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Why a RAID for motion graphics?
Would someone please explain to me the purpose of using an external RAID for motion graphics use – This is the first and only place I’ve ever worked so I haven’t been exposed to other workflows, but since working here I have not been piped into the machine room so I depend on editors to digitize quicktimes for me. This has worked fine up until this point but now I’m upgrading and the sales rep is trying to sell me on a RAID setup – what would the benefit be of going down this road? I’d like to better understand so I can make an educated decision – especially if a couple grand is in play
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5 Replies
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Hi Travis,
Raid array’s have many benefits from protection of data to greater bandwidth – all depends on the type of raid array you go with..Raid 0 (striped drives) is basically for greater bandwidth. The data is split into fragments which are stored on the drives that make up the array.. But if one disk fails, you loose all data..
Other raid arrays give some protection against failed drives but it shouldn’t replace backing up your data..
Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks
–KTFA
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How big is this RAID for a couple grand. Essentially, your data is better protected in the event of a crash, often by making a redundant duplication. You’ll also have a much faster read/write from the drive depending on the type of RAID.
The explanation has already been written for you, you just have to look for it in the right place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks
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Thanks for your replies guys – I understand that the RAID offers better data protection with redundancy but up until this point the RAID I have has been used solely for project data backup. Rather than spend a few grand on a new RAID and card for this new system I was going to just get a couple redundant internal drives to use as project backup – seems much cheaper – what advantage would an external RAID offer over this solution? faster access? What advantage does keeping and working with video off a RAID offer over say working from the desktop?
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a raid that is fast enough to capture uncompressed media would allow you to capture media yourself, and possibly at a higher quality than your editors can provide. you wouldn’t need to then transfer the media files from there machine to your machine.
it’s also recommended that you have your media on a separate drive and controller than your disk cache to prevent a data bottleneck as ae read and writes cache files while rendering/writing the media files.
how fast of a media drive you need, depends on what you are doing (and your workflow). if you are fine with how things are being done right now (editors capturing for you), then having a media drive that is just a large firewire drive or raid may be all you need. if you want to capture uncompressed sd, then a single sata2 drive and sata2 host adapter (of whichever pci flavor you have) should be fine. if you want uncompressed hd, then your looking at a 4-8 drive sata2 raid (i think you need a setup that is capable of 320mbits/sec sustained read/write) with a separate host adapter….
a highend raid may not help ae render much faster, but it may give you better options for capture and redundancy.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
wow – thats a big help Kevin – since I typically don’t capture my own video it looks like the RAID is a road i dont need to go down at the moment – that has helped clear it up for me –
thanks again
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