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Raid / Suggestions / Save Me!!
I’m not a major post house and don’t make much money off editing video, but have been looking for a solution that will allot me no issues and no worry about maintmence. I want something like the Apple motto of it just works. I have a 27inch iMac (2013) and a 15inch MBP Retina (2013). I edit mostly using FCPX and I have a Blackmagic Cinema Camera (shooting mostly in 2.5k). All I am really looking for is a Raid solution that will allow me to edit the BMCC 2.5k solution without lag, stutters or issues with crashing.
I bought a Drobo 5D a couple months ago and it’s been good. I’ve hooked it up via thunderbolt, I had in it 5 drives, 3x 2tb Black Caviar WD drives, plus 2x 4th HGST drives but found out the HGST were not as fast as the Black Caviar so I removed them. I also have a 240gb Crucial mSata card in the Drobo. I was editing with ProRes 4444 but down converted to 422 to make it simpler. But my issue is editing is a nightmare, there no major fx only ones that came with FCPX. When I hit the playback button there is a substantial wait for media to playback and often there is dropped frames.
I’m curious if there is something about my system that could be causing this issue. I feel like I shouldn’t have any problems and that’s all I want something that allows for ease of use. Is it that the Drobo cannot handle this sort of speed? Should I look for another system to edit? What are my options? What would you advise? Like I said I don’t make my money off using this but I want something that will just work and without problems which is why I bought the Drobo 5D hoping to be able to upgrade in the future. Please help! Thanks!
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1 Reply
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Hi Rich,
Theoretical throughput calculations of a 5-drive RAID array are fairly simple if given enough data, but you make absolutely no mention above of how the drives in your Drobo are striped together and configured in a RAID set. Although I’m not 100% with Drobos, and do generally consider them to be prosumer solutions, I am aware their BeyondRAID software has many different ways of automatically configuring drives, and I’m certain there must be manual configs as well, but until you spill that info, there’s no chance anyone here could do anything other than hazard guess about the potential throughput of your Drobo drive subsystem.
[Rich Camp] “I had in it 5 drives, 3x 2tb Black Caviar WD drives, plus 2x 4th HGST drives but found out the HGST were not as fast as the Black Caviar so I removed them.”
Can you please explain how you measured the speed in this case?
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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