[Chris Jones]

That unit looks like it might work for me.

Thanks! 🙂

[Chris Jones]

Jon,

That does look interesting.

With the 3/G chassis and only 4 drives; what kind of read/write speeds would I see?

[Chris Jones]

Thanks for the good advice. Unfortunately I’m not getting paid for what I’m doing (it would be nice). I’m working on my own 16mm feature so It’s all coming out of my pocket.

Right now I’m just paying to learn… down the road of course hopefully it will pay off 🙂

[Chris Jones]

I had been leaning toward the Highpoint 2722 setup but after discovering the RAID forum on Creative Cow yesterday and reading through it a bit – I found a lot of dissatisfaction with the Highpoint product.

“I won’t contribute to the many Rocketraid trials & tribulations (except to say we would never have made it to orbit with this rocket)”

“Highpoint has no support and a confusing web interface which you’re aware of already.”

“You have already seen what happens when you stick with the Highpoint.”

Since I’ve never set up a RAID before and my budget forces me to set it up myself, I’m a bit nervous to start with something which might prove problematic.

I did call both Highpoint and ATTO to see what the tech support was like; there was no question that ATTO would be able to help me out if I ran into problems. Highpoint I’m not so sure.

I’ll post over in the Cow’s RAID area but if anyone else here has anything good to say about the Highpoint setup I’d be interested to hear since I’ll be using it with Resolve and people here understand my needs.

Thanks again!

[Chris Jones]

[Robert Houllahan] “Do you have a eSata enclosure now?”

I have 2 copies of the film’s DPX files (24TB total) on Western Digital 1.5TB internal drives and used a eSATA dock: Voyager Q Quad Interface.

I have to be very careful with them, but so far it has worked very well and it saved a lot of money at a time when I was spending a lot on scanning.

I’m also starting to look into the more expensive setup you recommended 6 months ago – if it’s possible to put together a scaled down version.

The ATTO R680 sounds reliable. I only have 1 free PCI slot though (after I remove the eSATA card) so I can’t use a multiplier. Do I need a multiplier with the R680? By the way… what exactly does a multiplier do? 🙂

Would something like this be possible?

R680 $1000.00
8 Disk Enclosure $500.00
4 2TB drives $800.00 (to start)

Thanks again for your help!

[Chris Jones]

Thanks for the answers.

Sounds like Apple is losing people even if they do come out with a new Mac Pro.

The hardware I’m looking at buying is either the Tangent Wave or the MC Color (leaning towards the MC Color because I don’t have much desk space) Does anyone know if they will work on a PC also?

Also I need to set up a RAID and I’m not sure how much of that could be used on a PC – The hard drives could be formatted but I’m not sure what I really need yet.

[Chris Jones]

FCP7 Works fine but I didn’t like having to connect to my viewing monitor using the decklink card instead using it as an extended monitor.

You have to constantly change the Blackmagic output settings whenever your sequence settings change instead of just setting output to “Preview” for everything. Also, I liked taking full screen screenshots in FCP and couldn’t after connecting through the decklink card.

You can still connect if you have a third monitor for scopes, which I do, but it was a cheap monitor. In the end I switch the cables when working with FCP and Resolve. I prefer to connect to my viewing/grading monitor using “preview” over the decklink card when editing in FCP.

But in direct answer to your question. I have never had a problem running FCP and 2 cards.

[Chris Jones]

I have installed Resolve and a Quadro 4000 GPU also (with a GT120 as the main card) . I have not started to use Resolve yet but have noticed when I do run it that it is noisy. When I did do a little experimenting with grading I did think to myself “this is pretty slow”.

Resolve does say the Quadro is running as a GPU and everything is installed to Blackmagic’s specs.

I downloaded the CUDA-Z but don’t really know what the numbers are telling me. This is what I’m getting without Resolve running.

Single-precision Float 482 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float 185 Gflop/s
32-bit Interer 242 Giop/s
24-bit Interer 242 Giop/s

For the GT120

Single-precision Float 88 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float NOT SUPPORTED Gflop/s
32-bit Interer 17 Giop/s
24-bit Interer 88 Giop/s

[Chris Jones]

WOW! Great info! Thank You!

That gives me a very good place to start.

I have a new question. The “multiplier” looks like it uses a PCI slot. I can only afford 1 PCI slot for the RAID (I can’t afford a Cubix at the moment)

Do all RAID setups need a Multiplier? Looking at this option, it looks like it does not need one?

“Rocket Raid 2722 + Sans Digital 8-Bay SAS/Sata enclosure $500.00 8 2Tb enterprise Drives $1400.0”