-user or pro, you would probably wind up with issues you could not fix yourself with that brand.

Sonnet certainly comes to mind as source of good eSATA controllers. The one at this link below is really what you need. At $249 it’s not cheap, but it’s what works and it will have resale value for you if you decide to go with the new Thunderbolt technology later on that Apple is putting in all their newest products.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816122015

Actually, as Walter stated, for 2K you will need a bigger and more powerful RAID… I missed that point initially.

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.

[Steve Zimmerman]

Thanks guys for all the quick responses!!

I have been looking at these lower cost 4 drive RAID drives.

BH Photo:
$469.95:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/730904-REG/Buffalo_HD_QL4TSU2R5_4TB_DriveStation_Quad_HD_QLSU2R5.html

$539.95:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/706859-REG/Verbatim_96956_2TB_PowerBay_Quad_RAID.html

$475.00:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/741603-REG/OWC_Other_World_Computing_OWCMEQX2T2_0S_Mercury_Elite_AL_Pro_Qx2.html

$549.00:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/669210-REG/Glyph_Technologies_FTRD_2000_2TB_ForteRAID_External_Hard.html

newegg:
$499:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165089&cm_re=4_drive_raid-_-22-165-089-_-Product

$524:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165265&cm_re=4_drive_raid-_-22-165-265-_-Product

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I have also priced out rather cheap build-it-myself RAID setup:

4 bay RAID enclosure:$139 — Add 4 nice drives and RAID card.(below)
https://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat4eb.asp
(There are fancier ones with temp gagues and removeable drives)

4 x 500Gb Hitachi Drives: $38 x 4 = $152
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%2050001984&IsNodeId=1&name=Hitachi%20Global%20Storage%20Technologies

I wave built a 4 drive RAID for my PC before (using my motherboard’s SATA RAID capabilities) with no issues. Which card would you use with this setup? The Sonnet one still? Are there any other lower priced eSATA RAID cards?

Thanks so much,

Steve Zimmerman
Charleston, SC

[Steve Eisen]

You’re gonna have to spend some money if you want sustained data rates. Listen to what Walter said.

Hard drives are at their all time low these days. 2 TB isn’t gonna get you very far.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Chad Tingle]

None of these are going to work for those file sizes.. you need to be runinng something like this https://www.caldigit.com/store.asp#HDOne
to manage those file sizes.

Chad Tingle
Producer/Editor

[Steve Zimmerman]

Thnks for the responses.

Hmm, looks like we may have to deal with using proxies, and color correcting in Color using stills. We are still getting some sort of RAID setup to speed things a little.

Thanks again,
Steve

[Walter Biscardi]

Nothing in this list will work with 2k to my knowledge.

This will:
https://www.maxxdigital.com/evo-2k-expando.html

This will:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiond800raid.html

In other words, cheap arrays will not work for the data throughput for 2k as explained in my first post.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

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