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OT: Sonnet Fusion Boxes-No build your own anymore!
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Bob,
Since your a Caldigit fan, have you had a chance to work with the HDPro yet? Or which Caldigit unit are you installing these days?
Joe Murray
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the HD Pro is not out yet. I use S2VR’s. Even when I don’t use Cal Digit drive boxes, I almost always use Fasta 4x and Fasta 4e cards as the SATA host.
I am a big fan of SATA in general, not just Cal Digit, but they are a teriffic company.
Bob Zelin
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I have 4 of the Sonnett’s with “approved” WD drives. Not a fan of the box at all.
The eSATA cables they give you are total garbage and ALL had to be replaced. If you power them down they rarely come back up without some replugging, new ports etc. Mac or XP, they are very finicky and I don’t recommend them. They also have a “ramp up” before they reach speed.
They are good for local raids that don’t get turned off or moved – EVER – and may be a solution for ProRES projects.
If I have to buy them pre-built, I’ll go with someone like CalDigit next time.
Lance Bachelder
Southern California -
Lance writes –
The eSATA cables they give you are total garbage and ALL had to be replaced. If you power them down they rarely come back up without some replugging, new ports etc. Mac or XP, they are very finicky and I don’t recommend them. They also have a “ramp up” before they reach speed.REPLY –
many people are used to letting their SCSI or Fibre channel drives spin up, and then launching their PC or MAC. This is not the way the Silicon Image port multiplier chipset works. On all of these chassis, there are LED’s which cycle or “ramp up” ONE AT A TIME. When all 5 are lit, your drive array mounts. You restart (or boot up) your computer, and you see no drives. Each drive mounts (10 seconds per drive), and when all 5 drive LED’s are lit (one at a time), the drive array mounts. This is how they work – this is not a problem. If you boot up, and you dont’ see your drives, and get impatient, when you “unplug and replug” your cables, you are going thru the same process of having the drives mount.What can I say. Perhaps you would be happier with a Ciprico Fibre array .
Bob Zelin
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Sometimes the drives cycle through and viola! The raid mounts – other times no dice – cycles properly and nothing! Seems a tad better on the Mac. I’ve been dealing with this for months Bob – it’s not a patience thing.
The ramp up I’m talking about is when editing – they raids take a bit to get up to full framerate playback – not a lot but there is a noticeable delay.
YES! I would prefer a 4GB fibre array!
We did have the Sonnet’s on our MetaSan system as off-line network drives – not enough horsepower for more than one user. We are now using them as local drives for ProRES HD finishing on our current series.
We moved our off-line networked projects to a large Isilon system – very expensive but it works!
Lance Bachelder
Southern California
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