Recommend a RAID card for new Mac Pro, PCD35 workflow

[Shane Ross]

[Graham Hutchins] “Just thought I would ask around to see what the most current recommendations are for RAID cards. My company will need to purchase a system for dumping P2 cards via the PCD35 for archiving and delivery purposes”

Raid for SPEED, or Raid for REDUNDANCY and backup?

[Graham Hutchins] “The idea I had would be to dump the footage with Shotput to an external eSATA or SAS drive and an internal RAID 0 for redundancy “

Uh….BAD idea. Raid 0 isn’t redundant, it is PERFORMANCE. Lose one drive, everything’s gone. RAID 1 is what you are looking for. And I would NOT get any internal card with Internal drives for this. External drive cases and solution. Like the Caldigit VR set to RAID 1 if you have the money, or a USB or firewire 4 drive CHASSIS that holds bare drives in slots. That is what I use for archiving P2. After retrieving the drives from the field, I dump them to TWO drives…manually. Heck, I guess I could use Shotput for this, but it is busy with the offload in the field.

[Graham Hutchins] “Does this sound right? “

Right for…. ? Media editing…yes. Archiving…no.

[Graham Hutchins] ” Would there be an unworkable performance hit using an eSATA external vs SAS? “

SAS is faster. For MEDIA storage, look at MaxxDigital EVO series, or the HDONE or HD PRO from Caldigit. Archiving, something like this:

https://www.satasite.com/4-bay-raid-enclosure-sbox-4e.htm

Shane

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[Graham Hutchins]

Hey Shane,

Thanks for the fast response.

When you ask “Raid for SPEED, or Raid for REDUNDANCY and backup?” I guess both, but with the provision that this isn’t really for editing, rather making the most use of the speed the PCD35 affords. I’m looking to prevent the bottleneck with offloading that happens on multicam P2 shoots with the provision that I have no intention of doing any kind of uncompressed online finishing.

Yeah, I’m aware of the difference in RAID 0 and RAID 1. The RAID 0 partition would be the backup to the external drive that would be delivered and would more than likely be completely wiped as soon as the footage is received and the copied by the client. The thing is that everything I’m reading about the PCD35 is that the bottleneck is in disk write speed, hence the need for some kind of RAID scheme.

Here’s where I’ve been getting my info:

https://www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/ROI-Review-Panasonic-AJ-PCD35_11176.html

and

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/193/876831

I guess my main concern with this is that we’re needing to get drives out the door ASAP and it seems like the PCD35 is the fastest way to get data off P2 cards. I’m just trying to figure out a way to make this happen. We could even just rent two laptops instead of one and just keep doing things the way we always have with FW800 external drives, it would just be nice to have everything in one place and not have to sweat the inevitable bottle neck. The more I look at the 4 bay SATA enclosure, the more that seems to make sense. I just don’t know how that enclosure with an eSATA RAID card will perform in conjunction with the PCD35.

Thanks for you time and input.

-Graham

OSX 10.6.2
AE CS4, Nuke 5.1.3
FC Studio 3
Octo 2.26GB MacPro, 6 GB RAM