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Hard drives (storage and editing)

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Ryan Lalonde

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Hey everyone,

I'm getting more and more requests to finish smaller projects in house rather than sending the footage to a post house (doing commercials in more of a corporate film type workflow)

Shooting Epic in 5K or 4K and usually ending up as 1080p for the web or other deliverables.

What do you recommend for a good RAID (drives and system) to work off of and drives to back up.

Before 5K I simply had a 1TB internal for OS and apps, another 1TB internal to render out to and source footage on a 2TB GRAID connected through ESATA.

Looking for more speed! Doesn't have to much bigger than 6TB since I normally only have 1-3 projects going that are 1-2 TB in size.

I've used these and they are awesome since I can also plug them into my macbook pro and go portable...but still too slow

http://www.g-technology.eu/products/g-speed-q.php
 
Thanks Grant,

Still seems pretty slow. Then again I have no idea really what I'll need for speed.

I'm editing in premiere and colouring in Resolve.

I figured I'd need upwards of 600MB/s from the RAID to have decent playback.

I'm brand new to Premiere so I not really sure what the need is... I'll have to look around some more.
 
That's quite the speeds you're looking for. Have you thought about 5x SSD's in RAID0 then? You'll get around 580MB/s with that scenario.
 
Elsie N said:
Here's a couple of links to a possible option.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227740

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227753

They easily cover you need for speed.

EDIT: Never mind. I just re-read your post and see that you are on a Mac. I think these are Windows only, but I'm not sure. And of course, these are OS drives primarily. The 1 TB hybrid could work as an editing drive and then transfer over to storage.
Click to expand...

Elsie, appreciate the link to those. Do you have any understanding as to why they're so cheap for an apparent large amount of data? I don't quite understand the 'SSD/HDD' hybrid.
 
Grant H said:
Elsie, appreciate the link to those. Do you have any understanding as to why they're so cheap for an apparent large amount of data? I don't quite understand the 'SSD/HDD' hybrid.
Click to expand...

Hi Grant, the Hybrid SSD is only 240 GBs as I understand it, and the HDD is probably a 750 GB to round it out to a TB. I'm guessing the cost for that is reasonably low due to the fact that being a PCIe 4 lane drive it may be a little more difficult to install. Some of the reviews seem to point that way.

Their 1 TB all SSD model runs about $2500 or so.
 
+1 on Sans Digital's enclosures. Although, if you're looking for something with transfer speeds of at least 600 MB/s, I'd recommend one of their SAS solutions. The TowerRAID TR8X+P is an eight-drive enclosure with mini-SAS connectivity. According to Sans Digital, you should see average speeds of around 700 MB/s in RAID 0.

The issue with eSATA is that no matter how many drives are in the array, you'll still be limited by the 265 MB/s maximum transfer rate of the actual eSATA interface.
 
For what it's worth, if you do have Thunderbolt I have had a Promise Pegasus R6 since about a month after its introduction and it's been truly fantastic. Configured with a 6-drive RAID 5 it could pull speeds in excess of 700-800+ MB/Sec sustained read/write using AJA and BlackMagic's disk speed test utilities. Doesn't draw a lot of power, daisy-chain compatible, and really makes it possible to use an iMac or Macbook Pro as a major production tool. I've started to upgrade it with 4TB Hitachi 7K4000 drives (Promise uses Hitachi 7K1000 and 7K3000 drives in the stock configs, the 7K3000 3TB and 7k4000 4TB work great so far) as I can get hold of them, and with 6 bays that means I could end up with a 20TB RAID 5 or 16TB RAID 6 and still have blazing speeds plus enormous storage capacity. Of course it's not much use if you don't have Thunderbolt.
 
Brian Iannone said:
+1 on Sans Digital's enclosures. Although, if you're looking for something with transfer speeds of at least 600 MB/s, I'd recommend one of their SAS solutions. The TowerRAID TR8X+P is an eight-drive enclosure with mini-SAS connectivity. According to Sans Digital, you should see average speeds of around 700 MB/s in RAID 0.

The issue with eSATA is that no matter how many drives are in the array, you'll still be limited by the 265 MB/s maximum transfer rate of the actual eSATA interface.
Click to expand...

We have something similar like this at work, and on SAS 3.0gb/s we get around 500 Megabytes per second in Raid 5 over 8 drives. Keep in mind those mini sas connectors have 8 lanes of SAS. So that's a really cost effective raid if you have a tower with open PCI slots.

The Thunderbolt stuff looks interesting for people on laptops. Just depends on how mobile you want this thing to be.
 
Harrison Diamond said:
For what it's worth, if you do have Thunderbolt I have had a Promise Pegasus R6 since about a month after its introduction and it's been truly fantastic. Configured with a 6-drive RAID 5 it could pull speeds in excess of 700-800+ MB/Sec sustained read/write using AJA and BlackMagic's disk speed test utilities. Doesn't draw a lot of power, daisy-chain compatible, and really makes it possible to use an iMac or Macbook Pro as a major production tool. I've started to upgrade it with 4TB Hitachi 7K4000 drives (Promise uses Hitachi 7K1000 and 7K3000 drives in the stock configs, the 7K3000 3TB and 7k4000 4TB work great so far) as I can get hold of them, and with 6 bays that means I could end up with a 20TB RAID 5 or 16TB RAID 6 and still have blazing speeds plus enormous storage capacity. Of course it's not much use if you don't have Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...


thanks everyone and Harrison.

I think I'm going to go with the Pegasus R6 but not in a huge rush so I'm still going to look around.
 
Alexander Mejia said:
We have something similar like this at work, and on SAS 3.0gb/s we get around 500 Megabytes per second in Raid 5 over 8 drives. Keep in mind those mini sas connectors have 8 lanes of SAS. So that's a really cost effective raid if you have a tower with open PCI slots.

The Thunderbolt stuff looks interesting for people on laptops. Just depends on how mobile you want this thing to be.
Click to expand...

True. (Though by the way, I was referring to four-lane mini-SAS operating at 24 Gbps.)


Ryan Lalonde said:
I think I'm going to go with the Pegasus R6 but not in a huge rush so I'm still going to look around.
Click to expand...

Also, keep in mind that if you go with a Thunderbolt solution, you'll be permanently stuck with Thunderbolt. Which, is not an issue, but very few Thunderbolt-compatible devices exist currently. Whereas, with a SATA-based or mini-SAS-connected system, any workstation with an eSATA/SAS PCIe card can access the data. Just something to consider. :)
 
Simplest and cheapest solution is to get 4 fast hard drives (I favour Hitachi's) and stipe them raid 0 - this will deliver very high performance and the best bang for your buck. Caveat is you MUST backup all media religiously and remember if you don't have three copies, you don't have anything :o)

Of course if you have the budget, get a pro system provided by a Raid specialist.

Scott
 
I'm also searching for a HDD backup solution. I would love to go Thunderbolt but with no new Mac Pro on the market and me personally still figuring out if I will stay on the Mac Platform, I just keep purchasing Lacie quadra drives and connect them through e-sata. Eventually I will need a Raid 5 configuration but this has been working for me. People do seem to get unlucky with Lacie but I have had a very pleasant experience with them so far. 30 external D2 and Quadra drives for the last 7 years and only one single drive- which was formatted by an idiot and used on a PC and reformatted for Mac- failure. Cannot recommend more. Hope the new Seagate deal will not bring QC down the drain...
 
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