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Raid first time buyer with a more than likely stupid question…
Hello all 🙂
I’ve been doing a lot of research on this. Going to be buying the 5k iMac maxed out everything fairly soon as virtually 100% of my clients this year have been 4k projects.
My first question is this:
Is there anything I can do to NOT have to upgrade my current late 2013 27 inch iMac to edit 4k smoothly without having to proxy?
My current iMac config is:
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory, Nvidia GeForce GTX 775M 2048MB.
Out of curiosity would maxing out my memory on my current setup make much of a difference? Would Raiding my current system help at all?
All of this said, my other primary question in regard to RAID is…I’ve been seeing everyone post about it say that you STILL have to back up to an external drive that isn’t your RAID setup.
I don’t understand. If I’m spending $3,500 on a RAID setup, why is it not capable of backing up my work? Why do I still need to buy a couple of passports to backup everything? lol. As I said, I know this is a stupid question, but I am honestly perplexed at why I have to spend so much on a backup system that more than likely doesn’t actually do it’s job well enough for me to not have to also back up on another backup lol.
Please someone that doesn’t mind taking the time, break this down for me lol. I really need to understand this as my limitations as an editor have nothing to do with software or skill, and everything to do with understanding my hardware, and how to best maximize it.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for anyone willing to respond to my lowly level of stupidity on this particular subject lol.
Michael
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4 Replies
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Hi Michael,
I wouldn’t touch a editing workflow with 4k without a decent raid (Raid5 or 6 thunderbolt or FC). The raid performance gives you the power to edit in real time.
Our workflow:
footage is on our working raid 4x8GB FC, Raid6 plus hot spare around 96TB space.
Backup1 on a Raid5 small raid system with eSata.
Backup2 on a normal HD, stored within a seperate building.
This means professional back up.
Your question: Why does a raid worth thousands of bucks no backup itsself?
If the raid would do a 1:1 backup on top of the normal work it would loose too much speed (Raid 1). The reasons for a raid are speed and redundancy. The more redundancy the more speed you loose. Even with Raid level 6 you loose significant speed.cheers
Rainer
factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems -
Michael,
you ask excellent questions.You are not clear to me as to where your media is. It cannot be on your iMac. It needs to be on a RAID array that has multiple drives in it, so that it is fast enough to edit your 4K media. Why do you need to still back it up – because all these products suck. Even the $80,000 professional products suck. Drives fail.
Electronics fail. One day (and it’s when, not if – it will fail), you will lose all your media, and be screwed, even i you spend $80,000 on the top of the line RAID system. Backup is a fact of life with modern equipment and dealing with SATA disk drives. You have some protection with RAID 5 and RAID 6 drive arrays, but things still can go wrong (and do go wrong, as I deal with all the time).you cannot edit with media on the internal drive of your computer – period. You must have external storage. It should be a RAID array, and unless you like living dangerously, you should back that up as well.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Thank you guys for your responses. “Because they suck” is likely the most thorough and clear response I think I’ve ever received to a question lol. At the end of the day, that makes sense to me lol.
Currently I’ve been getting the 4k footage and ProRes4444″ing” it and editing that way, then outputting as ProRes4444 as well. It’s been working fine, but if the Raid can save me the step of proxying everything into 4444 then it may be worth it.
Will the Raid setup on my current iMac stop me from having to upgrade to the 5k iMac?
currently a late 2013 27inch iMac, i7 of course.
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Hi Michael,
a decent raid will let you edit in real time without proxy work.
The editing speed comes from the raid, not from the CPU power.
Your mac will handle it,cheers
Rainer
factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems
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