[Peter Dunphy]

I just received this email from Sonnet – I’m not exactly sure which of the settings they are recommending I go with (for Final Cut Pro6):

“Peter,

Our testing of an 8 TB raid indicated we got the best read speeds with a 128k interleave and prefetch set to 5.
Our best write speed was had with an interleave of 1 MB and a prefetch of 6.

Changing the interleave will require rebuilding the raid from scratch, thus erasing all data.
Changing the prefetch can be done by right clicking on the group in the RAID tab and
selecting “Properties”.

Regards,”

Bit confused!

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Bob

Thanks for your excellent, informative feedback.

For now I’m stuck with the Seagates I’m afraid – I just dearly hope they aren’t ‘bad seeds’ and cause me any further issues.

Would you suggest that I persist with a Raid 5 (on all 8 drives though) to get good performance out of Final Cut? Or might Raid 4 or something be better?

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Jeremy

I bought them from a different retailer than Sonnet (here in United Kingdom).

On the d800 detail page it lists the drives as being compatible – I checked the stickers on each of the drives and they all have the latest firmware:

• Seagate Barracuda ES.2, # ST31000340NS(4)
(4) Seagate ES.2 drives only with firmware versions SN06 and newer are compatible. Seagate ES.2 drives with firmware versions SN03, SN04, or SN05 are NOT compatible. Click here to view location of firmware number on hard drive.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiond800raid.html

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Neil

The drives I’m using are the “Seagate OEM ST31000340NS 1TB Barracuda ES-2,7200RPM 32MB Cache,Enterprise Hard Drive”

‘Symptoms excessive click and whirr. Mac hangs. ‘ Strikes a chord with me!

“3 of these drives failed over 3 weeks, but after I had done a XDCam transfer of over 4 Tb on them. ”

That’s just horrible. I hope you’ve managed to bounce back from that okay!

Thanks for your feedback! I’ll keep an eagle eye on these drives!

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Ken,

Scary! I’ll keep my fingers crossed then!

All the best, and thanks again for your input into my dilemma!

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Jeremy

Will do!

Just now buying an additional 1TB internal drive for a bay in my MacPro to assist me with temporary storage of my captured media.

Happy days! Thanks again!

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Jeremy

Thanks so much for replying so quickly – that’s terrific advice.

Do you think running Raid 5 with 8 drives might make things run even quicker, in addition to the extra capacity?

I’ll proceed as I was with logging and trimming all of my clips. Then once I have all the clips trimmed, prior to starting to edit using the timeline etc I’ll move the Media to temporary storage while I move the PCI card and restripe and rebuild the array from scratch.

You’re a great help.

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Jeremy

Gulp *nearly faints* I had one of the drives designated as a ‘hot spare’ as backup should something go wrong with a drive (automatic rebuild on the hot spare).

Aja Test: Disk Read/Write

Volume: Sonnet D800 Raid 5

Video Frame Size:

1920×1080 10-bit RGB

File Size:
8.0 GB

Disable file system cache – ticked ‘yes’

Sonnet D800 Raid 5.DiskWhackTest – 8192.0 MB

Write: 489.0 MB/s
Read: 553.0 MB/s

* nearly faints again *

Okay from those low(?) write and read speeds I guess I’m going to need to amend my current Raid Group of 7 drives to include the 8th. What would be the ‘safest’ way of doing this? I have hours and hours of video captured and trimmed onto the Sonnet as it stands – I understand that there’s a chance I could lose data by modifying the Raid – but do you think it’s possible that I could successfully modify the Raid to include all 8 drives without any data being damaged?

* faints*

I have a ATI Radeon HD 4870 in Slot-1

and the ATTO ExpressSAS R380 card in Slot-3

* feels pains in heart *

I just plugged in this Raid by the way – it is brand new.

Any advice you can offer would be dearly appreciated Jeremy!

peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Have emailed Sonnet Tech will all my info and waiting on reply – will repost with my findings and hopefully it will be of use to anyone else reading this thread.

It’s a brand new D800 enclosure and new hard drives also – so would hope that they’re not failing, but you never know!

Thanks for your feedback Ken :o)

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi David

Thanks so much for all your effort.

I suppose my main concern right now is whether the hang I experience will get worse once I transfer clips to the timeline and begin editing in earnest.

If FCP”s already slightly hanging when just scrubbing through clips in the viewer then I fear it won’t really improve.

I’m hoping that the hang with go away the more memory I free up on my hard drive. However, I still have my doubts about the positioning of my FCP Projects folder – could this be the cause of the problem?

Perhaps I could create a new project in FCP? Would I be able to retain the titled bins and sub-bins I’ve created if I do so?

If anyone else can offer any tips I’d be really grateful!

Peter