[Steve York]

The cost of a SAN system, at least for our operation, was very quickly offset by time savings and the convenience factor. Inspired by Bob Zelin’s original “do it yourself SAN” article last summer, I built a system which provides shared media storage for three WinXP-based Avid Media Composer rooms. We use Tiger’s metaLAN software. We use gigabit ethernet connections, including quad port aggregation between the server and switch, and have 3TB of eSATA storage (4 x 1TB drives), in RAID5. Our 8-bay enclosure will let us double the storage capacity when we’re ready. This system is not everything for everyone, but is more than adequate for our DVCProHD projects, not to mention SD work. Total cost of commonly available off-the-shelf components, including the metaLAN software, was under $6000. Building and tweaking it was not fun, but not onerous either. At this price, I don’t see how anyone in a similar sized operation can afford not to have shared storage.

Steve York

[Steve York]

Thanks for the suggestions, but as it happens we had already uninstalled all earlier versions and all the supporting files, per the release notes from Avid. We still have the problem

Steve York