Need Unexpected Buying Advice

[William Carr]

Hello Herb and Mark(s), thanks for advice about RAID 0.
I keep a 1:1 back up of each external RAID 0 unit on cheaper storage drives as a precaution so at least I wouldn’t lose acquired media. At the moment one of my G-RAID2 FW800 is making loud crunching noises even when “idle” and is running slow, this even after DiskWarrior treatments. So its failure may be around the corner.

RAID 5 in the Mac Pro would be great, but I realistically need 5TB of available content these days for current projects.

About RAM, in an older thread about the new Mac Pros, Walter Biscardi mentioned to buy at least 1GB of RAM per core, so that means I should add at least 2GB to start or as you say, max out if I can.

Here I am trying to set priorities, coming to realize every area is a priority!

[William Carr]

And adding to Mike’s question, do I need a RAID card too, or can the drives be software-configured?

Apple sells this card for an additional $700 with Mac Pros–

“The new Mac Pro RAID Card brings data protection with even faster performance to your Mac Pro system — up to 553MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0. Ideal for video and creative professionals with demanding storage needs, as well as for use as a workgroup server, the new hardware RAID option supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. It has 512MB of cache and an integrated 72-hour battery for protecting the RAID cache. The card occupies the top PCI Express slot (slot 4) and connects to the four internal drive bays.”

[David Roth weiss]

William,

No raid card is needed for Raid 0. I assure you, I’m quite thorough and I would have mentioned it if you needed it. If you want to move to raid 5 at some point a raid card is necessary, but you should avoid the Apple raid card, as it is overpriced and has been very problematic.

And, let me commend you on your decision to go with the raid and to simply backup manually. Raid performance is very important, and while media security is important, it should not never become an editor’s overriding issue. SATA drives are very robust compared to all drives that came before them, and they rarely fail, so it’s foolish to live one’s life in fear. A manual backup to firewire takes just minutes, so it’s outright foolishness to give up tremendous performance benefits around the clock just to save a few minutes here and there.

From a performance standpoint BTW, the rule of thumb with raid 0 is that you “nearly” double the throughput with every drive you add to stripped set. So,, if one drive averages 60 to 68mbps you can just do the math.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[David Roth weiss]

[Mike Allen] “If you add these Hitachi 750gb SATA drives and stripe them as Raid 0, how much speed will you get? Somewhere in the area of 200MB/s?
“

The rule of thumb with raid 0 is essentially that you “nearly” double the throughput with every drive you add to striped set. So,, if one drive averages 60 to 68mbps you can just do the math — you’re just at or just under 200mbps.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[William Carr]

Thank you David, I am better assured about RAID choices for now. RAID 5 is the gold standard, but RAID 0 with separate back-up is my affordable and productive solution right now. We will make our Mac Pro decision (hopefully to get it!) with greater confidence.

[David Roth weiss]

[David Roth Weiss] “BTW, the rule of thumb with raid 0 is that you “nearly” double the throughput with every drive you add to stripped set.”

Oops, I actually stated that incorrectly Mike, the increase in throughput does not double with every new drive, instead throughput is multiplied by the number of total drives — so two drives is approximately 2X as fast as as a single drive, and three drives is approximately 3X as fast.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[David Roth weiss]

[William Carr] “RAID 5 is the gold standard, but RAID 0 with separate back-up is my affordable and productive solution right now.”

Exactly right. Raid 5 is great, and something everyone aspires to, but it’s also a real luxury and not a necessity for everyone. Throughput on the other hand is a real necessity for every editor.

BTW, as I mentioned to Mike above, I stated something incorrectly in my previous post. The increase in throughput does not double with every new drive, instead throughput is multiplied by the number of total drives — so two striped drives is approximately 2X as fast as as a single drive, and three striped drives is approximately 3X as fast.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Walter Biscardi]

[David Roth Weiss] “Exactly right. Raid 5 is great, and something everyone aspires to, but it’s also a real luxury and not a necessity for everyone. Throughput on the other hand is a real necessity for every editor. “

At one time this was true, but with RAID 5 being so cheap now from companies like Maxx Digital, Sonnet and others, there’s no reason NOT to go with RAID 5 when starting up a new system. That will cost you about as much as buying an eSATA array plus another drive to back up the RAID 0.

For 475GB of raw material, I would start with a minimum 2TB array to give you plenty of overhead and no issues of performance slow downs as you fill up the drive with render files, graphics, audio files, etc… that go beyond just the raw material.

Costs a little bit more up front but it’s certainly not a “luxury” by any stretch. The first time you lose a drive and it doesn’t matter, you’ll be happy you have RAID 5. Go RAID 5 from the start and if you can afford it, pick up one of those Expando Chassis so it’s even easier to add more RAID storage later.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “but with RAID 5 being so cheap now from companies like Maxx Digital, Sonnet and others, there’s no reason NOT to go with RAID 5 when starting up a new system.”

Well, it’s all relative Walter. Everyone’s perception of “cheap” is a little different. And, as I have explained, a manual backup takes only minutes, so for those for whom raid 5 isn’t cheap, an automatic backup really is a luxury, and so it can wait.

Performance on the other hand comes into play every minute of every editing day, and it can be had very inexpensively now for everyone. So, it makes little sense not to take advantage of it.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.