[Rome Will]

Hey Eric my bad for the late response…but you’re right. I DO need to continue to do more research.

I think I’ve decided on the Red (b.c as you mentioned, the BMCC 4K will probably take a while)…now comes the biggest question of Scarlet vs. Epic…there’s a ton of info online and so far, the main thing I need to decide is whether or not I’ll be shooting slow motion…

As for the Red Rocket, I guess I misunderstood the product description and its purpose in a workflow. I see from your tag you’re a consultant- I really appreciate your advice! My setup is below…don’t need your advice just yet, as I want to research some more first…but for now, I think I’ll stick with the J4 as an external HD for my main footage. Still, I will definitely do more due diligence before I add any more pieces of equipment. My setup is for editing (what looks to be) Red Scarlet/Epic footage

MBP Late 2011, i7 w/16gb of memory (2.4 GHz quad-core w/the boost)
Apple Thunderbolt Monitor
Asus PA 248Q (for color grading, 2nd monitor)
Blackmagic Intensity Extreme
Pegasus J4 (w/4 500 gb SSD’s)
*soon to be Lacie 10GB Big Disk (for backup)
*soon to be Tangent Tk Element (just gonna get the center one)

[Rome Will]

Yeah @Kannan, I was thinking of editing footage from the 2.5k on the BMCC…but now I was thinking of getting the new 4K model…still, I don’t really know how to do proxies and from what it looks like, seems a little complicated.

@ Eric, I guess you’re right…if I shoot ProRes on the Blackmagic then I’d be fine with a decent thunderbolt HD for my footage…even if I end up with an Epic, if I didn’t use R3D, would I be ok?…I honestly I don’t know. And I’ve thought about an Epic (or Scarlet) recently…sill my overall reasoning to get the fastest HD for editing was because I was thinking if I had enough hard drive speed, I might could skip things like a RedRocket…but honestly Eric, I just don’t know yet. I haven’t edited since college, but its all I’ve thought about. I’ve saved what I could over couple years in hopes of shooting a feature and submitting it to film festivals as I would have done if I went to Tisch (sorry for the mini life story, but I’m putting A LOT in this…figured I go hard and try to make it happen)…So…fastest hard drive as I can get equals future proofing myself…

[Rome Will]

Yeah @ Kannan, it set me back around $2100…$1800 for the 4 Samsung 840’s and the rest for the J4 (ended up keeping the Pro’s and sent back the regular 840’s…can tell the difference with the write speed, but not that much once its in RAID 0)…

We’ll see in the long run if it pays off…and you’re right, I could have opted for the R6 at >$2k…but even in RAID 0 I doubt I’d get >600 read/write…with this, I am.

If anyone is able to break >700 like the advertising says (and I’ve seen benchmarks floating around the internet) I’d REALLY like to hear…for some reason, I’m stuck on 600 write and 650 read with my 4 SSD 840 Pro’s stripped…sucks…really wanted the max speed. But I guess it is what it is.

I’ll try to get the Lacie Big Disk (Thunderbolt) to have as my backup for this J4…slower, but will do the good job for the redundancy needed…

[Rome Will]

And yeah Alex…the PCIe looks like the move…I see OWC has the HELOS thunderbolt for sale with a 900gb PCIe SSD…but that might be a little much for 2 TB which is what I want…thats $3k…vs. my $2K for 2TB at 640 Read and 550 write…and there’s no guarantee that Ill get the advertised speeds for the PCIe SSD cards…

[Rome Will]

Ok Alex…Im at now and I did like you said…here goes:

1) I unplugged each SSD and ran them individually through thunderbolt to check their speed…I didn’t do this through the J4, I did it through a Seagate adapter which had thunderbolt connection…and each drive came up around 384 Read and 305-310 Write

2) Before I took the 840 SSD’s out the J4, I tried to do a 2 stripped RAID and got speeds around 480 write and 650 Read…which means that as I add more SSD’s I get slightly faster Writes…but my Reads (which are kind of more important) max out at 640/650 after I RAID anything above 2 SSD disks…

3) This sucks…Like I said, I use a MBP 2011 i7 with 16 gb of memory…really wish I could reach the 750 speeds with the Pegasus J4…but something seems to be holding up the READ speeds…Im hoping that the 840 Samsung PRO’s I have coming tomorrow will help with the Write speeds..

Will keep you posted. Thanks again for the help/advice…anyone else have any ideas on whats creating the- as Alex said- bottleneck for my SSD speeds?

I’m going to do some more research and see if those things like turning off TRIM, etc…can help with the SSD speeds…

Rome

[Rome Will]

My internal SSD tests around 350 write and 450 read…which I’ve heard was pretty consistent for the Samsung 830 SSD…I think the SATA controller allows me to hook up 6GB SSD drives…I’ll check again…

To make thinks worse, my co-worker just got a MBA- the new 2013 kind…I told him to run the Blackmagic app to test his computer…he pissed me off lol! He’s pulling in +650 write and +700 read…guess I should just buy a couple MBA’s and start editing that way…could save some money!

[Rome Will]

Hey Alex really appreciate you responding!! Thank you!

So, I believe when you’re asking me about my Host system you want to know about the computer that’s feeding the J4 (right?)…I’m running a MBP 2011 (Late) with 16GB of ram. It’s an i7 quad-core processor (I think it’s Ivybridge not the new SandyBridge)…I installed a 500GB SSD for my internal drive- another Samsung, but that one was a 830 model.

I went ahead and ordered a set of 4x 500GB 840 Pro SSD’s and another Pegasus J4 to compare to the one I’m having trouble with now (a J4 with 4x 500GB Samsung 840 non-pro SSD’s)…I’ll return whichever set lets me down the most (based on the added costs of the 840 Pro’s, or if the speed is the same and it’s just something wrong with my system)…

As for the the individual speed drive test- I think I already tried that…I’ll give it another go tonight but from what I remember, a single SSD gave me around 300/400 write/read speeds through thunderbolt into the J4…but I was frustrated last night so when I get home tonight I’ll give it another try and let you know.

Thanks again! Oh, and I talked to Promise customer support and all they said was the 840’s weren’t supported, and to try another benchmark test…and that the speeds of the J4 (which are advertised at +750 write/read) are just their test results and aren’t real world results sometimes…O_o…oh, ok…lol!

[Rome Will]

Thanks for this post guys! I’ve posted this below in a similar thread…maybe it can help shed some light on the J4…I have some experience with it and I wanted to share…and I kind of need some help…any thoughts is much appreciated!!

Set up my J4 last night with 4x500gb Samsung 840 (regular not the Pro) SSDs…tested it with blackmagic speed test and got around 550 write and 640 read…but the SSD’s were in RAID 0 (all four were stripped to together on the J4)…

My problem is that the device is advertised for speeds of +750 write/read when using SSD in RAID 0 format…so am I doing something wrong?! I’ve heard something about removing the cache, enabling TRIM (etc…) but that wouldn’t cause such a hit to performance would it?

I’m thinking I need the Pro edition for Samsung 840 given the difference in technology (one uses TLC, the regular, while the pro uses MLC…)…

Or am I missing something here? Really need those +750 speeds (want to edit footage and don’t want to use proxies when doing 2.5k- haven’t edited in a while and that workflow is new to me…).

Again, thanks and hopefully this ends up helping somone as this device starts to get around in the mkt.

[Rome Will]

Great comments guys!…I have some experience with the J4 I wanted to share…and also maybe get some help with.

Set up my J4 last night with 4x500gb Samsung 840 (regular not the Pro) SSDs…tested it with blackmagic speed test and got around 550 write and 640 read…but the SSD’s were in RAID 0 (all four were stripped to together on the J4)…

My problem is that the device is advertised for speeds of +750 write/read when using SSD in RAID 0 format…so am I doing something wrong?! I’ve heard something about removing the cache, enabling TRIM (etc…) but that wouldn’t cause such a hit to performance would it?

I’m thinking I need the Pro edition for Samsung 840 given the difference in technology (one uses TLC, the regular, while the pro uses MLC…)…

Or am I missing something here? Really need those +750 speeds (want to edit footage and don’t want to use proxies when doing 2.5k- haven’t edited in a while and that workflow is new to me…).

Again, thanks and hopefully this ends up helping somone as this device starts to get around in the mkt.