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Slow Write/Read Time w/ G-Raid Drives
I bought two 2 TB G-Raid drives for a DVCProHD multicam project, but before I jumped headlong into the digitizing process, I checked out the drives’ performance using the AJA System test. The results were well, less than stellar with write speeds clocking 24mb/s and read times at 60mb/s. I tried partitioning the drives then recreating the raid and raiding both drives together. Neither option increased the drives performance. I proceeded to test the digitizing capabilities of the drives and the performed well enough as I didn’t encounter any dropped frames. When I created a 2 clip multicam clip though, I couldn’t switch cameras without encountering dropped frames. Adjusting my r/t settings didn’t improve the issue either. Am I missing a trick to optimizing the performance of these drives? Would anybody have suggestions for alternatives?
Thanks,
Erich Hoberg
iEdit CreativeDual 3.2 ghz quad core Mac Pro
8gb Ram -
9 Replies
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Partitioning the drive will make it slower. Are they G-Drives or G-RAID’s? You should get around 50 to 60MB/s write I would think.
If you have a FW400 device plugged in to your system, that slows the FW800 bus down to 400 so that will result in slower speeds.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
Walter:
These are the G-Raid 2 series 2 TB drives and I too fully expected to get between 50 & 60 mb/s out of them. I had heard about the FW 400 conflict, but thought it might only apply to laptops so I will try that. My only concern with that is the 30″ cinema display has a firewire 400 component built in to its power supply structure. Would you be aware of any ways around that? Does that same conflict apply to usb devices?
Thanks,
Erich
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Well, the G-Raid 2’s have an issue that actually Walter discovered….and one that I have been able to recreate. If you put one G-Raid on your system, it runs great. 60-70MB/s of read write. But as soon as you daisy chain another drive, or connect it somewhere else on the system, performance drops to 16 to 24MB/s. Doesn’t matter if you raid them both as a RAID 0, if they are both connected, performance drops.
This isn’t limited to the G-Raid 2s. ANY 2 drive hardware raided drive does this. LaCies do this, Maxtors…they all do. All but one. The CalDigti Firewire VR doesn’t have this issue. I have daisy chaind 4 of these and performance stays the same.
But you already have the G-Raids…so the best you can do is to use them one at a time. Stinks, but what else can you do? Firewire drives are really not the best for editing nowadays anyway. eSATA is a far better solution. Caldigit, Sonnet tech, Weibetech, Firmtek and Macgurus.com all have eSATA solutions.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
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[Erich Hoberg] “These are the G-Raid 2 series 2 TB drives”
Ah the G-RAID 2 series. You can’t daisy chain them. I had to ship two of them back because the speeds dropped. Forgot about that actually.
You can daisy chain 2 LaCie’s just fine or 2 original G-Raid units.
I’m surprised G-Tech hasn’t fixed this issue yet as I found this issue at least 6 months ago.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
Just curious, could he use a firewire pci card, putting the units on separate busses?
Regards,
David -
Yes, if he got another Firewire bus, then the drives would be on separate buses and thus not suffer this issue. Shouldn’t anyway.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
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Indeed. Hooking one up via the port on the rear and hooking the other one up via the port on the front did dramatically improve the drives’ performance. They still didn’t support the 3 streams of DVCProHD as touted on both on the product’s page and on the box so they will be returned. I plan on getting a raid for future projects, but given my timeframe, I think off-lining this project would be best.
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Indeed. Hooking one up via the port on the rear and hooking the other one up via the port on the front did dramatically improve the drives’ performance. They still didn’t support the 3 streams of DVCProHD as touted on both on the product’s page and on the box so they will be returned. I plan on getting a raid for future projects, but given my timeframe, I think off-lining this project would be best. Thanks for everyone’s take regarding this.
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[Erich Hoberg] “Hooking one up via the port on the rear and hooking the other one up via the port on the front did dramatically improve the drives’ performance. They still didn’t support the 3 streams of DVCProHD as touted on both on the product’s page and on the box so they will be returned.”
That’s because those ports are still on the same firewire bus. All Macs, irregardless of model, have one firewire bus. Even though they have more than one firewire port, those are still on the same bus. So your drive performance is still lacking. You need to get a separate firewire card to get a second bus.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.lfhd.net
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