Mac Pro and eSATA?

[Jeremy Garchow]

The MacPro comes quipped to handle four internal SATA drives ready for you to RAID to your hearts content. There are now other kits that will allow another four internal SATA drives at the expense of losing your superdrive. People have had good luck with internal storage, I have not so I think external is the way to go. People around here have been raving about the CalDigit units (which come with a controller card). You can also build your own arrays and you will be looking for a PCIe SATA controller, not PCI or PCI-X. Sonnet seems to have a great reputation as a good controller card. How much speed are you looking for?

Jeremy

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bret Williams] “We’ve got a new MacPro coming and were just trying to figure out which eSATA card/drive to buy. PCI or PCI-X, etc. Or does it have an esata connection built in?”

It must be a PCIe Card first of all, and second many SATA arrays come with the cards. We just ordered a Cal Digit SATA array and the card is included in the price. LaCie is the same way.

So choose your SATA array first and see if the card is included.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Bret Williams]

No array. Just a 500gb external to swap between machines. Seems like the CalDigit or LaCie is a good way to go. Whaever they have at MicroCenter as the computer has arrived and we’ve got to start digitizing.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bret Williams] “Whaever they have at MicroCenter as the computer has arrived and we’ve got to start digitizing.”

Just for my own personal use, I never recommend “off the shelf” products from an electronics / computer store unless they sell G-Tech, LaCie, CalDigit, Medea, etc…. Companies that make hard drives for A/V use make a product that’s tested to stand up under almost constant use.

Stuff you buy from electronics stores generally won’t take the abuse of long term video production. They’ll work for a while, but will generally die sooner than later.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Winston A. cely]

I’m actually starting my own small edit suite/business. I’ll be getting the top Mac Pro because of the built in SATA RAID availability. (Saving cost, and space). I’m going to be running some tests with the Mac Pro and it’s internal storage before I move 3K miles away from the company I now work with (and will be working closely with in the future). I was wondering if anyone had used the internal SATA storage on the Mac Pro like an external SATA? Meaning, has anyone used project specific drives in the internal SATA setup? Installing and removing drives when new projects come along? That’s how we do it now with our external SATAs on our G5’s. I don’t see any problem, other than it means I’ll have to shutdown and restart my Mac Pro when I need to remove/install drives, right?

“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 4.5 GB
Final Cut Studio (Not Universal, yet)

[Jeremy Garchow]

In theory, i guess this could be possible. You will just have to get more of drive trays or swap the trays every time you want to swap RAIDs.

http://www.barefeats.com has some tests done with internal MacPro RAIDs.

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

Well, interestingly enough, the new MacPro is now nearly DOA. After updating all the OS, and whilst installing FCP, we inserted a disk and it shut off about the instant the CD went into the drive.

Anyone have anything like this? On the old G4s we’d probably reset the PMU or something, but don’t want to mess with anything on the new Intel.

The only thing going on is a very slight chirp noise coming from the power supply. Otherwise, it seems to be as dead as I’ve ever seen a mac.

Any ideas?

[Jeremy Garchow]

I’d call Apple immediately.

Jeremy

[Winston A. cely]

I’ve been looking and I can’t find on Apple’s website any spare trays to be sold separately. Looks like I’ll just be using the ones that came with it and switching drives.

Also, I looked at the benchmarks at Barefeats. Seems like the drives to get are not Seagates. Something was causing a glitch that prohibited them from making Raid 0 drives internally with Seagates. (Though a firmware update did help certain serial numbered Seagate drives, but even then they could only be updated via Windows PCs).

I’m glad I’ll have about a month to test this before we put it into effect!

“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 4.5 GB
Final Cut Studio (Not Universal, yet)

[Bret Williams]

Apple was pretty much no help. They can’t get a new stock quad to us by tomorrow morning. However I could call MacMall until 11pm tonight, and could have one at our door by 9am tomorrow. Funny how they’re in a hurry when you’re buying, eh?