System Test

[Bob Zelin]

you have problems with both drive arrays. You MUST specify exactly what Sonnet product you have – the RAID 0 port multipler product, or the new RAID 5 product that uses the ATTO card – replies below –

You write –
I am having some RAID issues. I have an PCIe Sonnet card in my MacPro going via external eSATA to an 8 bay enclosure. I have 2 sets of striped 750’s. One pair does about 130 mb/s while the other does about 90. They both have lots of space on them. They are the same brand as well.
Is this a pretty good number for an eSATA? It never feels fast enough when working in 10 bit.
Why would one pair be so much slower?

REPLY –
The new Sonnet RAID 5 SAS/SATA array is VERY VERY fast. I have no idea of what 8 bay enclosure you have. I ASSUME that you have a Sonnet X4P or Sonnet E4P card, but you have not told me what model # you have. If you are on a MAC Pro, it’s a Sonnet E4P. If you have the new RAID 5 enclosure, you have the ATTO R380 card.

The new R380 card will do over 500Mb/sec with 8 drives. The older Sonnet E4P with 4 drives (RAID 0) will do over 200Mb/sec.

A single SATA drive in your MAC Pro will do about 70Mb/sec. Two SATA drives in your MAC Pro stripped RAID 0 will do over 128Mb/sec.

So there is something DEFINATELY wrong with your system. Until you tell me the EXACT model #’s of your Sonnet SATA host card, the name of the drive box you are using, the striping utility you are using, and the brand of the disk drives, I cannot help you further.

Bob Zelin

[Ri Stewart]

Thanks for your assistance Bob.

The Mac is a 2.8 8 Core. 6g ram
The card is a Sonnet E4P.
The enclosure is a Sansdigital TR8M.
The drives are (2) sets of Western Digital 750gb/7200 rpm WD7500AAKS
They are striped in Mac Disk Utility as a “striped raid”.

Aja System Test (with 720p 10 bit/128mb)
Array 1 w
124.3/s Write
126.7 mb/s Read

Array 2
102.9mb/s Write
104.6 mb/s Read

BlueDot Productions
https://www.bluedotproductions.org

[Bob Zelin]

Read this review on NewEgg –
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111051

Worth Every Cent
Reviewed By: on 12/14/2008 Tech Level: high – Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
Pros: I have loaded this beast with 8 1TB Seagate Drives, and there is no problem with heat at all (all holding steady at 33c). These drives were all previously in USB enclosures, and the speed was around 12-15 MB/s. After moving the drives to this enclosure, the speeds are averaging 85MB/s. A great improvement for doing digital editing.

REPLY – pretty funny. A single 1TB Seagate drive will do about 70Mb/sec. The Sonnet E4P is a teriffic card and will do 210Mb/sec with only 5 drives in a SONNET 5 bay PORT MULTIPLER ENCLOSURE.
I don’t know anything about the SansDigital, but from your results, and from the review above, I can conclude that it’s a piece of S#$%.
You have good drives, and a great SATA host controller. Buy the correct enclosure, and you will be in good shape.

ALSO – change the AJA System Test to 1920×1080 RGB, and do a 2 Gig file size. What are your results now ? If they have not dramatically increased, replace your chassis for your drives.

ALSO –
from the SansDigital Website –
https://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid/tr8mb.html

Support PC, MAC and Linux. (Please note that the host adapter card is based on Silicon Image chipset, which currently only support up to MAC OS 10.5.1 by Silicon Image.)

Bob Zelin

[Ri Stewart]

Thanks for your brutal honesty.

I thought it may be a cheaper solution for a low budget film maker like myself. I thought the bottle neck would be the card or the drive, not the port multiplier!

Looking initially at a $3k raid, I had to figure out how to build one, and did so for under $1k. Once again, it appears we get what we pay for.

Perhaps on the next project, eh?

BlueDot Productions
https://www.bluedotproductions.org

[Bob Zelin]

plug 3 of your SATA drives directly into your MAC Pro, and watch your performance dramatically increase.

Bob Zelin