Red Drive

[Matt Redmond]

A few quick, yet important questions regarding RED Drive, etc...

What will the Red Drive filesystem be?

I heard that the e-sata port is a custom connector - is it possible (or necessary) to get a custom e-sata to conventional sata converter cable to connect to a computer, or disk duplicator, for file transfer/duplication?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

File system is FAT-32. While it's hardly the best filesystem out there, it's the most practical for cross-platform use.

The eSATA connector is proprietary and uses a LEMO cable that provides both SATA and power. I suppose you could risk a RED DRIVE and figure out a way to make a cable of your own by discovering the pin configuration. However, we're talking about two 2.5" HDDs in there. Using the USB2 or FireWire interfaces are going to give you full performance of the RED DRIVE anyway. If you're still not willing to believe this, you have Firewire 800 on there too. All the Firewire and USB ports are bus-powered, so you don't need to find a way to provide the proper power like you would with an eSATA + power cable.

[I Bloom]

File system is FAT-32. While it's hardly the best filesystem out there, it's the most practical for cross-platform use.

The eSATA connector is proprietary and uses a LEMO cable that provides both SATA and power. I suppose you could risk a RED DRIVE and figure out a way to make a cable of your own by discovering the pin configuration. However, we're talking about two 2.5" HDDs in there. Using the USB2 or FireWire interfaces are going to give you full performance of the RED DRIVE anyway. If you're still not willing to believe this, you have Firewire 800 on there too. All the Firewire and USB ports are bus-powered, so you don't need to find a way to provide the proper power like you would with an eSATA + power cable.

Does the drive need a power supply when not connected to camera or is it bus powered (thinking it needs a power supply)? Does it have a non-proprietary e-Sata port for connecting to a computer(guessing it doesn't)?

IBloom

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The RED DRIVE takes power from the USB2 and Firewire 400/800 interfaces, so when using it with powered ports of those types, no extra power adapter is needed. A power connector is present on the RED DRIVE so that you can provide power to it, which is handy as many notebook PCs don't supply bus power over USB and Firewire. This power connector could also be used if you want to make yourself a LEMO to SATA adapter and run a standard SATA cable to RED DRIVE -- you wouldn't have to incorporate power into that adapter or cable you make. There is no standard SATA connector on the drive.

[Matt Redmond]

File system is FAT-32. While it's hardly the best filesystem out there, it's the most practical for cross-platform use.

...which means a new file every 4GB?

[Siva Kollipara]

Yesterday only I posted a question, how to handle if the file is >4GB in FAT-32.
Is RED drive going to genenrate new file for every 1 minute?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

On another topic it sounded like the quicktime file is only going to be a reference file which means they can break up the data into chunks if need be.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yes.

Data recorded to the RED DRIVE is saved in 4GB chunks or clips. Playback of these clips is seamless through the REDCODE codec though, so it's not an issue in that respect. While I'll agree that lots of 4GB files aren't as convenient as one larger file, there are some advantages. Like if one file gets corrupted, then it's just a single 4GB file and not a larger file that needs to be rebuilt.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Personally I would even prefer a folder filled with an image sequence and XML metadata attached to a Quicktime reference in the root folder.

[tj williams]

Why won't RED make an adapter cable for Lemo to Esata?
Isn't SATA quite a bit faster than fire wire 800? There is a card to dual Esata connectors available for laptops. with a small raid or mirror drive/ sata to sata and a laptop it should be easy to quickly backup the data onto a secure setup. like Raid 5 or raid 1 (mirror)