[Debbi Mita]

For the memory, both smalldog and macsales are selling great memory.
As for the raid storage, take a look at internal or external hardware raid. If you shop around you may find somewhat lower prices but cover both internal and external drives, like caldigit’s raid card.

[Debbi Mita]

You can get the drives cheaper from third party. Apple has a whopping price list for extras. 🙂

RAID 0 – 2 drives share the content, it’s fast, but if one fails, all data is lost, requires identical size drives
RAID 1 – 2 drives share as copy, if one fails, all data can be rebuild by the other drive, requires identical size too, can be done by software or cheap RAID controllers in a fast way
RAID 10 – mixture of 1 & 0, fast, reliable, requires 4 identical drives
RAID 5 – needs at least 3 identical sized drives, total capacity is (n-1),
safe as long only one drive fails, if some day 2 drives break down, data will be completely gone.

Calculating the checksums for rebuilding requires really good and powerful hardware,
otherwise it’s really slow in writing, so for the video editing, I would count on hardware raid not software’s.

Apple has good hardware raid card, so does Caldigit.

https://www.apple.com/macpro/technology/storage.html
https://www.caldigit.com/raidcard/

As already mentioned, get larger drives, build an internal Raid 5 and have external backups
that if things happen, your loss is minimized.
Apple’s only support internal 4 drives.
If you use Caldigit’s raid card, you can utilize both 4 internal and 12 external drives. Caldigit’s is about 300 dollars cheaper and it supports RAID 6.

[Debbi Mita]

I was in macworld last week and saw caldigit’s new raid product, CalDigit RAID card. It’s an internal raid card that can connect to mac pro’s 4 drives and another 12 external drives. I am sure it can do RIAD-5 and RAID-0. The sales person told me it’s using an Intel CPU with 256 cache memory and is a true hardware raid card.

[Debbi Mita]

[Bob Vick] “. I see the Cal Digit is pretty attractive. And what cards are needed”

https://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-1ex.asp

it is to connet their SATA RAID to MBP.

[Debbi Mita]

talking about the backup and protection, just wanted to add my 2 cents here

4105 is 6,298.50+ 1295 for the host adapter
so the total investment for 4105 will be $76XX (for 2.5tb)
Caldigit’s 2.5tb is around 2999
so if buying one 4150, you can buy 2.5 S2VR HD 2.5TB
1 unit of 4105=2.5 units of s2vr hd

Hard disks fail too, but less. It’s all statistics : you have a certain risk that you lose data within x years.
The solution to this is redundancy, always have a physical BACKUP or RAID 1 (hardware RAID of course).

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=98&postid=862762

yes i have a very similar set up like walter’s but i am using caldigit’s DUO as back up device. it is much faster than FireWire, save my backup time.
also i can just buy the spare drives from caldigit when the drives are full…
you could systematically organize your work by drive sets without buying multiple units again and again.

Of course, it will be nicer if you have more RAID levels other than 0, 1, this may save some hard drive space to do redundancy.
But in reality, even RAID 6 cannot guarantee your data safe or “safer”.

Heat is death to hard drive, so how to keep drives cooler and run longer would be even more important than fancy RAID levels.

I found CalDigit’s S2VR and FireWire VR have excellent cooling system that
cool down the hard drives and entire unit. This quite important to all the external RAID or single drive, otherwise,
even you use RAID 3, RAID 5, RAID 6 or RAID 50, they are nothing but “RAID numbers”.
You cannot recover any data if they are all burned out.

“scratch disk” is like a working drive not for “backup”, it needs nothing but speed, reliability, and inexpensive. CalDigit’s S2VR HD is solid enough and in the right price bracket.

[Debbi Mita]

[msacci] “Shane, what would the CalDigit get me for twice the money of a Sonnet P500 and 750GB Seagate drives? I can put that together for under $2200. Since I already have the card.”

We have been running several CalDigit S2VR HD units in our Mac Pro. Performance is very stable and the entire system run smoothly.

Sonnet’s box is great, but you may need more drives (multiple boxes) to support your workflow. That means you may end up to pay more and you need more CPU and memory resouce to control your drives. Bob has a great review, you may want to check it out.

let me put down their sales pitch (copy from their site) and my own experience.

1. CalDigit has its own GUI (software) to monitor whole RAID, fan, temperature, email, voice notification, password protection…etc. Of course, you may or may not want to use these fancy functions, but again, you are dealing with multiple drives, not single drive, you have no way to monitor your drives or case in disk utility. this is kinda inconvenient, so with CalDigit’s software you can access the raid and monitor the status.

2. CalDigit’s S2VR HD can do hardware raid 0, 1, jbod and 10, but sonnet or other port multiplier box is only a non-raid sata box which give you nothing but individual drives. no raid function at all. That means CalDigit’s unit has built-in RAID engine. and their GUI can access this engine and config different raid levels.

3. They provide 3 year warranty.

4. Excellnet tech support and single vendor support – this is the most important to us. all we need just give them a call. their professional support guys did trouble shooting with us, very helpful and patiently.

5. another great advantage is their modular and industrial desing –
swappable fan, swappable power supply, server grade power supply, the case looks very sturdy and professional.

anyway, if you are looking for a pro gear for video editing, CalDigit’s S2VR is very inexpensive.
I hope this helps.

[Debbi Mita]

Like you buy a printer and keep buying cartridges when it is empty,
you can keep using the same chassis and buy additional trays/drives from them.
swap out the drives, archive them then buy new trays from caldigit. virtually you have unlimited capacity.

the cooling system is also very important. Keep it in mind, HEAT is DEATH to drive, you need a good fan or cooling system to keep drives cool 🙂

https://www.caldigit.com/FireWireVR.asp

and the price is very attractive.

[Debbi Mita]

We chose Caldigit’s S2VR duo.
https://www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp
Since it is a SATA RAID, you can free up the firewire port to capture device.
they also bundle 4-Port SATA card which makes whole solution very inexpensive.

S2VR Duo can reach 150MB+ per second, twice faster than any other firewire RAID,it it also provides hardware RAID 1 option or JBOD. excellent RAID disk. if you choose firwire interface, they also have FireWire version 2-bay RAID, FireWireVR.
https://www.caldigit.com/FireWireVR.asp

Both S2VR Duo and FireWireVR have removalbe drives design, so you could purchase extra drive pairs for offline storage.

If you are looking for the Best External Hardrive to use for rendering, CalDigit is your best bet.
many editors are posting their reviews and feedbacks online:
https://www.caldigit.com/Testimonials.asp
https://www.caldigit.com/Reviews.asp

hope this helps.

[Debbi Mita]

[marcus] “Just want to confirm if you have been able to capture 10bit Uncompress without a hitch, if not please explain.”

with CalDigit’s S2VR HD 5-bay SATA RAID, capture, playback, no problem.

[Debbi Mita]

if talking about Mac Pro, your best bet is CalDigit’s S2VR HD.
Cal Digit announced Mac Pro driver long time ago and has been proved by many pros here.
https://www.caldigit.com/ENews/10-25-2006.html

Maxx digital and other companies are selling it.
https://www.maxxdigital.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=60&products_id=367