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Raid over FW800 any good?
On an iMac, dont have esata unfortunately, will a 2 drive raid0 system be of any benefit over a single external fw800 external hard drive? (even a little faster?)
Cheers!😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.ukSony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD. -
7 Replies
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Of course! Approx 2X the throughput of a single FW800 drive.
That’s what the CalDigit VR is. You should check it out.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Most single drives now days can handle around 100MB/sec. The most FireWire 800 can handle is around 80MB/sec. So having a two drive raid 0 over FireWire 800 won’t make a huge difference. It might help to make the preformance more consistent as the drive fills up though. I think the bigger advantage is having a larger volume instead of having to daisy chain drives. There are also drive enclosures that are a raid 5 over FireWire 800 and that helps protect against having a drive die.
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net -
Hi David,
As I always like your answers around Creative Cow, I’m sending to you some words of a post that I just did and if you could, I would like to read your thought about it.Greetings,
Fredy.” Dear friends:
I’m in a crossroads.
The bottom line is: The HD is knocking my door and I’m trying to solve my problems.
I’m using my MacBook Pro as described on my profiles and FCS on a “Blue Screen” production that has mixed materials from Canon D5 (HD) and a Sony HDV camera.
First I captured everything to Prores 422. So far so good …..
But when I start to apply filters (Chroma Key, Color correction, Denoisers) and increasing the number of tracks, FCP start screaming asking for render (I’m using a 500GB external HD over FW 800). Sometimes, based on experience (not as great as some of you guys), I do things and pray to be ok after rendering some clips. But I can not live like that ! It is frustrating most of the time.
I can’t increase the speed of the processors but I’m thinking to make better connections to my external drives and put more RAM.
Three things I’ve read here and there on internet and I would like some advices and a word if they are right or not.1- Use a Express Card/34 with a eSata connection which is faster than FW 800.
2- Build a eSata RAID. (Which RAID would be better ?)
For that I would need an enclosure to use 4 or 5 HD that are getting dusty on a drawer. They were used only once on an old production.
Capacity- 750GB
Interface- Sata 3Gb/s
RPM- 7200
Avg.Seek- 8.9 ms
Buffer- 16MBDoes anyone know the product: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 ?
Link: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/3- Now it is possible to put 6GB of RAM on MBP
In a short past, 4GB (2 x 2GB) were the most you could use on MBP but now I can see on internet, companies selling 6GB Kit (1 x 4GB + 1 x 2GB) for MBP. Does it really works ?As buying a Mac Pro or change the processor of my Macbook Pro are out of question, would those things above help me ?
thanks fellows. ”MacBook Pro 17″
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
(2) External HD LaCieMac (400/800 FW and USB)with 500GB -(2) USB External HD Western Digital (in cases) with 750GB
OS X 10.6.5
Final Cut Studio “3” -
When you are doing things locally, you get the benefit of the systems local cache, so a lot of latency issues with a single disk are hidden. That being said, a single disk, or even two striped disks aren’t going to be fast enough for much sustained streaming. 8 is the fewest spindles we’ll go with.
This isn’t about the sustained IO rate of the devices. It’s about the ability of the device to keep a low latency response time when you’ve got three file pointers going at once (audio left and right and the video itself). Obviously more things on the time line leads to more file pointers.
The fastest I’ve seen FW800 go was 64MB/sec. I haven’t tried it with an SSD.Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
[Steve Modica] “The fastest I’ve seen FW800 go was 64MB/sec”
I get more than that through FW800 on my Caldigit Raid-0.
rafael -
[Fredy Schwerdtner] “Three things I’ve read here and there on internet and I would like some advices and a word if they are right or not.
1- Use a Express Card/34 with a eSata connection which is faster than FW 800.”
2- Build a eSata RAID.
Hi Fredy,
Yes, go with a SATA RAID with two or more drives.
No matter what the others have told you, adding a SATA RAID will make your day to day editing experience on that older laptop better. It won’t make rendering faster, but it will a) maximize RT performance; b) minimize renders; c) allow you to render when you decide to render rather than when the machine dictates.
I’ve never bought an enclosure from OWC, but they look okay. Just make sure that the Express card you get is port-multiplier capable, (i.e. capable of handling whatever number of drives you want to stripe together), as some Express cards are only good for driving one drive per each SATA connection. Ask the OWC people to make certain that what you’re getting will work as you want before you place the order.
[Fredy Schwerdtner] “3- Now it is possible to put 6GB of RAM on MBP”
I think so, but that may be limited to newer machines. You’d better ask OWC about that as well.
Hope this helps…
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Hi David,
As I wrote before, I’m now working with my old MBP with 6GB of RAM, with a RAID 5 over the OWC enclosure tunned with the Sonnet Express/Card 34. Everything is working fine. But as you’ve said, all of it didn’t speed up my renders but the renders thar I need to see are faster.
I’ve finally finish the job and I’ve post it on my website. I did the Production, co-direction and all of the reaserches for images and midias and everything in post-production. Of course, it is not like the ones you have on your company’s website LOL … , but I’m starting to work …..
Thanks for your help. If you want to see it, here goes the link. Just click on the blue picture labeled “Sangue, Suor e Lágrimas”.
Once again, thank you very much.https://www.videolab.com.br/comercial.html
MacBook Pro 17″
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
(2) External HD LaCieMac (400/800 FW and USB)with 500GB -(2) USB External HD Western Digital (in cases) with 750GB
OS X 10.6.5
Final Cut Studio “3”
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