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SATA vs FW 800
Hey guys,
We still are trying to figure out the best storage solution for our budget.
We currently have
G5 dual 2.7
Black Magic Decklink HD Dualink (in the 133 slot)
Huge U320
PCI-UL4D scsi cardWe would like to add another storage solution for our SD stuff. Wondering if adding a SATA II RAID with the PCI-X would cause any performance problems with UL4D card or the Black Magic card. I see that the SATA II RAIDs are way faster than a FW 800.
We were not going to digitize in 10bit to the additional drive, but if the SATA if fast enough we may just do that.
Just wondering what your thoughts were on this. I did see the ‘Roll your own SATA raid” post and that is something we could do.
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4 Replies
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if you are in the US, call Ron Amborn at Maxx Digital (714) 374 4944. He is a good source for SATA complete systems. You can ABSOLUTELY run an ATTO UL4D card, a BMD card and a SATA card in the same chassis. Two SATA drives stripped in RAID 0 will do 8 and 10 bit SDI uncompressed and DVCProHD. You CANNOT use a single SATA drive. Put the BMD card in the PCI-X slot (slot 5), and the ATTO and SATA cards in slots 3 and 4. You can start with the cheap Firmtek 2 port SATA card, and 2 500 Gig SATA drives to give you 1 Terabyte of SATA storage. In the future, as you get more comftorable with this, you can go to the Sonnet X4P card, which uses the more expensive ($500) port multiplier chassis, which you can stick 5 drives into – for a total of 2.5 terabytes per box. You can plug in 4 boxes to this card, for a total of 10 terabytes. But if you want to start small, 2 SATA drives in the Firmtek box, with the 2 port SATA card from Firmtek will work just fine – and 1 TB of storage is a nice way to start for just over $1000.
Bob Zelin
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Thanks Bob!! I have used scsi drives for so long that I am a little overwhelmed trying to figure out a cost effect solution to our storage issues as the company grows.
We would love to get another HUGE U320 2.7 TB but at $9000 a pop, it is just something we can’t afford right now.
The SATA RAID seemed to me to be the way to go.
Thanks again!
Michelle
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Is there a SATA solution for some sort of RAID-3 or 5 data protection?
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yes, but currently it relies on the hardware based on the horrible Highpoint Rocket Raid card series. The stable SATA products that actually work (that you see on these user forums, and that are OEM’ed by G-Tech, ProMax, Lacie, etc) are from Firmtek, and Sonnet. Adaptec, SIIG, Initio, and Aacard are also making SATA host controllers, but these are not multiport, and these do not have the RAID feature.
As I have often stated on these forums, I have installed numerous SATA arrays (all RAID 0) since April 2005, I to date, I have NEVER seen ONE SATA drive fail. Of course, because I have just said this, they will all drop dead next month, but so far, I would not worry about RAID 5 protection, like we used to with the ATA drives we have seen in other arrays.
Bob Zelin
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