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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 :)

R2E LEMO to eSATA Cable Available Now

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Raffi Kryszek

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It brings me great pleasure to announce that the R2E LEMO to eSATA Cable is Available now online from CoolCameraGear.com and through Birns and Sawyer Inc at NAB booth #C3447.
The ability to offload footage over eSATA has been on the wish list of RED users since the camera’s inception, and we are thrilled to make that wish come true at with the R2E cable. CoolCameraGear.com will also stock other innovative, high-end, quality cinema accessories for RED and other camera systems.
The R2E LEMO to eSATA cable lifts the burden off of a computer’s FireWire 800, FireWire 400 or USB buss. By simply powering the RED-Drive™ or RED-RAM™ using the original power adapter, plugging the LEMO end of the R2E cable into the drive and the other end into a standard eSATA port, the user gains instant access to RED footage with eSATA performance.
Simply power your RED-Drive™ or RED-RAM™ using the original power adapter, plug the LEMO end of the R2E cable into the drive and the other end into an eSATA port and presto- instant access to your RED footage over eSATA.
Check out the R2E Cable at www.CoolCameraGear.com or visit Birns and Sawyer Inc in their Hollywood store or at NAB booth #C3447.
Thanks
Raffi Kryszek
www.CoolCameraGear.com
http://twitter.com/coolcameragear
 
Well Raffi!

That's cool cable, well done!

Cheers
 
I don't know if it's been discussed. Might it be possible to use this cable to connect an off the shelf eSATA drive to the RED ONE directly for capture? That would be nice. I imagine there might need to be some firmware developed to allow that.

whats yous thinks
 
Remember, the Red drive is actually a 2-drive RAID 0 array (with custom firmware to provide the specific timings they needed). I don't think any single drive currently has the sustained bandwidth and timings to make it work for live capture.
 
Anyone have experience with this? Does it speed up transfers from the Redraid? Please report hard figures or anecdotal experiences.

Thanks in advance.
 
Got to see one in action last week. Played with it a bit, it does speed up transfers slightly compared to FW800. We're talking 1 to 2 MB/s increase here as we're already at the speed limit of the drive, the SATA connection is just a bit more efficient than the Firewire. I didn't have my RED-RAM available to test it, but I'm hoping that it will benefit from the faster connection.

I haven't got around to buying one of these for my own kit, but probably will do so in the near future. Just the added connectivity option of eSATA would be worth it.
 
I'm testing one now, I'll report back when I have some real numbers. So far so good... I'm digging it.

It does work to record to an off-the-shelf drive if you plug the LEMO into the back of the camera. You're limited to 2K, however, as it's non-licensed media.
 
Haven't got one of these yet (though I plan to shortly) but having just plugged our LaCie 1TB eSATA Little Big Disk into my new PC and copied some R3Ds from it using the eSATA interface, I think that unless you are copying to something with a lot of write bandwidth it may not be the RedDrive that is limiting you - it may be the media you are copying to.

I was copying to RAID'ed SSDs with huge write throughput and managed to get 112MB/s from the LaCie, which architecturally is similar to the RedDrive. FW800 on the LaCie tops out around 75MB/s so that's a BIG difference.

I'll get a cable soon so once I do I'll properly bench a drive with all interfaces and let you know the results. Anyone dying to know the results quickly can always sponsor me for the cost of the cable (or even just loan me one) and I'll get the test done sooner :)

HTH

Paul
 
Paul Leeming said:
I think that unless you are copying to something with a lot of write bandwidth it may not be the RedDrive that is limiting you - it may be the media you are copying to.
Click to expand...

Yes, the bandwidth of the storage system you're copying to will play a huge role.

I was copying to RAID'ed SSDs with huge write throughput and managed to get 112MB/s from the LaCie, which architecturally is similar to the RedDrive. FW800 on the LaCie tops out around 75MB/s so that's a BIG difference.
Click to expand...

That LaCie and the RED Drive are quite a bit different. Keep in mind that the drive units inside the RED Drive have a max read bandwidth of around 36~38MB/s as spec'd by the manufacturers - assuming Hitachi and Seagate, but, they're the fastest out there anyway for drives with these specs. The LaCie is using larger and faster HDD's. Actually with it only doing 112MB/s, I'd say that's actually a bit slow for two decent 500GB 7200rpm HDDs.

Copying over SATA from the RED Drive to a Mac Pro w/ 650MB/s RAID, we were still getting less than 80MB/s.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Yes, the bandwidth of the storage system you're copying to will play a huge role.



That LaCie and the RED Drive are quite a bit different. Keep in mind that the drive units inside the RED Drive have a max read bandwidth of around 36~38MB/s as spec'd by the manufacturers - assuming Hitachi and Seagate, but, they're the fastest out there anyway for drives with these specs. The LaCie is using larger and faster HDD's. Actually with it only doing 112MB/s, I'd say that's actually a bit slow for two decent 500GB 7200rpm HDDs.

Copying over SATA from the RED Drive to a Mac Pro w/ 650MB/s RAID, we were still getting less than 80MB/s.
Click to expand...
RedDrives are Hitachi, I opened one up last year to fix and documented it here on reduser :)

The LaCie I'm talking about is the 2.5" Little Big Disk, so 5400rpm drives inside. But being 500GB drives the areal density probably helps with the throughput bandwidth a bit.

Thanks for the info on your test though, it confirms that the current generation RedDrive is the limiting factor between FW800 and the eSATA cable this thread is about.

Cheers,

Paul
 
This is great Raffi, very nicely done. Now I need to grit my teeth and install an e-sata extender in my Mac. Should be interesting....
 
Just bought one of these per a client request. I was a bit sceptical, but they insisted I have one for the job, so...

I'm happy to report:

Via FW800 on my Linux workstation, I was seeing benchmarks around 62MB/s on average.

Via R2E on the same workstation, I am seeing 81MB/s on average. This is a significant improvement over the FW800. I am really surprised because I expected the drive itself to be limited to around 60MB/s.

You're mileage may vary depending on your FW800 drivers, OS, etc. But for me, on mine, this thing is pretty cool. Thanks CoolCameraGear (Raffi)!

PS. These are direct IO benchmarks, which bypass data caching, etc.
 
Rocks!

Rocks!

Love the eSATA to RedDrive cable. I actually ran a grading session today on Scratch right from the RedDrive and it worked like a champ.

I haven't done a proper benchmark but it seems about twice as fast as the FW800 tap. Awesome, highly recommended.
 
Kyle Mallory said:
Via R2E on the same workstation, I am seeing 81MB/s on average. This is a significant improvement over the FW800. I am really surprised because I expected the drive itself to be limited to around 60MB/s.
Click to expand...

Well yes, it will run faster on the eSATA, but what will you copy to?
 
Cail Young said:
Well yes, it will run faster on the eSATA, but what will you copy to?
Click to expand...

Any one of many 270MB/s RAID 5's. Or as was mentioned, even the ability to cut on a laptop direct from the drives. R2E is worth the $$.
 
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