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my disk array options
I have an HD project coming up and need to rent some drive space. I just want reconfirmation that what I am getting is my best option before I make any purchases.
I have a 2.5 G5 and would love to rent Apple’s XServer and just plug that into my Decklink Pro HD card and go. Unfortunately, I’ve only found one for rent in the Boston area and it is under a yearlong contract.
So…is my other best option to buy an ATTO UL4D scsi card and rent a bunch of drives and stripe them to that?
I’m pretty sure it is, but want to triple-check before I go out and buy the ATTO UL4D.I don’t have a lot of video media to work with, so it is speed and not necessarily space that is essential for me. So the XServer’s size might have been a little overkill, but I had seen one in action and liked the “plug and play” factor of it.
Thanks!
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2 Replies
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Hi,
you could consider buying 4 pcs S-ATA drives, a S-ATA controller card and
some external enclosures. We did a 10 bit uncompressed HD commercial some
time ago with a setup like this. Just remember this is NO bullet proof
solution, we used FW drives to backup media. These stuff is so cheap
you could buy instead of rent (almost anyway).
We got arround 240MB/sec read and write on our JBOD. Software raid in
Mac OS. For short work, using backup for media, this worked fine for us.
If you are going for 4:4:4, this is not enough though.fwiw,
Robert -
Thanks for the info, Robert.
I am definitely not in the market to buy at the moment. I have money in the budget to rent drive space. I won’t have another HD project that would require this kind of disc speed for quite a long time, so that is why it isn’t the right time to buy for me.
I just see the XRaid server as the simplest solution, but I can’t find one for rent in the Boston area.
I am not totally clear what my other options are.
I can buy the blackmagic recommended ATTO scsi card and rent drives to hook up to that.
Is there a third option that does not require me to buy a scsi card? A scsi card is a $350-400 purchase….and again, I won’t have a project that would utilize it again for quite some time.
Most of my client base is no where near ready to go HD. AND I am having a baby after this project, so I will be cutting back on large scale jobs (and decreasing my chances further that another HD gig will come up soon).I am sure that these are obvious questions. It’s just that I tend to work on a need-to-know basis when it comes to hardware. I don’t know all that is out there.
Again, this is for a small job. I am really more in need of a disc speed solution rather than disc space. I just need to be able to play back HD animation to my HD monitor to check for motion jitter, moire and clarity.
Thanks, again.
Alisa
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