Paging Bob ‘SATA’ Zelin…

[Bob Zelin]

I am amused by your post – I wish I had this 3 days ago.
I just suffered thru this SSC nightmare, and wrote a private
email to AJA about it. People who say “oh, you should build your own
SATA arrays – it’s easy” have not had the good fortune to run into this
nightmare, where everything stops working, and you say to yourself “what the
hell is going wrong here !!!”.

Thanks for your post. Most people won’t read it or understand it, but it
is incredibly important.

Bob Zelin

[Jeremy Garchow]

Alright, now what do I do? I am not going to be purchasing 500 Gig Hitachi’s as this is going to be a mobile rig and once I am done using the drives, they are going up on a shelf to be replaced with new drives. I simply don’t need the 1TB of space for these kinds of gigs. I’l probably be getting 160-250 Gig drives, depending on the job. I will probably go with Hitachi as it’s what I know and am used to, are there any in those sizes that I need to look out for that have SSC enabled?

Jeremy

[Ed Dooley]

Jeremy,
The SSC issue has been discussed quite a bit at barefeats.com. Hitachi also came out with a number of their drives SSC-enabled
a while ago, and after OEM complaints, they offered non SSC versions of those models. SeriTek’s SATA card(s) also have an SSC Chip
on them. Do a “SSC” search on barefeats.com, a number of articles about ti show up, along with drive recommendations.
Ed

[JeremyG] “Alright, now what do I do? I am not going to be purchasing 500 Gig Hitachi’s as this is going to be a mobile rig and once I am done using the drives, they are going up on a shelf to be replaced with new drives. I simply don’t need the 1TB of space for these kinds of gigs. I’l probably be getting 160-250 Gig drives, depending on the job. I will probably go with Hitachi as it’s what I know and am used to, are there any in those sizes that I need to look out for that have SSC enabled?”

[Mitchji]

[Ed] “SeriTek’s SATA card(s) also have an SSC Chip
on them.”

Hi Ed,

According to barefeats and amug the Seritek cards DO NOT support SSC:
https://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/1eve4/
FirmTek has four 64-bit SATA host adapter models available. They include the SeriTek/1eVE4 ($139.95) which has four eSATA (Type I) external ports, the SeriTek/1VE4 ($139.95) which has four SATA (Type L) external ports, the SeriTek/1VE2+2 ($139.95) which has two internal and two external SATA (Type L) ports and the FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 ($119.95) which has four SATA (Type L) internal ports. All of these host adapters work very well. You simply make your choice based on whether you want internal, external or both types of connections. The SeriTek/1eVE4 is identical to the SeriTek/1VE4 with the one exception that the 1eVE4 has external eSATA type “I” connectors. They both use the same exact firmware.

Controller & Hard Drives
The FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 SATA host adapter utilizes the Intel 31244 PCI-X to Serial ATA Controller chip. It provides a dedicated DMA channel for each SATA port, supports hot-plug SATA drives and is compliant with both SATA 1.0 and SATA II including Native Command Queuing (NCQ). In addition, the Intel 31244 PCI Expansion ROM enables boot-up capability in the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. The one issue with the Intel 31244 chip is that it does not support Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC). This means that SATA hard drives which have SSC turned on will need to be configured to turn SSC off in order to work with the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. Most SATA hard drives currently in production have SSC turned off by default. However, those models that have SSC turned on usually have a method to turn SSC off so that they will work properly with the FirmTek host adapter. I have used Seagate 300GB 7200.8, all models of Maxtor hard drives, Hitachi drives with SSC turned off, and Western Digital 250GB SATA hard drives with the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter with great success.

BTW If you have a PC (with a SATA port) you can turn off SSC on Hitachi and Seagate drives. You can’t do that with the Western Digital Drives that have SSC.

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Mitchji]

[JeremyG] “Alright, now what do I do? I will probably go with Hitachi as it’s what I know and am used to, are there any in those sizes that I need to look out for that have SSC enabled?”

Hi,

Barefeats had a list of models with and without SSC. I’m not sure if its current.

Firmtek has this list (probably not a totally current list since it doesn’t mention 500 gig drives):
https://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
At this time, the following Hitachi Deskstar hard drives have the SSC feature disabled, and are compatible with the SeriTek/1VE4 host adapter:

* Model 7K400 (400GB)

[Jeremy Garchow]

Thanks for all of this. I am having trouble finding a PCMCIA card, so I’m on hold until I can get that.

Jeremy

[Ed Dooley]

You’re right Mitch,
They have the Intel AIC, which, as you said *doesn’t* support SSC. I misread it.
Ed

[Bob Zelin]

Firmtek is selling a PCMCIA SATA card for our applications. The 2 port Firmtek SATA card supports SSC, but the 4 port card (that uses the Intel chip and intel driver) does NOT support SSC. Firmtek is working on a new 4 port card. Sonnet cards support SSC.

It is VERY CONFUSING to determine which drives do and do not have SSC – the same Seagate drives do and do not support SSC, with the SAME MODEL #, depending on the SUFFIX in the part #. This is why you should go to a VAR to buy your stuff, and not “Joes cheapo internet SATA drives” – because Joes cheapo will NOT take back your drives if they don’t work because of SSC. Go to a great Value Added Reseller, like Maxx Digital, Virtual Media, Pro Max, or other companies that SUPPORT their customers. YES, you will pay more per drive, but is this aggrivation worth it to you ?

Bob Zelin

[Jeremy Garchow]

I can’t get a PCMCIA card anyway. When I do, I’ll but from the same establishment.

———–
G5 Dual 2Ghz <> 4GB RAM <> FCP 5.04 <> Kona 2
ATTO 42XS <> Huge Systems 4105 Fibre
OS 10.4.2 <> QT 7.0.4

[Lawrence Marshall]

I just came off a two-week shoot with Panasonic’s HVX200, recording directly from the camera via Firewire to a Powerbook laptop. I used the Firmtek SeriTek/1EN2 enclosure with two Hitachi TK250 drives, and used a PCMCIA SATA card I purchased from Granite Digital (about 50.00). I recorded directly to one drive, and upon completion of the shoot cloned the footage to the other drive for backup. I was recording in standard DV format, and everything performed flawlessly. It made it especially convenient, since we did a rough edit of the A-roll interviews in the evening – no digitizing needed.

I was hesitant to purchase the SATA PCMCIA card from Granite Digital, as it really isn’t branded by a company name on the card, so who knows who made it? I would have preferred the Firmtek card to keep things in the family, but had to make a purchase for this shoot. Again, everything performed flawlessly – – no problems whatsoever.

In terms of drives for these enclosures, I think the Hitachi and Seagate drives at 250 gigs hit the sweet spot in terms of pricing and performance (I own drives from both manufacturers). I tried the 500-gig Hitachi drives… they ran a bit warmer than I was comfortable with. Speed-testing them also showed them to read and write a bit slower than the 250’s, but this is marginal. Mainly, if you do the math, you can buy two or three 250-gig drives for the price of one 500-gig. I prefer this route, as I can keep projects separate, and I haven’t had one yet that required the capacity of a 500-gig drive.

Larry Marshall