Refreshing the Red-Raids ?

[Rick Darge]

I imagine after 2 years of use, the Red-Raid drives get a little worn down. Is there such thing as defragmenting the Red-Raid? Does this help? Any tips out there to keep the Red-Raids working at their best?

 

[D Fuller]

I imagine after 2 years of use, the Red-Raid drives get a little worn down. Is there such thing as defragmenting the Red-Raid? Does this help? Any tips out there to keep the Red-Raids working at their best?

As far as defragmenting is concerned, that's not really a necessity. Every time you use them, you format them. They start fresh every time you use them.

 

[Rick Darge]

I figured as much. Reason I ask is I occasionally get a green frame or two. Happens about 2% of the time and am wondering why that is. Thanks

 

[dino g]

bad firewire cable...is one culprit.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

I still think Red should authorize someone (if not they themselves) to do a hardware refresh by using two SSDs in place of the existing ones. Tech has way caught up in this area. A RedDrive could now be a RedRam for <$1k

 

[David Battistella]

It's funny you posted this tonight.

I am ZEROing out data on both my RED drives.

This is a way of erasing the drive with Apple disk utility. It takes about 2 hours per drive and writes zeros to the drive to erase all of the data.

Not sure this will refresh them, but it means that you'd have to work extra hard to recover data from them.

David

 

[Shawn Nelson]

I dont think data recovery is possible after a zero'ing out, there'd be nothing left. Data recovery works on the principal that deletion doesnt really delete, it just loses track of the data.

You must really want no one to see that footage

 

[David Battistella]

I dont think data recovery is possible after a zero'ing out, there'd be nothing left. Data recovery works on the principal that deletion doesnt really delete, it just loses track of the data.

You must really want no one to see that footage

Sean,

I actually think it should be a standard (for rental houses for sure). I've seen too many drives returned with a full day worth of footage.

FREE stock footage anyone? BAD.

No porn on there Shawn, just protecting my last client from the next client.


David

 

[D Fuller]

It's funny you posted this tonight.

I am ZEROing out data on both my RED drives.

This is a way of erasing the drive with Apple disk utility. It takes about 2 hours per drive and writes zeros to the drive to erase all of the data.

Not sure this will refresh them, but it means that you'd have to work extra hard to recover data from them.

So David, why are you doing this? Bored? Afraid of a subpoena? Or is there some technical voodoo at work here?

 

[Darren Orange]

There is no maintaining the drive. Writing zero's only prevent data from being recovered that was there and in fact wears the drive out even more because it is writing to every spot on the drive when writing all zeros. If you want to make the drive last longer, just do a quick format and thats it. Only zero it out if your afraid the data might be recovered by someone.

Keep the drive in a dry, moderate temperature place and use it less is the only way to make the drive last longer.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Or what the heck were you shooting that has you zeroing out the drives????

 

[David Battistella]

So David, why are you doing this? Bored? Afraid of a subpoena? Or is there some technical voodoo at work here?

It's a bored, voodoo, maintenance superstition thing.

I've spend the day cleaning up the desktop, deleting temp files, making space on drives, checking backups, repairing permissions, etc. So why not ZERO out a drive while I am at it?

David

 

[Darren Orange]

Or what the heck were you shooting that has you zeroing out the drives????

Yes you should never zero out drives as I said above, very bad for drives relatively speaking.

 

[David Battistella]

Or what the heck were you shooting that has you zeroing out the drives????

Ocean creatures that you can not imagine!

 

[Johnny Friday]

It's a bored, voodoo, maintenance superstition thing.

I've spend the day cleaning up the desktop, deleting temp files, making space on drives, checking backups, repairing permissions, etc. So why not ZERO out a drive while I am at it?

David

David, you could take a toothbrush to the tile in the b-room and maybe clean the tread on your car tires as well.....

....LOL, I understand. I have a strange temptation every morning to clean teh leaves in my front yard by hand when the get under the large rocks i have around the trees and fixate on the dog hair in my house twice a day---especially near my computer workspace! it's a clean space that drives me crazy!

 

[David Battistella]

bad firewire cable...is one culprit.

Hey Dino,

You are supposed to be working. Can't you throw a few more hours on that RED of yours! LOL

David

 

[David Battistella]

David, you could take a toothbrush to the tile in the b-room and maybe clean the tread on your car tires as well.....

....LOL, I understand. I have a strange temptation every morning to clean teh leaves in my front yard by hand when the get under the large rocks i have around the trees and fixate on the dog hair in my house twice a day---especially near my computer workspace! it's a clean space that drives me crazy!

Yep,

Every once in a while the OCD kicks in. I have an eye on the shelving next!

David

 

[Conrad Hunziker]

Yes you should never zero out drives as I said above, very bad for drives relatively speaking.

Not true. Zeroing out drives is a read/write pass, but not "very bad for the drives".

In fact, it really is a preventative measure. During operation your drives are constantly evaluating themselves. When they come across sectors that dont read/write correctly, they remap those sectors to spare parts of the drive. Since you are usually using a portion of the drive while shooting and not the whole thing, your drive may never read certain sectors of the disk. During the zero out process you are writing to all sectors, and your drives will automatically remap any bad sectors found.

In addition, this remapping of sectors takes time. If it happens while you are shooting there is the potential for dropped frames. Id rather it remap off the camera.

Most modern drives will keep a record of how many sectors they had to remap and other useful info. This is part of the SMART status. Unfortunately I dont believe we are able to access the SMART on the individual drives in the Red Raid, as theres a raid controller in the way.

The first thing I ever do on ANY new drive is zero out the drive. If there are issues writing to any portion of the drive, it will be apparent then. Much better to know about it before your footage is stored on it. This process is similar to a full format on RAID controllers.

In general hard drives will have lots more read/write passes available to them than solid state drives. So a read/write pass is not as expensive on those drives as opposed to CF cards.

In addition, the general advise on spinning media is to keep them running. You tend to have less failures of spinning media when its constantly running, due to the internal lubrication and motors. Drives that are sitting on shelves tend to die faster from these mechanical defects.

In short, I recommend zeroing out the drive as part of a general maintenance on spinning media. The benefits, especially when considering what these drives are used for, outweigh the risks.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yes you should never zero out drives as I said above, very bad for drives relatively speaking.

Then again, if you do production work for certain government agencies, etc... They mandate you do multi-pass zeroing of data and/or randomized multi-pass writes to your reusable media or else submit the media to them for destruction.

Zeroing out a drive can indeed wear drives down if you do it a lot. But more than that, it really does nothing to "condition" a drive and is a very poor means of testing a drive. By zeroing or low-level formatting a drive, you can see if the drive is good at that instance in time -- woohoo, it passed. OK, no guarantees that the drive is all good the next time you write to it.

Keep the drives in proper storage environments and don't abuse them. Harsh operating conditions that cause the drives to skip and drop frames, or even situations that cause a spinning drive some stress on the platters, motor or heads, while not reading or writing, can also damage the drives.

If you're shooting anything important to a RED Drive, or any other spinning media, I highly recommend regular offloading and back-ups. Personally, I only shoot to CF and RED-RAM these days. And I still follow the regular offload and backup philosophy.