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Two 500GB or One 1TB?
I posted this over on the G-Tech forum, but figures I would try here as well, as I haven’t gotten any bites over there.
I was wondering, is there a performance advantage of getting two G-SATA or G-RAID2 arrays with a 500GB capacity and striping them together, or would it be the same as getting one 1TB array? I use both FCP and Avid, but read somewhere that Avid prefers multiple smaller drives over fewer large drives.
Also, it seems to me that price and performance are almost identical between the G-RAID2 and G-SATA based on the G-Tech website (you basically get 1 more stream of RT for a given resolution). What would be the advantage of getting the G-RAID2 when the G-SATA gives you slightly better performance for the same price?
Thanks.
Trip
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10 Replies
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Simply, the more drives you have in a raid set-up, the faster the raid will be.
Factors to consider are controller card, drive speeds, so on…
If drive specs are the same, running through the same controller card, 2 500gig drives striped in raid0 will perform faster than 1 1-tera drive.I just picked up a 2-tera G-Speed eS. It boasts read speeds up to 230mbs. I can later add a second 2-tera G-Speed eS stack and stripe it with my existing stack for a little less than double performance.
Colin McQuillan
Vancouver BC -
I do understand the point about more drives being faster, which would definitely point me in the direction of two or more 500GB drives striped together. But how about the difference between the G-RAID2 and G-SATA? They seem to be almost identical performance-wise, with the only real difference being FW800 vs. PCIe SATA. Is there something I’m not realizing?
Thanks for responding, by the way.
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The main difference between the two drives you’ve listed is the connectivity.
The G-Sata drive requires you to instal a card (that comes with the drive) to allow the sata connection, and will transfer data at 135 MB/second.
The G-Raid2 can be connected via conventional usb 2.0, FW400 or FW800 ports, but limits data transfer to a max of approx. 80MBs
thats why you can handle more streams of video with the G-Sata, ’cause the SATA connection will allow more data flow. You will also get improved real-time playback with the faster G-Sata drive.
Colin McQuillan
Vancouver BC -
It was my understanding that, to get the best performance out of the FW800, I would need to buy an additional FW800 bus card, as I will inevitably have other FW800 devices hooked up to my computer at one time or another and don’t want them to have to share a data stream with the media storage. Is this not correct? If it is, wouldn’t that basically be the same as having to buy a PCIe adapter?
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The only problem with the extra bus is that it uses up a slot, if you have extra, it’s a good thing.
Have a wonderful day.
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[ventureforth] “It was my understanding that, to get the best performance out of the FW800, I would need to buy an additional FW800 bus card, as I will inevitably have other FW800 devices hooked up to my computer at one time or another and don’t want them to have to share a data stream with the media storage.”
My advice to you is to quit investing firewire devices. SATA is much more rugged and reliable, and so much faster. Any investment you make in firewire simply takes you further down a very limited path. Meanwhile, you’re going to be cutting more and more HD, and any investment in SATA drives will be useful to that end well into the future.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Another consideration is the capacity of the system. If you only have 8 lanes available for hard drives and you fill them with 500’s you limit yourself to 4TB. If you fill them with 1000’s you can go to 8TB. It’s kinda like buying ram, if you fill your slots with smaller ones it could come back and bite you further down the road when you have to toss the small ones to make room for the bigger ones.
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In that case, am I shooting myself in the foot by investing in smaller SATA drives like the G-SATA instead of just ponying up for one of the GSPEEDes arrays? Twice the price, so tough to swallow, but a bit more future-proof and I can always expand the capacity by swapping out drives in the future. Still, I’ve always been of the philosophy that you get what you need for a given project, nothing less and nothing more (or maybe a little bit more), and for this project, I’m doing SD only and 1TB is more than enough storage for what I need and the speed of the G-SATA is more than enough for the job. But, again, I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot, or pay more in the end by investing incrementally in inferior technology. Does that make sense? It’s late…so I’m not entirely sure if it does. At any rate, thanks to all who chimed in.
Trip Gould
Editor – Composer – Professor -
[Colin McQ] “The G-Raid2 can be connected via conventional usb 2.0, FW400 or FW800 ports, but limits data transfer to a max of approx. 80MBs”
Please note, if you daisy chain two or more G-Raid 2 drives, performance will DROP CONSIDERABLY. From 65-80MB/s, to 16MB/s. The only solution would be to get a firewire card and add a FW bus.
But, that being said, Firewire is fading as the choice for editing media. Never was supported by Apple, but it has worked. eSATA is faster, and as much as FW800…so why not go that route? CalDigit S2VR Duo, Dulcesystems, Sonnet…all offer good eSATA solutions.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.lfhd.net -
Just an update…I decided to go with the CalDigit S2VRDUO 1TB solution. It should be here in about a week. Thanks for all of your feedback.
Trip Gould
Editor – Composer – Professor
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