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RAID 1 Experience?
Hi all:
I am hoping that some of you have some RAID 1 experience? I am setting up a P2 workflow for a documentary project and based upon reviews here and elsewhere, the CalDigit VR looks to be a contender. I would like the convenience and reliability of the RAID 1 workflow when downloading P2 cards to the drives.
In the past, I tried setting up a RAID 1 workflow using two physically separate drives of the same size and brand. I discovered that while the dumping portion of the operation went fine, when we would separate the two drives, wanting to send one of the drives to the editor and keeping one for safety, the separated drives would not boot correctly and were basically freaking out, looking for the other RAIDED drive. This was a few years ago, but I recall, we used Apple Drive Utility or some other third party software to set up the RAID 1. Is there some sort of formatting operation or option that is needed when you physically separate one RAID 1 volume from the other?
The CalDigit VR looks to be a great drive but I need a work flow that will allow me to dump all of the P2 cards to the two volumes, then I want to separate the volumes, one for backup and one to the editor. I contacted CalDigit and they told me that I am not allowed to switch out the drives on the CalDigit VR anyway, it voids the warranty and dark clouds of the Apocalypse will gather over our shoot. This sort of seems to negate the whole idea of the RAID 1 CalDigit VR workflow. I need a drive setup that I can setup as RAID 1, unload the drives, and then load new blank drives, format them and configure for RAID 1 again and do the same thing. My editor will need to take this RAID 1 formatted drive, mount it on his FCP system and edit away. Is this a strange workflow? What I have been doing instead of this is bringing two separate drives to shoots, dumping all of the cards to one drive, then cloning the cards in the breaks in between. This is stressful and non-automatic, it requires concentration and awareness of exactly what has happened to each P2 card. I can do that, but it requires either a P2 tech or a lot of my time and attention, which is tough as I am typically DPing and or producing the shoots as well.
I believe the CalDigit VR contains regular Hitachi SATA drives don’t they? I cannot understand why, if I rotate the stock drives out with identical OEM drives from Other World Computing, it would void the warranty. The VR has easily removable drive trays. Why have removable drive trays if you cannot change out the drives? It seems to not make any sense.
Anyway,
1. Can you separate RAID 1 volumes on a hardware RAID 1 setup and use the two drives separately without the drives freaking out and looking for their RAID mate?
2. Has anyone used the CalDigit VR and successfully changed out new raw, SATA drives?
Thank you!
Dan Brockett
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19 Replies
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I am not sure if you understand what RAID is. When you stripe two or more drives, they basically act as one big drive, with various options for redundancy etc, hence the various flavours of RAID.
It sound like what you want to do is have two separate drives with the same content. This can be achieved various ways but one way is to use software like Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact copy of your first drive to the second one.
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Hi Michael:
Considering that I am editing right now with an eight drive SATA RAID that I created from scratch, I think I understand what a RAID is. I was under the impression that the whole point of a RAID 1 hardware device like the CalDigit VR was to give you seamless backup, which it does. I was just wondering if there is technology available that lets you configure, then separate the two RAID 1 volumes when you want to. It appears that there must not be, once a RAID 1 device, always a RAID 1 device unless you re-format it?
I have been using the dual physical drive and Carbon Copy Cloner/Super Duper route for the past three years of P2 production, I am just wondering if anyone has come up with a better way to dump P2 as you shoot and to end up with two backups simultaneously.
As you shoot all day with multiple cameras with P2, the cards quickly reach a backlog point when using this method because it takes much longer to write the card to one drive, then write the card to a second drive as a separate copy or to copy over the card from the first drive to the second. If you wait until the end of the day to clone the entire first drive over, you have been shooting all day and erasing cards, praying that the one drive doesn’t decide to crash, it is very risky to only have your P2 material on one drive at all, it needs to live on two separate drives to be considered “backed up” and having only one drive with the days shoot on it until I can make that clone is risky. To clone an entire drive takes hours and we are usually already packed up and ready to leave the location and cannot wait around for extra hours while the P2 drive clones. Driving away from a big multi camera shoot with all of my material on only one drive is not a good feeling. Sure I can clone it back at the office but what if I drop the drive before that or there is a power spike or ??
I tried ShotPut Pro from Imagine which is supposed to let you write to up to three drives at once to back up P2 but Imagine claims that the Duel Adapter drivers and the P2 drivers have a clash with ShotPut. All I know is that after downloading ShotPut, it does not work with the Duel adapter, it crashes my MBP every time. Yet, I can still manually dump P2 cards fine with the Duel adapter so I don’t know who to believe. So ShotPut may work for some people, but not on MBPs with 4GB of RAM and a Duel Adapter, which is what I use in the field. Nice idea, but unless you have an older PB and don’t need the Duel Adapter, it doesn’t work.
Thanks for your advice,
Dan
Providing value added material to all of your favorite DVDs
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What Michael said. What you are trying to do really isn’t how a RAID 1, at least with that unit, works.
You are talking about RAID 1, which MIRRORS the content on both drives. If you take two 500GB drives and stripe them as RAID 0, you get one 1TB drive on your desktop (or close to it). If, however, you RAID 1 those same drives, they show up as ONE 500GB drive (or close to it). And anything you copy to that drive on the desktop is copied to both drives. It is complete redundant backup.
The CalDigit VR is a great drive for archiving P2. I use the older Firwire VR for this, but just got my CalDigit VR as well. Not sure about using it to then send one drive to another editor…even if they also had a CalDigit VR with the same capacity drive on their end and inserted this drive and had it rebuilt the raid so that now they have a Raid 1 across two drives on their end. I don’t think that will work. You can call Jon at CalDigit to confirm this.
This really is a single station backup solution. If you want one drive for you and one for the editor, then just have two drives as separate drives and do what Michael says, clone one drive to the other and then send it to the other person. This is what we do in the field…use Shotput Pro to copy the cards to two drives, send one back and keep on as a backup…until we archive it to the Firewire VR at the office, then they reuse the drive they have on set.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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Dan
I can verify that ShotPut Pro along with My Caldigit Firewire VR (RAID 1) along with 2 other external hard drives provide me with an excellent P2 offload workflow for me. I have not had problems with my MBPro and Dual adapter.
In addition, when I completely done with a project, I copy the files onto my 4TB Drobo then erase the data on my 2 external hard drives.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Steve:
How much RAM is in your MBP?
Dan
Providing value added material to all of your favorite DVDs
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4GB. I had problems with Shotput but I upgraded to Shotput Pro and everything is working great.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Hmm..I have the same setup, MBP, 4GB, Duel Adapter and ShotPut Pro and it crashes EVERY time I try to use it. Imagine told me it is a conflict between the Duel drivers, Panasonics P2 drivers and ShotPut and the only solution is to try to remove 2GB of RAM, which doesn’t work for me as I use my MBP for Photoshop, FCP, etc. and need 4GB.
Interesting that you are on the same basic setup and it works for you without crashing.
Dan
Providing value added material to all of your favorite DVDs
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My advice? Get yourself a cheap 2 drive Sata enclosure ( ours was $60) and set it up JBOD. Use shotput pro to copy the footage to both drives when you offload. You can the pull one of the drives and send to where ever, then you keep one.
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Hi Jeremy:
Thanks for the advice. If I could get ShotPut Pro to work, that would be an ideal workflow but ShotPut Pro will not work on our MBP with 4GB RAM and the Duel Adapter. Imagine says its Duel’s fault, their drivers have a conflict.
I’ll figure out a way to make this work. I do have a Western Digital 1TB drive that is a RAID 1 drive (so its actually a 500GB x 2). I think I will just offload to it during shoots, then make clones back at the office to SATA drives for editing. Not ideal or streamlined but it will work. The main thing is that I need redundancy as we offload on the shoot.
Dan
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Try P2 Genie. It does the same thing.
Warren
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