[Julia Brown]

Hi Bob,
Wow, really? You’d recommend it? Only 4 hours ago I ordered a 8TB Maxx Digital evoVR RAID 5 array. The Stardom you mention, with four 2.0TB Hitachi 7K2000 7200RPM SATA drives plus 1 drive module to spare, comes in at about $1100–about 30% less than the Maxx system. Hopefully its worth it.

I looked a lot at the Sonnet Fusion D400QR5 also, but it was more costly still. The G-Drive Es or Q didn’t appear to be a true hardware RAID 5, and was virtually the same price as the Maxx, so I crossed that off the list.

Julia

[Julia Brown]

Hi Bob,
Wow, really? You’d recommend it? Only 4 hours ago I ordered a 8TB Maxx Digital evoVR RAID 5 array. The Stardom you mention, with four 2.0TB Hitachi 7K2000 7200RPM SATA drives plus 1 drive module to spare, comes in at about $1100–about 30% less than the Maxx system. Hopefully its worth it.

I looked a lot at the Sonnet Fusion D400QR5 also, but it was more costly still. The G-Drive Es or Q didn’t appear to be a true hardware RAID 5, and was virtually the same price as the Maxx, so I crossed that off the list.

Julia

[Julia Brown]

Hi,
Is eSata a better option than EPCIe? Re Shane’s recommendation, what is the speed tradeoff of RAID 5 vs RAID 0? I’m one of those said dSLR users (Canon D7), similarly looking for an external storage solution for a 17″MBP that comes in under $3K. I think David Weiss recently called a RAID 1 a waste of money, so I’ve scratched that off the list.

I’ve been following these external storage topics for a few weeks. I just posted a similar question in the RAID forum at :
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/292/433

Julia

[Julia Brown]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for your response.

I figured I would go with an eSata card by whoever manufactured the drives I end up with. It seems like a lot of people around here like the Caldigit VR, so if I went with that, the card you recommend would be great. But the question is really about how to setup storage-RAID 0, 1, 5, jbod….for the best mixture of price, speed, redundancy.

You are not a fan of OWC, or not a fan of their website? I’ve used their Mercury elite drives for years and never had a problem yet. They also seem well liked around here, so I’m curious about your experience.

Your suggestion of interning in a post house is in an interesting one, unfortunately not within my possibility for the next year or so. Maybe some of you pros would kindly offer some shorter term advice?

JB