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Questions about building a system and harddrives

M

Mike N

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Hello,

I'm in the process of building a system on which I can comfortably edit RED's files (2k).
I was thinking about a Intel Corei7 920 with some 8 Gb of RAM both overcoked for higher performance.
The thing that i'm not sure about is the harddisk configuration. If I use internal SATA harddisks will they be fast enough or should I look at an external RAID solution.
I found these guys www.caldigit.com and was thinking about this product http://www.caldigit.com/HDElement/ they say it was a read/write speed of 370 MB/s . Is this enough ? What is the performance that an internal SATA harddrive would give me compared to this ?

thanks!
 
Performance-wise there doesn't have to be a difference between internal RAIDs and external ones.

If you have a good hardware RAID card such as an Areca card and hook up 8 to 12 decent SATA drives you should be good. There are many cases that have hotwap-drive cages - if you need them.

Whether 300 MB/s is enough completely depends on what you're going to do. But for anything up to uncompressed 2k you'de be fine. Oh... the 370MB/s stated is RAID 0 - you don't want to do that. RAID 5 or 6 is the safest bet.

Bar3nd
 
Hi Mike,

Currently red files are quite low bandwith (for 4K), around 30MB/s so you don't need any raid array to achieve that speed. If you keep them all the way in raw state then you will only need 1 sata drive (that should run around 70MB/s depending on the brand and model).
The raw files are way more cpu intensive than hard drive intensive, so get as many and as faster as your budget allows.

But when you convert the 4K raw in 4K or even 2K rgb 10bit files, now we are talking about an other bandwith around 200MB/s
So for the rendering of the final images, then you should have a raid array to render to, the speed will depend on what kind of format you export (10bit dpx would require 4-8 disc raid configuration, while prores hq should be fine even on 1 sata drive).

And if you need blazing fast disc i/o and don't need sereval terabytes of it, there you go: fusion i/o duo it is really nice but is still a bit expensive.

cheers,
antoine.
 
thank you guys.

@Barend - i was refering to internal SATA's vs. external RAIDS. As i can see now, there is a HUGE difference :bleh: .
Even is it's RAID 0 I was plan to use it for editing and rendering and then backing it up to my internal harddrives for storage. Is this a good ideea ?

@laboprod - what do you mean by converting 4k RAW into 4k . Isn't RED already compressing the 4k through REDCODE ? OR do you mean after you do a 1st light color corection in REDCINE and export it to whateva format you need ?

I also saw that the new kid on the block now are SAS drives. Are these phisical drives or just a high speed connection to link external things (like RAIDs) to the computer ?

What do you think of CallDigit. Someone on this forum also said something about G-tech. Both companies have profesional looking thingies...

Thanks,
Mike
 
Mike, yeah I meant 1st light in redcine and export 4k rgb or 2k rgb or 1080 rgb.
Redcode is around 30MB/S. You can edit with it, grade with it, so it can stay all the way till the rendering in redcode.
But this is not the workflow i personnaly use. So I do a 1st light in redcine and then export to AN offline codec for editing and then when it is time to conform I go back in redcine and export 1080p dpx (or 2K) which is now around 200MB/s. Now the speed of the drives you render to is important.
Both g-tech and calldigit are good products.
SAS goes for Serial Attached SCSI. It is a connection (and of course a protocol) a bit different from sata. While scsi had always sounded like faster, now with sata there isn't a real difference, I think.
You should calculate the kind of bandwith you will require for the type of project you want to accomplish and the kind of quantitiy of storage that you will need. Then you will have a better understanding of what kind of hardware you really need.
To a certain extent it is absolutely valable to have rendering drives in raid 0 and have slower backup drives, like you mentionned.

If you are not going to build up a post house, don't go too crazy, an adaptec sata raid with 4 good internal sata drives is quite fast (more than 300MB/S)
And the sdd are now really comming.

cheers,
antoine.
 
I think connecting it through a SAS cable would be the fastest. You have to have this on your motherboard.
 
Antoine thanks so much for your advice,

I have another newby question. You posted this:

"So I do a 1st light in redcine and then export to AN offline codec for editing and then when it is time "

What is an offline codec ?


I also saw that some system builders (like Silverado) are using a fast HDD (WD Raptor) for the boot drive. Does this help applications run smoother and faster somehow ? Or is it just for the OS to boot up faster ? Does it help post in anyway ?

thanks,
Mike
 
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