Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

RED RAID DRIVE technical specification

A

AlanJ

Member
Joined
Sep 26, 2011
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Hi,

I have a dead RED hard drive with rushes on it and we thought we would try a data recovery specialist to try to see if the data is intact on the drive.

But I don't know if the drive is RAID 0 (stripped) or RAID 1 (mirrored) or some other more complex RAID configuration.

If it is something relatively simple then recovery might be possible but if it is a proprietary RAID environment it might not be so easy I just don't know and hope that someone here can help us understand what is possible.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Alan
 
well my research seems to have brought up that the RED RAIS disk is made up of two 160Gb drives in a RAID 0 configuration (ie striped for performance) to create a 320Gb drive.

I still don't know if one could run it as a RAID 1 160Gb mirrored drive does anyone know?
 
I've contacted then and they say no and haven't been overly helpful so I thought I would ask the community for any insight into the technical workings of the RED RAID DRIVE.

I assume that the configuration can only be RAID 0 because they are trying to maximise the performance by striping the disks but to the non technical RAID means more secure and in reality RAID 0 is less secure with NO redundancy but more performance.
 
The Red Raid Drive is striped to Raid 0 for performance to enable enough bandwidth to accept the high data rates required by the Red One. No, you can't change it to a Raid 1, because it won't have enough bandwidth in that configuration. Besides, the Raid controller is proprietary, so I wouldn't monkey with it if I were you. Others have had problems with the drive, have sent it to Red for recovery, and have received their footage back from Red. The Raid Drive has already been EOLed by Red. Maybe you should consider changing over to SSDs to avoid future Drive problems.
 
Bill Goehring said:
The Red Raid Drive is striped to Raid 0 for performance to enable enough bandwidth to accept the high data rates required by the Red One. No, you can't change it to a Raid 1, because it won't have enough bandwidth in that configuration. Besides, the Raid controller is proprietary, so I wouldn't monkey with it if I were you.
Click to expand...

It's not proprietary, it's a standard SIL5723 controller:

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=103

You can peek & poke via the serial port or with SteelVine Manager - at your own risk!

I've been playing with this stuff for a few months, but a multi-drive RAID setup for EPIC/Scarlet, similar to or larger than RED DRIVE, is a higher priority right now. Can't progress it much until I get hold of hardware though!

Anyone got a dead RED RAM? I'd be interested to see what makes it tick... and I'd have a go at fixing it if you liked.

Mike
 
Mike 'Fireman' Ross said:
It's not proprietary, it's a standard SIL5723 controller:
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=103
You can peek & poke via the serial port or with SteelVine Manager - at your own risk!
Mike
Click to expand...

My bad.

Good luck with your raid drive, Mike, but I think you're tilting at windmills here. I know you are resistant to the pricing of the SSDs, but, once pre-record looping is enabled, won't you be able to use a 64GB SSD and not have to worry about the need for a monster raid to capture your lava eruptions? Personally, my biggest R1 worries have been associated with the potential failure of the Red Raid and I'm happy to see it go by the wayside. I think Red was wise to leave it behind.
 
Thanks for the feedback much appreciated.
 
This would probably not help, but if all else fails....

I repaired a 640Gb that failed to work on either the camera or Mac/Win.

I carefully disassembled it. reseated the drives and tested... No joy. I do know of a couple of people that worked for.

Then, since I had nothing to loose as it was not my drive anyway.. I pulled each drive, put it into a desktop 3.5"/2.5" drive station (less than $40 @ Frys) and formatted it using the mac into a single DOS drive. Repeat on the other drive.

Reassembled into ORIGINAL locations, plugged it into the R1, and beauty mate!! Worked like a charm!! taht was over a year ago and AFAIK still working today!!

NOW, that being said, IF all else fails, and you try that, do now hold me responsible if the data is not still there. Technically the data is not really erased, just set to ignore. Then you could try RedUndead of R3D Data Mgr and see if you can revive the unliving, unseen files.

YMMV and probably will.
 
Good on you, Scott; congratulations. But, for me, already-shot footage in the can is too valuable to risk being light-struck by opening the Red Raid enclosure in a lighted room. ;-)
 
Bill, I know, scary :-)

But if all else fails and you can not find a data recovery service, might give it a try. R3D/RedUndead can do miracles. And using the steps I outlined, you are basically just doing a in camera or regular Mac/DOS format. It just for some reason "Reset" whatever was out of whack on the drive I fixed. The data was theoretically still present, just had the "Overwrite Bit" set (or whatever the real tech term is)
 
Bill Goehring said:
My bad.

Good luck with your raid drive, Mike, but I think you're tilting at windmills here. I know you are resistant to the pricing of the SSDs, but, once pre-record looping is enabled, won't you be able to use a 64GB SSD and not have to worry about the need for a monster raid to capture your lava eruptions? Personally, my biggest R1 worries have been associated with the potential failure of the Red Raid and I'm happy to see it go by the wayside. I think Red was wise to leave it behind.
Click to expand...

That's only half of it; at times I'll be looping for sure. I can also see times when I'll want a LOT of cheap storage, full stop.

I used to be a senior engineer for DEC & Dell in the UK; I've created, broken, and fixed more RAIDs of all flavours than I can count! I'll have a hack at it for the sake of hacking.

Mike
 
I have no doubt you're up to the challenge, Mike.

I guess I've just bought into the idea of solid-state and am willing to pay the penalty ($) to sleep easier.
 
SSDs aren't indestructible, infallible or immortal.
 
Great. Copy thrice before hitting the sack for a good night's sleep.
 
Bill Goehring said:
I have no doubt you're up to the challenge, Mike.

I guess I've just bought into the idea of solid-state and am willing to pay the penalty ($) to sleep easier.
Click to expand...

Oh don't misunderstand me; I'm no fan of spinning media. I'm thinking about... something like a RAID 0 across four 1.8" 256GB SSD drives, in a case roughly the size of a RED DRIVE. With good quality SSD and a decent controller, appropriately programmed, using RAID 0 across 4 drives makes the ultimate data rate performance of each individual SSD much less important, and therefore cheaper: 4 x 256GB SSD is roughly $2k and dropping fast; I wonder what the complete unit could be made for? 1TB for $4k? That's competitive, IF you need the space.

Mike
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the ideas have passed them on to the data recovery people and keeping my fingers crossed they say they should have any idea this afternoon.
 
Bill Goehring said:
Great. Copy thrice before hitting the sack for a good night's sleep.
Click to expand...

Best advice yet on this thread, provided one of the copies goes offsite!

Mike
 
totally agree the only problem is when in carrying the drive from the camera the person trips over and the drive slips out their hand and ends up on the floor :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top