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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Esata cable for drives

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Bret Lanius

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When will we see a Red Drive Esata cable to attach to standard Esata on computer?

Seems to me this is the way to off load the drive at full speed.
 
Uh, probably not anytime soon.

FW800 already provides transfer speeds in excess of what the drive can handle and it's supplies bus power so you don't need to fiddle with extra adapters / cables.

This has been asked many times before, I don't know if RED is going to supply a SATA to LEMO cable or not or if they will make the pin-out specs available. But as far as performance goes, you won't be gaining anything in respects to transfer speeds (the drive can only go so fast). You would just be gaining one more interface option, which would be nice at times.
 
I don't think a single 2,5" is capable of anything close to 750 mb/sec... More in the ballpark of 36-50 mb/sec. The RAID 0 gives the neccesary overhead.
 
I've done the math based. It should be able to do upwards of 80MB/sec but I would expect it to easily run in the 70MB/sec's

The writing is linear so you should see nearly twice the write rate of one drive.

No way to fully tell without testing it.
 
its 2 160gb drives internal correct? with the RAID 0 it should be able to operate close to SATA speeds. def faster than FW800.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve and hope to have something to say shortly.
 
Uh, I'm not sure where some of you guys are pulling these numbers from... SATA I is 1500mbps like Evin said, that's 187.5MB/s. Firewire 800 is 800mbps, which is 100MB/s.

The hard drives inside the RED Drive are 160gb 5400rpm units, last I heard anyone quote specs. If that's still the case, the sustained rates the Hitachi and Seagate 160GB 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs (like the Hitachi 5K100 / 5K200 series) is roughly 36MB/s. Put two of these in a proper RAID-0 and you can assume almost double speed. 70MB/s sustained is pretty reasonable. I could see bursts or peaking up to maybe 85~90MB/s, but not sustained.

If we speculate for just a moment that they could be 7200rpm HDDs, then the sustained read performance for each drive would be around 50MB/s, peaking at perhaps 65MB/s. Hitachi claims a peak transfer rate on their 7K200 160GB (7200rpm, 16MB cache) at 67.5MB/s. So in theory, if RED is installing 7200rpm drives in these units, they could theoretically saturate a Firewire 800 bus.

...I have yet to be able to read data off a RED Drive at any rate faster than about 70MB/s, but I haven't actually run specific benchmarks. If you want me to, I will sometime in the next few days. I'll run PCmark, AJA and IOmeter.
 
Actually sata I is 150MB/sec because of an 8bit/10bit per byte thing. But you do have a good point there Jeff. Another thing to think about though is that if you connected it through esata, then your data wouldn't have to go across the FW800 bus and then to the pciexpress channel to your sata controller, it could all be handled right on the same controller, I can see advantages to that.


Jeff Kilgroe said:
Uh, I'm not sure where some of you guys are pulling these numbers from... SATA I is 1500mbps like Evin said, that's 187.5MB/s. Firewire 800 is 800mbps, which is 100MB/s.

The hard drives inside the RED Drive are 160gb 5400rpm units, last I heard anyone quote specs. If that's still the case, the sustained rates the Hitachi and Seagate 160GB 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs (like the Hitachi 5K100 / 5K200 series) is roughly 36MB/s. Put two of these in a proper RAID-0 and you can assume almost double speed. 70MB/s sustained is pretty reasonable. I could see bursts or peaking up to maybe 85~90MB/s, but not sustained.

If we speculate for just a moment that they could be 7200rpm HDDs, then the sustained read performance for each drive would be around 50MB/s, peaking at perhaps 65MB/s. Hitachi claims a peak transfer rate on their 7K200 160GB (7200rpm, 16MB cache) at 67.5MB/s. So in theory, if RED is installing 7200rpm drives in these units, they could theoretically saturate a Firewire 800 bus.

...I have yet to be able to read data off a RED Drive at any rate faster than about 70MB/s, but I haven't actually run specific benchmarks. If you want me to, I will sometime in the next few days. I'll run PCmark, AJA and IOmeter.
Click to expand...
 
kinobairn said:
Actually sata I is 150MB/sec because of an 8bit/10bit per byte thing.
Click to expand...

You're right about the 2bit overhead (8bits transfered in 10bits)... And 1500Mbps bandwidth adjusted for the 2bit overhead is 150MB/s... And I must have had my head somewhere it shouldn't have been... And, well. :biggrin:

Anyway, that said, I'll run some benchmarks on a RED Drive later today via FW800. I may be able to hack together a SATA cable to hook one up later this week to see if there's much difference -- I highly doubt there will be as I'm still pretty sure the drives can't push that amount of data. Most 3-drive RAID-0 arrays made of 500GB 3.5" 7200rpm drives have trouble sustaining 150MB/s across the entire RAID.
 
OK, I ran the AJA KONA System Test utility on my Mac Pro. RED Drive was connected via a 6ft Firewire 800 cable. I used a few different tests, including the 1920x1080 10-bit and 10-bit RGB and 2048x1556 10-bit RGB. Consistently the results were about 61MB/s write and 70-74MB/s read. The 1920x1080 10-bit test with the 2GB file size gave the best performance, with read speed peaking at 75MB/s and showing a 74.9MB/s average. Most of the other tests I tried, the write speed peaked at about 72MB/s with 70~71.5 being about average. These results seem pretty consistent with how manufacturers like Seagate and Hitachi are rating their 160GB 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs.

535_1210719225.jpg


The firewire 800 controller in my PC isn't cooperating right now to try a couple other tools. I suppose I could try IOmeter on my G5 Quad, but that will have to happen tomorrow. In my experience, the AJA tool rates drives a bit on the fast side, but only just a bit and it's a pretty consistent test tool.

Edit> I could probably try to figure out a pin-out to make a LEMO to SATA adapter, but that will have to wait until this weekend when I can sit down with the right equipment. Even then, I don't know if I will right now... I don't have a LEMO connector and I'm not about to chop apart a $200 RED Drive cable to make the adapter, which I'm pretty sure will offer no real benefits in performance. Additionally, while I don't work for RED, I am a moderator of these forums and have a certain level of responsibility. I'm not sure if I want the liability of others hacking on their RED Drive based on info I've posted.
 
I have a working Lemo on my download station. Haven't had a chance to test speed yet. But I hope soon.
 
So, after a long period of time - is it available esata pinouts to the lemo connector?

Actually, it was almost two years ago, since that time we've successfully jump to the 640gb red drive (2x320 inside?) and since WD (for example) starts to make 1tb 2,5 disks - it is only a time question when we'll get bigger disks. And I believe - NOW esata faster than FW800 and FW nd USB is real bottleneck for the downloading tasks. This is the first reason to ask esata-lemo pinouts.
Second one - lemo is MOST stronger than FW or USB connectors. And I definitely prefer to use stronger way to connect instead of plastic connector.
Third one. I want to custom made download station, where RedDrive will be fixed HARD with 0.01 mm accuracy to AUTOMATICALLY after inserting - connects to the DS. In this case - lemo has enough strong and accuracy to be fixed in the backplane.

So, support guys. Since it is an OFFICIAL forum of the red community - PLEASE, tell us the pinouts. IT IS OUR! RESPONSIBILITY to make and use cable like this.... Hope you will help us.
 
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