[Craig Alan]

Right Display mode. Sorry.

My understanding is that the 5K could support it but

that there’s no port that can properly drive the 5K … yet.

I read somewhere that

should become possible with Thunderbolt 3.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Yes. Thanks.

I think Bob Zelin recommended the Highpoint dock. I’ll check again in article on backing up.

OWC now makes one but not a lot of feedback yet.
What do you use for backups? I guess i could use my voyager with usb 3.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks John. I’ll check it out but already have a lot of the Pegasus and mercury Elite enclosures.

As far as the system drive, I store all my media on external enclosures so on my current set up my system drive has less than 200GB on it. On the other hand, Apple sure makes replacing the drive difficult.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I was told the firmware on each drive within the unit must match. How could you tell what will match?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks Joe.

I was talking to OWC support and the only thing he added to the picture is that all drives within a raid need to be the same firmware. He said the enclosure does not determine what firmware to use but just that the internal drives match. Is this true and if so how can I determine what the firmware is on a drive during pre-sale? If it’s the same model drive will it match and if not how can i tell?

Can I see what firmware is on an existing drives if one has failed and the others are good? One of our R4s Raid 0 got corrupted data and Pegasus tech said that the utility report indicated that drive 3 (of the 4) had bad sectors. If I were to replace just that one I’d need to match the firmware yet I’m not sure if that 4 year old model is still sold. hitachi dec 2011 2TB hds72302 (but model number tends to include additional digits when I see these on-line). Plus not sure I want to invest in older drives rather than replacing them with 4TB ones.

[Joe Marler] “BTW here are some test results I did on the RAID 5 sync rate of the R4. In general I’d suggest not using a 128KB stripe size.

https://joema.smugmug.com/Computers/Pegasus-R4-RAID5-Sync-Rate/n-p2Nn4p/i-p...”

Sorry, above my head a bit. I assume stripe size is an option when you configure the raid using Promise utility?
If so what stripe size do you recommend? I’ve always left all options on the default settings. It took almost a day to format it and have already copied about 2.5TB of Aperture libraries onto it which also took a day since I was copying from a Mercury Elite raid using usb 2 because thunderbolt was no longer stable with these raids.

I’m beginning to suspect that one of the Yosemite updates messed up the Mercury raids thunderbolt compatibility because several of them are failing and they are newer than the Pegasus raids. I took one that would no longer mount even using usb and plugged it into to a newer iMac. It mounted. Then I updated OS X and Aperture on that newer iMac and when I rebooted the raid was not recognized. Now hardware failure can be and has been intermittent so who knows but its getting very frustrating.

So unless there is a real reason to create a new raid 5 using a different raid format and copying over from the one with stripe 128K, I’ll leave this as is and consider your suggestion as I reformat the rest of them.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks Joe!
Any advice on bare drives or are all the name brands pretty much solid?

Pegasus mentioned:

Toshiba 4TB 7200 rpm in our standard shipping configuration in Pegasus2 family.

But they only recommend drives they have tested and they do not test them all. Not sure it matters and they no longer test in pegasus thunderbolt 1 raids which we have.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Hi John,

Timely post for me. Configuring an iMac 5K.

Does FCP X use multicores?
Asking if the i7 config is worth the upgrade (see https://barefeats.com/imac5k16.html).

Would getting the minimum ram and using OWC ram chips be a good option?

(I would save the original apple chips for trouble shooting and repairs under warranty like I have done in the past)

Is this the best graphic card config?: AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5)

Is the fusion drive nearly as good as the flash options? I’m thinking either 1TB fusion or 500gig flash.

Any other advice for new iMac configure would be welcome.

I’m hoping that when Thunderbolt 3/USB-C MacPro comes out that using the iMac 5K in target disc mode will be an option to save $2000+ on a 5k monitor. Was hoping the new MacPro would be here by now.

In the real world how much faster is Thunderbolt 2 than 1 – I have a bunch of thunderbolt 1 raids that need to have their individual drives updated to 4TB x4.
And I plan on getting one of these:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/985459-REG/highpoint_5212_2_bay_thunderbolt_10gb_s_storage.html

for backups and archiving.

Any advice on brands of 4TB bare drives for all this.

Thanks for your posts – been helpful in the past.

[Craig Alan]

Does FCP X use this extra speed? Does resolve? I’ve had graphic cards in the past that improved some apps’ performance and were meaningless with others.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

[Bob Zelin] “The threat that in 2017, Thunderbolt 3 will be on these machines, making these expensive boxes (obsolete)”

so no early 2016 update that will include thunderbolt 3/usb-c?

That’s the MacPro I’d like.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Whether or not you store “original media” in the library (managed) or in its own folder elsewhere, can FCP X even use the original card files as “original media” . I had always thought these needed to be decoded (not sure that’s the correct term) into media files/clips that can be edited in FCP.

As soon as you import them FC creates original media where you set that library to store media.

My workflow is similar to yours but I copy the card files into a labeled folders rather than have FC create an archive. I think in the long run it is more likely that Panasonic or Sony or canon or black magic etc card structure will work with ANY future NLE than FCP’s archive.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.