David Roth weiss
Forum Replies Created
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[walter biscardi] “I don’t compromise at all when it comes to my media storage. I’ll save money elsewhere, but not with the arrays.”
Walter,
You make the assumption that saving money by building one’s own raid implies compromise, and that simply isn’t a valid argument. In fact, since many of the companies that sell pre-configured raids use cheap consumer-level hard drives, it could be argued that home-grown raids, built with enterprise-level hard drives, may be more reliable and a better value.
As you may recall, I had a conversation about this very subject with Mike, from LaCie. Mike stated that, while the industry had earlier used enterprise-level drives with five-year warranties, for the most part, it was now the practice by most, including LaCie, to use consumer-level drives with just a one year warranty. This may seem unimportant to you, as you don’t like to look under the hood, but in fact the difference between consumer and enterprise level hard drives is vast. Data stored on enterprise level drives can be insured by corporations with a budget for such things, while data stored on consumer level drives cannot be insured.
It is obvious from your posts Walter that you are not comfortable building your own raids, and so, I would suggest that your arguments against home-built raid configurations may be more of a reflection of that than anything.
DRW
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On the other side of that discussion, in a more years in this than Walter, I’ve never bought a fully configured raid setup.
Building a raid that works is not rocket science by a long shot, especially with SATA drives and hot swappable drive trays. If you can use a screwdriver to mount the drives, and you can slide them in where they belong (they only go in one way), you’re done, at least in in terms of the hardware. The software aspect, using Apple Drive Utility, is incredibly simple and lierally takes 2-minutes.
DRW
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That can be made to work, however, the weak link is all the internal SATA cables you’ll need. Check out this great inexpensive 4-bay setup https://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2eEN4/
they have done all the the design work for you, and the hot swap drives plug directly into the backplane with no internal cables whatsoever.Search for my post from January entiled ROLL YOUR OWN LOW-COST 1.2 TERRABYTE SATA, and you will also find out about the best drives availbale for the dough.
DRW
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Al,
The readability of white text against picture is affected by the luminance of the BG image more than anything else. You have to create more contrast between the two elements, and there are only a few ways to do that.
1. Lower the luminance of the BG.
2. Add a dark drop shadow behind the text.
3. Add a dark edge to the text.
4. Add a colored lower-thirds BG between the text and the video.
Adding the edge should help considerably. If you are not completely satisfied with your control of the drop shadow, you can always copy your title, color it black, and place on a second video layer beneath the white layer. You then have complete control of the black layer uisng the motion controls and you can resize, offset, and change its opacity in infinte ways.
DRW
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Buy yourself an Epson R220 printer for $88 and inkjet printable DVDs. The printer does a fabulous job, and almost every pro I know has one or more. Available at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16828103180. And, it would be at home “duplication,” not replication.
DRW
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Guy,
Two drives striped counts as a real raid for SD DV. With two identical drives you certainly should be getting about 60 – 70 Mbps. That should do you fine for a while.
DRW
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Guy,
I hate to be the tider of bad news, but…
First, you got the wrong drives. The Diamondmax drives are just consumer level crap, with just a one year warranty. You should have bought their Maxline III “enterpise level” drives, which cost no more, and have a 5-year warranty. I’ve written several posts about them here. Newegg.com sells the 300gb drives for $130 and the 250gb drives for $99.
Second, striping two different sized drives together creates issues in most cases. Its possible that erasing you drives again in Disk Utility and restripping may rectify the issue and get you up to speed, but probably not.
Again, I’m sorry to deliver bad news, but you deserve to get value for your money.
DRW
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There should be virtually no difference at all. However, even a 100% digital clone from one tape to another has some minor, but inconsequential loss.
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Good luck. In all honesty, the HighPoint cards have been reported as “problematic.” Do Let us know how it goes.
DRW
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Sonnet was supposed to release one in February. Don’t know if its out yet.