G-Tech HD ARRAY for RED-One Footage ??

[George D.]

Hello everybody.

I've been checking out HD Arrays for editing and storage of our RED-One footage, and since our budget is limited to NO MORE than $2,000.oo, I realize we don't have much of a choice. But, it will have to do for now. Things can always be improved later.

Anyway, the first one I was thinking of is:

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro.cfm


What concerns me about it, right off the bat, is that it says, "...for 2K productions...", and we will be shooting in 4K all the time. Another is that it works in 10 bit. Is that good enough for Red footage?


This is the other one I was considering (Model: TR8X-BP16T - 8 X 2TB SATA HDD Included):

http://store.sansdigital-shop.com/totr8bay6gsa.html


*If any of you would be kind enough to check them out and tell me what you think, I would be most grateful. Please don't tell me I need a $4,000.oo ++ array of some kind. I just cannot afford it at this time. Please understand that.

Thanks.

.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Funny, seems i've posted about this four or five times this month. In fact just posted 30mins ago about online backup with SAME answer here:
5 bay HOT SWAPPABLE drive sets VIA E-SATA with port multiplier. I love G-tech, but not for the COST....i use MacGuru boxes with a port multiplier AND hot swappable--no screwing the hard drive onto a tray...open up the box the drive came in; open the bay door and shove it in---SIMPLE. YOu can RAID the 5 drives to one drive or run up to 128 drives as a RAID...cost is in the range you just gave--in fact i think cheaper. I run FOUR 5 bay drives with 60TB of storage available to me...I have one box dedicated as a RAID drive, but all other 5 bay drives are RAID 0 so i can swap out drives and make copies of full drive. Hitachi has a 3TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache drive you can buy for about $185usd each.

http://www.macgurus.com/store/ecom-prodshow/BurlyPortMultiEncl.html : Best to use 5 bay drive with a 4 connector PCI host card. you can control up to four 5 bay drives with this setup. if you go more than 5 bay drive--like 6 or 8 bay, then you must use 2 e-sata connectors---less bang for the buck.

 

[George D.]

Funny, seems i've posted about this four or five times this month. In fact just posted 30mins ago about online backup with SAME answer here:
5 bay HOT SWAPPABLE drive sets VIA E-SATA with port multiplier. I love G-tech, but not for the COST....i use MacGuru boxes with a port multiplier AND hot swappable--no screwing the hard drive onto a tray...open up the box the drive came in; open the bay door and shove it in---SIMPLE. YOu can RAID the 5 drives to one drive or run up to 128 drives as a RAID...cost is in the range you just gave--in fact i think cheaper. I run FOUR 5 bay drives with 60TB of storage available to me...I have one box dedicated as a RAID drive, but all other 5 bay drives are RAID 0 so i can swap out drives and make copies of full drive. Hitachi has a 3TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache drive you can buy for about $185usd each.

http://www.macgurus.com/store/ecom-prodshow/BurlyPortMultiEncl.html : Best to use 5 bay drive with a 4 connector PCI host card. you can control up to four 5 bay drives with this setup. if you go more than 5 bay drive--like 6 or 8 bay, then you must use 2 e-sata connectors---less bang for the buck.

Thanks Johnny. You really come through for me. I'll check it out.

What eSata Host Card do you recommend with that?

.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Check what macguru has....i think mine is a sonnet. BUT, what's good about MacGuru is you can phone them direct and talk to the owner/tech about your needs. He's super helpful and will steer you to the proper system for your video needs.

 

[George D.]

Check what macguru has....i think mine is a sonnet. BUT, what's good about MacGuru is you can phone them direct and talk to the owner/tech about your needs. He's super helpful and will steer you to the proper system for your video needs.

I have already sent them two emails, so I'm sure I'll hear from them on Tuesday.

I do have one concern about your system though. Your MacGurus array only has a transfer speed of 300Mb/sec, which is less than half the 650Mb/sec of the SansDigital TowerRAID TR8X-BP - 8 Bay array.

Also, isn't sas supposed to be faster than eSata ?

Thanks.

.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Both the MacGurus system and the SansDigital one have some trade-offs for their low price ranges. Personally, I would avoid the port-multiplied enclosures. When going port-multiplied, you're connecting multiple HDDs to a single SATA host connector, sacrificing bandwidth for convenience. You won't get 300MB/s out of it -- more like 280MB/s max as those 5 HDDs, if they are being stuffed through one 3Gbps connection. The SansDigital TR8X system isn't anything special either. It's 8 bays and each has its own SATA connector, no multipliers. All 8 SATA channels are bundled into two mini-SAS connectors at the rear, so you can connect to their supplied host controller, which handles the RAID functionality and each HDD gets its own dedicated channel. Or you can connect to a different host like an ARECA or ATTO controller. One of my external RAIDs here is actually one of these 8-bay SansDigital cabinets connected to an ATTO R680 RAID controller. Works great! But the enclosure is cheap and lacks redundant power and monitoring hardware. Price-wise, you won't be able to fit the ATTO controller into the mix with your $2K budget, though... I have not used the SansDigital controller, so can't comment. But for $800 the enclosure with a RAID controller seems like a decent deal.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I have already sent them two emails, so I'm sure I'll hear from them on Tuesday.

I do have one concern about your system though. Your MacGurus array only has a transfer speed of 300Mb/sec, which is less than half the 650Mb/sec of the SansDigital TowerRAID TR8X-BP - 8 Bay array.

Also, isn't sas supposed to be faster than eSata ?

Thanks.

.

....just create a RAID. But you'll get some finite info from macguru on actual speeds. But the idea behind me doing what i've done is to create online ACCESSIBLE files at an economical cost. Since we know in 2 years, we'll be doing this all over again with something probably twice as fast. My use is mostly online storage....R3D's alongside another folder that has Transcoded prorres 422HQ's....and i'm 99% of time using Prores files.

.....THEN, when editing, i use another stand alone system that is raided and i can pull from the other "storage" drives anything i need. I'd dig deeper and go faster, but i personally don't see any advantage for my work. I go at my own pace and don't find i have any bottlenecks and when something does take time to pull out, off to the frige for a beer if it's after 11am.