[Jim Curtis]

Well you got me all excited for a few minutes, but as I read their site spex and the PDFs including disk compatibility chart, it appears this is a 3Gbs box that only takes 3Gbs drives.

They brag about their own HBA achieving “a stunning” 400 MBs with RAID 0. That’s not really very impressive.

Steve recently pointed out that their 6Gbs products are seeing 1.5 Gbs read/writes. That is impressive.

I’d never heard of this company, but the enclosure looks well made. I has three fans, which is a nice touch. It appears they’re HQ’ed and manufactured in Taiwan. They have one distributor in CA. So, I’d have concerns about support. I’ll keep an eye on them. Thanks for bringing them to our attention. They do claim this box is for video.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.3; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (8.0.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I know this makes me look like a rube, but I’ve been using 8 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS drives in my RAID 5 for a month and a half now. My ATTO Configuration Tool does a Media Scan with Verify every night at 2 AM, and after 44 scans, it’s reported 0 errors on all 8 drives. However, these are enterprise drives.

I also had 8 of the infamous 7200.11 Seagates in my RAID before this, and they performed admirably for over a year. I had one go bad early, under warranty. But, other than that, no problems.

From what I read on the Seagate site, if you had one of the “bad” 7200.11 drives, it was a “brick,” or IOW, wouldn’t function at all. The real problem with that fiasco, as I recall it, was that Seagate denied there was a problem for months, to great outcry, before they admitted and addressed the problem, and released firmware updates (PC only, which further infuriated Mac customers). It was a PR nightmare for Seagate, and as you can see here, some people are still upset with Seagate’s poor response, and not getting over it any time soon.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.3; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (8.0.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

Hi Steve,
If you followed my thread, you’ll find that I’m still a babe in the woods about RAID. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have posted here before I bought anything RAID-related.

Anyway, I already have the R680 card, and it’s been working fine for a few months. I tried to return it to Backupworks in exchange for the R380 (after reading Bob’s advice), but my sales rep assured me, saying that he was getting his info direct from ATTO, that the R680 would give me equal performance. He suggested I keep the R680, which I did.

I’m getting read/writes in the 700 MBs range, depending on the AJA Hardware Test, with 8 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS drives in RAID 5. This is with a 3Gbs chassis. (I wasn’t getting much more than 500-600 with my old SATA drives and the HPT RR3522 card.)

I’d been corresponding with an engineer from ARECA about their 6Gbs chassis – one of the only desktop RAID chassis on the market, if you can find one – and he told me that even with a 6Gbs chassis, I shouldn’t expect much faster read/writes at RAID 5.

Do you have any thoughts on that statement?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.3; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (8.0.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I got excited for a moment, until I found nothing in the review or on the manufacturer’s site about compatibility with 6Gb/s drives. This line appears to be for 3Gb/s compatibility.

Oh well, thanks for the link, though. I’ll keep an eye on this company for a new 6Gb/s product. The design of their products looks sturdy, I love the 3-year warranty, and it’s designed to be visually compatible with the MacPro.

In the meantime, I made some more inroads on what is available and 6GB/s. I’ve learned the Areca ARC-8040 has RAID control built into the chassis firmware, and so that’s some overkill for those using full-featured RAID cards like the ATTO R380 and R680. I learned Areca has a “dummy JBOD” box as well, that would be better suited for one of these HBAs: the ARC-4036. So, what I’d like and could use exists, but I can’t find anybody selling it!

Even if I could, I’d be more comfortable buying from a US firm, simply because of east access to warranty service, if needed. Because the Arecas are from Taiwan, and have such scant US presence via VARs, I’m hesitating to be that much of a pioneer. I’m fairly confident that a plethora of 6Gb/s chassis will be fairly commonplace around early 2011.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.6.3; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (8.0.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

After doing some more web surfing, I’ve discovered two 8-drive desktop (tower) enclosures specced for 6Gbs:

Areca ARC-8040 ($2090 and $2250 from Acme and NewEgg, respectively),
and the SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID TR8XP ($680 from NewEgg).

The Areca site is demonstrating (AJA System Test) over 1Gb/s read & writes using SAS drives in RAID 5.

Dell has a rack-mount 6Gbs enclosure, but no desktop tower. Other than that 6Bbs backplanes seem to be few and far between at this point. Curious, considering the plethora of 6Gbs HBAs that are showing up.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I have new results to post:

I bought (9) 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS drives and installed 8 of them in my Enhance E8 MS chassis (It has a 3Gb backplane.).* I installed the ATTO R680. After setting up a RAID 5 and making (4) 3.5 TB partitions, I ran AJA System Test on all four partitions.

* [One drive arrived defective, and is on it’s way back to Amazon for a free replacement, including two-way shipping. I’ve learned it’s advisable to have a spare drive on hand. When running a degraded RAID 5, one is on pins and needles until a replacement is inserted and the rebuild is complete.]

I’m getting an average of 600-700 Mb/sec reads on most of the AJA tests – and over 1000 on some of them, and an average of 600 Mb/s writes on all partitions.

It’s an improvement of around 200 Mb/s from my 1 TB SATA drives and the RR3340 card, where I was getting in the 400 Mb/s range for reads & writes.

I loaded up a project with 2K 24FPS ProRes HQ source files (transcoded from RED RAW). The timeline scrolls like butter, and I am getting two PIP real time streams with no frames dropped. With three PIP streams, sequences play at full resolution, but the frame rate drops to what looks like 12 fps (This is on a 2008 octo Mac Pro.).

I’m aware I have a bottleneck here: my 3Gb chassis. So, I’m hoping to see even better performance with a 6 Gb chassis, when a reasonably priced and quiet one comes out. If anybody hears of one, please pass that info along.

Until then, I’m satisfied with a roughly 50% increase in I/O, a better than doubling of storage capacity, and most of all, the peace of mind that comes with using a controller from a top-tier company.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I already bought the card. It was only $119 more than the R380, so I can tolerate the slower speeds until Enhance comes out with either a 6G backplane update kit for my E8, or I have to buy a new chassis.

I installed the R680 for about a week. It worked at around 480 Mb/s with my SATA drives for about five days, then started hiccuping and telling me a drive was bad and then started giving me repeated kernel panics. I yanked it and re-installed the previously installed HPT RR3340, which is working, and reporting good drive health all around. From this, I concluded the R680 was bad, and told the VAR who sold it to me so. The next morning, I had a new card from ATTO on my porch. This confirms the fabulous customer service I read about here (and also Evan at BackupWorks).

But then, I got to thinking whether the card was just incompatible with my E8, hence my initial post.

Since then, my VAR spoke to ATTO, and they told him to tell me that the R680 will work where a R380 would, but at the slower speed. It could be a couple more weeks before I have enough downtime to swap cards again.

Enhance told me they’re getting 1 Gb/s read/writes in their E800 3G chassis with SAS drives and a 3G HPT RR3340 HBA. They put this data on their site, so I assume some level of confidence that they’d work for customers. They also told me they are testing the R680 with their “JBOD products,” and aren’t quite ready to qualify it officially.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

Thanks, Bob. Good to know.

So then, are there any 6Gb/s 8-drive enclosures you’d recommend for placement in the edit room – that are quiet like the Enhance Box / ProAvio?

I scoped the web, and 2TB 6Gb/s SAS drives (ie Seagate Constellation) are shipping for around $300.

Jim

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

Interesting. Did he or she happen to give you a reason? Just curious.

Thanks.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I’m reviving a two year old thread, because I have the same question as the OP, which didn’t get answered. But, after two years, maybe somebody actually has used DVRAID, and can comment on it.

ATTO claims, “breakthrough performance for a parity protected solution.” And from a company FAQ:

Q: What is DVRAID™?
A:

DVRAID™ is ATTO’s proprietary technology which is optimized for digital content creation environments which require protection in the event of a disk failure without the performance penalty traditionally seen with parity RAID. DVRAID supports the editing of 4k film, multiple 2k film streams, multiple uncompressed high definition (HD) video and multiple streams of real-time, uncompressed standard definition (SD) video.

I was thinking that RAID 5 was typically the solution for video editing, but I can’t find a lot of info on-line about DVRAID.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; Dual Boot: 10.6.3 & 10.5.8; QT 7.6.6; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3 (7.5.1); Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor (A) via AJA HDP2 SDI to HDMI converter and (B) DVI from MacPro.