REDMag SATA II disappointment

[Andrae Palmer]

I was informed today that the REDMags are SATA II. Can anyone from RED chime in on what issues at the time lead to the decision of going with SATA II?

 

[Brian Merlen]

Does that include the new 512's? aka the ones with twice the throughput?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

I'm not sure if the 512's have that limitation... hopefully they don't. I know on my testing of our 128GB REDMags I was running into a 224MB/sec max data rate... I thought it was my eSATA card slowing everything down. Until a respected friend informed me that the REDMag drives are SATA II.

 

[Steven Chill]

What's wrong with SATA II? I thought they would be faster. Aren't they?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

What's wrong is that I have a SATA III GRAID Thunderbolt 8TB drive that is capable of getting about 334MB/sec read and write... the REDMags which are SSD based can only give me 224MB/sec. My eSATA card is also capable of 6Gb/sec... so everything is ready to move for top speed... except the REDMag SSD's.

 

[Steven Chill]

what were they before? SATA I Were they slower?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Speed isn't the only criteria; stability is also crucial. Could that be the basis for the decision?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Speed isn't the only criteria; stability is also crucial. Could that be the basis for the decision?

I'm guessing that the new 512GB turbo SSD REDMag must be SATA 3 to double the current data rates that Jarred Land reported here:

512GB TURBO SSD - Data Rate almost double current media. Take advantage of Epic's higher Frame rates at a lower compression. Priced to match. A lot of Epic user's dream..

32GB Lower Cost SSD - Data Rate almost half current media. Matched to Scarlet's top speed. Priced to match. A lot of Scarlet user's dream..

Perhaps it was a issue with the memory chipset in the SSD.

 

[Mike Harrington]

well sata 2 can do 300MB/sec....
i would think the bottleneck is in the speed of the ssd....not the interface, it would not make sense for red to bundle a 300+MB/sec SSD with a sata 2 interface

if you put z rated tires on a civic...the civic wont necessarily do 200 mph

 

[Petri Teittinen]

Yeah, it's not the SATA interface, it's the fact that the SSDs used in REDMAGs are quite slow -- nowhere near what current consumer SSDs can do.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

So the issue is... why did they use such slow drives in the 64, 128 and 256GB models? What are the speed to stability or price issues?

 

[Bérenger Brillante]

Because they were designed at a time nothing better was available ?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Because they were designed at a time nothing better was available ?

At Cebit 2009, OCZ Technology demonstrated a 1 terabyte (TB) flash SSD using a PCI Express ×8 interface. It achieved a maximum write speed of 654 megabytes per second (MB/s) and maximum read speed of 712 MB/s.[23] In December 2009, Micron Technology announced the world's first SSD using a 6 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) SATA interface.[24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

These things have been super fast for a long time. Can't wait for the 512GB Turbo SSD to start shipping.

 

[Tom.Wong]

yes, but have you seen the performance of consumer grade SSD's over long periods of intense read and write, and as they fill up? redmags perform identically from when there's nothing written on it, all the way up till it's full. that's actually REALLY hard and expensive ssd to find and get. if you even saw the progress of the gemini 444 offboard record unit, it took them over a year and a half just to find the right manufacturers that could fulfill their ssd spec to be able to write and write at 240 mb/sec sustained, all the time, for thousands of cycles or more.

the speed/reliability/cycle factor are all part of the equation when we are talking about media that handles footage. don't get me wrong, the off the shelf stuff is a lot better than it used to be, but these are still all reasons in the decision making for the speed of their media. not to mention it's also easier to have faster media in larger capacity, since technically it's raided ssd chips in there. so the more you raid together, the more performance you get. so up to a 256 gb mag, at those speeds seems pretty normal to me. you don't start seeing too many 500 mb/sec ssd's on the market until around the 512 gb capacity.

i'm sure in the future we'll be seeing updated redstations that do 6g esata, and even larger redmags that will be even faster.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

yes, but have you seen the performance of consumer grade SSD's over long periods of intense read and write, and as they fill up? redmags perform identically from when there's nothing written on it, all the way up till it's full.

Tom,

Thanks for your input... makes sense that the data rate will have to be sustainable even at full capacity. What I will do now to get higher data rates is just to use two REDMag readers on a job.

 

[Tom.Wong]

Tom,

Thanks for your input... makes sense that the data rate will have to be sustainable even at full capacity. What I will do now to get higher data rates is just to use two REDMag readers on a job.

dumping to a fast protected raid then to externals helps with clearing mags faster. you just deal with the back logged footage at wrap but it won't hold up the cards.

to put things in perspective to for everybody. a codex mag is several times the price and size of a redmag. and only downloads at around 270 MB/sec. and requires a sas connection. redmags really are one of the best medias to use when you look at price and performance along with ease of use. I'm just glad the days off cf cards and dredded red drives are over...

 

[Stephen Wheeler]

I think it's totally a cost issue. Think of the price tag we are already dealing with with REDmags. Anything else that would be higher speed with the size and storage capabilities would make media unaffordable for most people.

I always thought this maybe a problem people would have when thunderbolt came out. As a PC guy I use USB 3. Well I use Esata for my REDmag and USB 3 for my external drives, the reasoning is that Esata Reads faster and USB 3 writes faster.

Stephen Wheeler
Daufenbach Camera
Specializing in RED, Digital Cinema, & 3D
www.daufenbachcamera.com

 

[Alex Carr]

It's cost, look at how much a Sony 512GB and 1TB card are at High speeds. But they offer Data rates higher than Epic even with the new 512