Some RAID questions

[Bob Flood]

Alex

I’ve often wondered whether or not you should keep your project files etc on the same drive as the media. Is that generally considered a bad idea? If so, why

I am not sure if it matters anymore as far as throughput goes, but one thing for certain, if your media drives go down, and your project is on there too, you are Hosed.

that being said, i do some work for a company that gives every project its own half Tb or 1 Tb drive, and they keep everything on it, project, media, renders.

What does ghosting a system drive mean? Why does not doing it mean you’re up and running more slowly?

Ghosting refers to a program by norton/symantec called, appropriately enough, Ghost. it makes a true, bootable clone of the system drive that you can simply slide in, or restart with, and you are up
and running. However, i think thats all you can do ie you can only clone your system drive, and cant back up any other drive on there, but as i am doing research on this, i caould be mistaken

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Alex Elkins]

[Bob flood] “it makes a true, bootable clone of the system drive that you can simply slide in, or restart with, and you are up
and running.”
So kind of like you tell it to copy the contents of your boot drive when it’s working ok in case there’s a failure five minutes later? A bit like Preference Manager??
So presumably the benefit of doing that is you don’t need to buy a backup internal drive, is that right?

[Bob Flood]

Alex

the “ghost” is on a drive, preferably one just like the system drive.
so its a backup,

and i would still want to have a backup of my project info etc, so i would still get a drive for the internal slot.

so now you have 4, System, Secondary, Ghost, and Backup

yeah its 4 drives but they are so cheap right now.

and please, as far as ghost goes, do not make any decisions based on waht i say as i do not know much about it (enough to be dangerous)

Seriously, go the the norton web site and look into it. google norton and you will find it!

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Anne Mills]

Hello,

I just want to help out and further clarify the difference between hard ware and software RAIDs because the performance level does differ between the two.

When ever you are having doubts about whether it is a hardware RAID ask the vendor two questions Does it have and independent CPU and Does it have an independent cache memory? If the answer is yes to both questions you know you are dealing with a hardware RAID.

Hardware RAIDs have a dedicated CPU this frees up the host system CPU resources to make applications more efficient. Software RAID makes the host work harder because you’re using the host CPU

If it is RAID 5, it does not necessarily mean it is a hardware RAID, there are products that support RAID 5 and are software RAIDs.

Hope this helps!

[Bob Flood]

Anne

thanx

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks Anne,

Could you clarify for me then whether any or all of the systems I mentioned in my original post are indeed hardware RAIDS? I don’t know how familiar you may be with any of them, but if you can shed some light that’d be great.

Many thanks,
Alex

[Anne Mills]

Alex

I believe both the Evo2 and CalDigit are hardware RAIDs. I just want to reiterate that RAID 5 doesn’t equal a hardware RAID. I do recommend questioning the vendor just to see how competent they are in their product knowledge. It also helps to see who you’re dealing with and how much they know about video editing so you can get the proper support.

-Anne

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks Anne, that’s all good advice. Much appreciated.