SATA-RAID recs

[Vman06830]

[peskypesky] “Wow! Seems like pretty universal acclaim for the CalDigit products. I have to say I’m leaning in their direction.

One further question. On doing a system profile, it appears that I already have a Sonnet Tempo-X SATA 4+4 card installed on my G5. This surprised me. Guess the computer came loaded with it?

Anyone know if this’ll work with the CalDigit SATA-RAIDS (or those of other manufacturers)?”

From what I can tell, Sonnet Tempo-x card is a port multiplier card which supports multiple drives to connet to one single SATA port. It is a good card , however, it may not good for HD editing, you will need multiple units to do real high-def.

CalDigit has a bundle deal – you buy their S2VR HD SATA RAID, and they send you free SATA card, FASTA-4e or FASTA-4x.

CalDigit’s SATA card appears to be faster than any other SATA card, roughtly 30% faster than others. and it is more stable, no hugh spike.

they have AJA speed test on their pages
https://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-4x.asp
https://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-4e.asp

You do not have to spend extra money on buying card from CalDigit’s reseller, all you need just tell them which capacity and which interface – PCIx or PCIe you are looking for.

[Arnie Schlissel]

[peskypesky] ” it appears that I already have a Sonnet Tempo-X SATA 4+4 card installed on my G5″

PC-Pitstop.com & datoptic.com both sell enclosures that will work with that card.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[John]

I have done exhaustive research on this topic. Caldigit will work great because it uses an 8x pci-e or x card depending on which pci system you have, but the cost is prohibitive. $3k x 2 if you want to edit uncompressed HD= $6k. Caldigit will not sell you a pci card alone, so i have been on a mission to find a compatible PCI-e 8x card, and the only hope is addonics is working on one. I spoke with Bill at addonics in sales, he knows this sata raid subject like no one i have ever spoken with bar none. His co already makes pci-x 8x cards but not for mac and not for pci-e, and they arleady make awesome and affordble towers with port multipliers that are praised with 5 stars at amug site where they put addonics boxes and etc with sonnet tempo 4x card and that system rocks, but it maxes out at 230-250 mb/sec, which is in itself incredible, but i need 260-280 for uncompresed hi-def so i have some head room, bill said the sonnet tempo will work but he said wait one month or two for addonics to test their 8x pci-e card for later model mac G5’s and macpros, whcih both have pci-e 8x slots. He said for a few hundred more dollars i can have an 8x card and conservatively 260-280 mb/sec for real, not in a fantasy, so although i cant wait, i will wait. The pkg will cost way less than caldigit and be rock solid so long as theri new card checks out, whcih it should. and their towers and port multipiers are as good as caldigits, that i have heard from 4 engineers who know their stuff. Ask for bill in sales at addonics and you will learn a lot of factual and conservative info. let him know i sent yoiu. you will not be let down, i was bouncing off of the ceiling when i spoke with him for at least 30 minutes. The drive to use is the seagate 7200 es barracuda, they are only $99 each at new egg. You can buy sets of drives and swap entire sets and have tons of affordable storage. the drives are 320 gigs each. you can go bigger but the cost per gig is super cheap and caldigit uses these exact drive, so there you go. check it out every which way. $6k or way less than half that amt for more storage adn total reliability. if you can live with 230-240 mb/sec, get the sonnet tempo 4x and go to addonics and new egg for the rest. I wish i could get a caldigit 8x card, but they want your money so they wont sell just the card. I dont work for anyone, no agenda, just done a hell of a lot of research and wanted to share it with you guys. i have a G5 quad, got on e of the last mac refurbs for only $2695, now they are out, they were returned unused and perfect from people wanting macpro cpu’s. I want the ibm chipset quad, so i am ecstatic. this system can edit 4-2-2 uncompressed hi-def if yoiur careful not to work with too many overlapping channels of hi-def video. check out this info and see,let me know if you learn of anything new or if yoiu can find a compatible 8x pci-e card, i will grab it immediatily if it chcecks out. john

[John]

spoke with michael Bean at amug (arizona mac user group) He corrected me. Here is the system he advises. you can go to amug.org and check out his exhaustive testing on many different configurations. He recommends the sonnet tempo e4p card, two sonnet fusion 500 Mp encloures, 8 drives, and you will achieve insanely fast speed for uncomp hi-def for only $2000. compared wth $6k for ths same thing from caldigit, and it is super easy to put together and totally tested. he says you can get over 700 mb/sec with two sonnet cards and a particular arrangement of drives. he uses a raid called sata pm. pm stands for port multiplication. Here is what he emailed me:

If you need 300MB/sec over the entire RAID even when the drive is more
than 80% full you will need two 500P enclosures.

Using two SATA PM enclosures with four hard drives each (instead of five)
provides a little slower average speed but not by as much as you might
think. You can see the 8 drive performance chart here:
https://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/8dual.jpg

If you need RAID redundancy this takes you to a RAID 5 setup:
https://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2322/
Disk Utility does not support RAID 5 so I use the RR2322 when I need
RAID 5. The RR2322 does not support SATA PM. It will not work
with the Fusion 500P enclosures. It requires direct connect enclosures
instead.

While RAID 5 is nice for protection I prefer to stay with
SATA PM. You could simply backup your work each day to another
striped RAID set or to individual 750GB-1TB hard drives. Another
option would be to use four SATA PM enclosures with 16 drives
in a RAID 10 configuration. This would actually provide the
most redundancy. In this setup, each hard drive in the 8 drive
striped RAID set has a mirror of itself in the second group of 8
hard drives.

Michael

[Shane Ross]

[john] “sonnet tempo e4p card, two sonnet fusion 500 Mp encloures, 8 drives, and you will achieve insanely fast speed for uncomp hi-def for only $2000.”

Uh…lemme look at that math:

$1000 for two Fusion 500Ps
$300 for the Tempo 4XP card
$600 for (8) 250GB Seagate drives
(not counting tax)

for 2TB.

Similiar config for the CalDigit…(priced on MacGuru.com)

1.25 TB S2VR HD (with card and drives included) $1299
1.25 TB S2VR HD (WITHOUT card, drives included) $1000

2.5 TB for $2299. NOT $6000. $6000 is for the units filled with 750GB drives.

What does the $300 get you? A GUI interface that e-mails you if a fan fails, or drives start overheating. World class tech support.

But, I’ll admit that the sonnet option is a nice one. I am not knocking it. You get what you pay for. CalDigit offers great customer support and they put out a solid product. Highly tested. THEY make sure all the components work. And if you have a problem, they respond instantly. But I also know many people who swear on Sonnet…on Burly…on Firmtek or Weibetech. Do what you want to do, we are just giving you options. If you don’t see the benefit of the cost increase, by all means, look somewhere else. Initially I built my own 2.5 TB unit for $1600. 5x500GB drives, a $90 PC case controller card and cabling. So I know…

And you did loads of research, which is great. I admire you for that. Most people wouldn’t go to those lengths. But many people just want to buy a unit that gives them everything, works, and has great tech support. That is CalDigits target market.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Shane Ross] “[john] “sonnet tempo e4p card, two sonnet fusion 500 Mp encloures, 8 drives, and you will achieve insanely fast speed for uncomp hi-def for only $2000.””

My problem is the two sonnet cards. You don’t need two cards to achieve “insanely fast speed.” You just stripe two units together or three or four, all on one card.

Plus tech support is all your own. I’ve never been a fan of build it yourself for anything as important as my media storage. Speed doesn’t mean anything if a unit fails and the only person to help you is yourself and hopefully some folks on the Cow. I like purchasing my media storage from folks who I know will be there when I need assistance.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[John]

my mistake- one sonnet card, 2 sonnet 500p enclosures, 10 drives for $1900 including shipping. You get 3.2 Tb with no redundency, or half trhat with. I prefer to back up every hour onto a non raided drive and dump when project is done. that way you get storage for all the drives instead of half. sonnet tech support is really great. check out amug.org and read michael beans tests, no one has tested as much as he has. sonnet tempo offers smart funcionality and that is significant, caldigit does not because they are on another platform, i am not an expert at that, something to do with silicon something, but i know the smart function is great, sonnet card is capable of 400 mb/sec with the above desc setup, enclosures run quiet and cool. No downside. michael bean is an absolute expert, no one could defeat him in a discussion on this subject, that is the truth, check it out at amug.org. I recommend joiining that gp, outstanding support on all things mac. worht the $39 a year. try pricing support with a qualified tech per hour, $39 is a bargain for sure. check it out yourself, i am very pleased.

[Shane Ross]

[john] “sonnet tempo offers smart funcionality and that is significant, caldigit does not because they are on another platform,”

Can you explain this? You asked if I say this in another thread and I have to admit that I haven’t seen you post where he mentions this. If you could re-post it, I’d appreciate it.

Another platform? What do you mean by that?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[John]

my system has 10- 320 gig es barracudas with two cases and one card. i paid $450 x2 for the cases on amazon, $270 for the sonet card on amazon- both free shipping, then i paid $89 per barracuda x 10 = $890 plus about $50 total for shiping for a grand total of $2110 for a 3.2 tb with no redundancy, which is better in my opinion- i just backup onto non raided sata 500 gig drives every hour, takes no time, drag and drop. the caldigit folks tried to bury me when i called them, i did not know about mac guru. I like the smart functionality with sonnet, caldigit does not have it and it is significant. The sonnet towers are quiet and cool, support is great, maybe not as great as caldigit. the caldigit 8x card can really kick with a ton of drives, it doesnt make a diff compared to sonnet with 10 or less drives. I am sorry they tried to bury me when i called them directly, that left a bad taste in my mouth, and i said to myself- there must be a cheaper and totally stable solution, adn i ran into michael bean at amug.org, who knows this subject better than anyone on the planet. he prefers the sonnet card due to the architecture and that smart funcionality. check out his exhaustive testing on amug.org and i am sure you will learn something, the guy is a genious, he is honest and not on any agendas in my opinion. i get 400+ mb/sec on my 3.2 tb with no redundancy, which i like very much and have no problems. if a drive fails, i lose no more than one hours worth of work, that is a great workflow, it is super quick to drag and drop to backup onto a non-raided sata.

[Samuel Adamski]

I’ve been extremely happy with my CalDigit S2VRHD.