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What are the most cost effective RAID-5 options?
A present I use a firewire 800 (dual drive) RAID-0 enclosure for my media. I got it from Other World Computing (macsals.com) It’s been great but I would like to look into getting higher speeds, support more real-time work in FCP and also add some safety, as RAID-0 is not redundant at all.
What are the most cost effective solutions for a RAID-5 setup? I don’t need super expensive, I actually need something that is very reasonably priced. I’ve heard that a 5 drive RAID-5 enclosure can handle around 240MB/s so I think that will be more than fast enough for my needs. So far the most reasonably priced one I have found is the Sonet Fusion product line. One thing to consider is I am on a G5 tower so I have PCI-X to interface with if I’m going to go the eSata route.
Will I see a huge performance difference if my media is stored on an eSata enclosure as apposed to a Firewire 800 enclosure?
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15 Replies
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My choice is the MaxxDigital ProAvio RAID units. We’re running two 8TB units (SAS/SATA) and they were very reasonably priced. Running almost 500MB/s in RAID 5. Prior to purchasing we had the unit in here for three weeks of testing during which time we pulled a drive completely out of the chassis while a 10bit Uncompressed HD capture was taking place. It performed perfectly and now we have the two units.
Sonnet and Dulce are also two very good providers of SATA RAID 5 solutions and we did test their products as well. Ultimately we went with Maxx because they had the best pricing and the fastest arrays.
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!
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LaCie has a Raid 5 box:
https://www.onsale.com/shop/detail.aspx?dpno=601806&store=onsale&source=BWBCJ&wt.mc_id=BWBCJ
I like CalDIgit HD Pro…but that isn’t “cost effective.” But it is DARN good.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
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Both are nice options. I wonder if I should look into purchasing the enclosure separate from the drives. I don’t recall where, but somewhere I found a hardware raid-5 enclosure that had eSata, Firewire 800 and Firewire 400 interfaces and was portable. I think it was a 5 drive enclosure.
So if I have this right, a 5 drive enclosure configured as a raid-5 will allow me to continue working if just 1 drive fails? Am I correct in assuming with a raid-5 that I lose the storage capacity of 1 (out of the 5 drives) to parity?
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[Luminosity] “So far the most reasonably priced one I have found is the Sonet Fusion product line. One thing to consider is I am on a G5 tower so I have PCI-X to interface with if I’m going to go the eSata route.
“
Hi
One little nugget of information on Sonnets website (hidden in the latest firmware upgrade download), is this about their PCI-X and older PCIe range of eSATA cards:
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Any thoughts on the MacGurus’ BurlyBox enclosures? So far I have only used Seagate and Maxtor 7200rpm drives as media drives. I’ve read about some people now using Hitachi drives. How do the Hitachi drives compare in terms of reliability?
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I don’t think Sonnet makes a RAID 5 card for PCI-X. For that you need to use a RocketRaid from High Point, either a 3320 or any of the 2200 series; or you can use an Areca 1681 card. I don’t know if the Areca is available yet.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
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I’m starting to see enclosures (like the G-tech G-SPEED eS) that come with 4 drives instead of 5 but they say they support Raid-5. Unfortunately the G-SPEED eS is only PCIe but I was wondering if there would be a big performance hit with 4 drives in RAID-5 instead of 5 drives in RAID-5?
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CalDigit HD Pro will soon offer a PCI-X option. That is what I am waiting on…I have an older G5 too.
The issue with getting bare cases and then populating it yourself, and getting a third party controller card is…if something fails, as it might inevitably do…you have to deal with THREE people to figure out what is wrong. And each one will point the finger at the other, so you’ll get the run around. With a single vendor making the case, with the drives provided by them, and controller card by them, if something goes wrong, you have ONE PLACE to call.
That, my friend, is big.
Shane
Littlefrog PostGETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
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[Shane Ross] “The issue with getting bare cases and then populating it yourself, and getting a third party controller card is…if something fails, as it might inevitably do…you have to deal with THREE people to figure out what is wrong. And each one will point the finger at the other,”
Exactly and I have seen this very issue happen so I never recommend anyone build their own storage solutions. I know a lot of folks like this option, but quite honestly, I really don’t want to have to deal with calling multiple people.
We had an issue with one of the MaxxDigitals and it turned out to be an Atto issue, but the folks at Maxx took care of the phone calls and testing on their end.
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!
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[Luminosity] “Any thoughts on the MacGurus’ BurlyBox enclosures? So far I have only used Seagate and Maxtor 7200rpm drives as media drives. I’ve read about some people now using Hitachi drives. How do the Hitachi drives compare in terms of reliability?”
CalDigit only uses Hitachi drives in their products.
Creating a Raid-5 on a Raid-0 budget and with equipment that is really meant for Raid-0 (Burley) can be frought with frustration. The “low budget” approach to raid-5 is not nearly as easy as the “low budget” approach to Raid-0, and you are very likely to end up spending enormous time and energy building and testing and retesting something that simply doesn’t live up to your expectations.
Buying the components ala carte is not a good idea when building Raid-5. At a minimum you need to get components that have all been thoroughly tested together and are known to work together seamlessly. Just because you like a particular brand of hard drives for one reason or another or because they are the right price, it doesn’t mean they will work seamlessly in every enclosure with every host controler card.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
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