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 :)

Sonnet Thunderbolt Goodies

Jeff Kilgroe said:
TOTALLY FALSE, ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE, BULLSHIT FUD!
Click to expand...

don't beat around the bush Jeff, tell us how you feel! :)

How are you connecting the Red Station 1.8" to the Thunderbolt RAID via Esata? Is there a new Station out that supports Thunderbolt? I'm confused.
What would the speed be if the Red Station has thunderbolt support?

or are you saying the speeds are the same? thanks
 
Kaku Ito said:
Tony,

I know what you talking about, I had really bad experience with their SATA RAID system.
Click to expand...

Yep, same here with SONNETT. I had a lot of difficulties when I went that route (like changing approved disk drives multiple times). In the end, right before I decided to send it all back - it worked. I have two FW400 raids working flawlessly 3 years now and two FW800 working 1 year. With both models I had to go through the same drama.

Jochen
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
don't beat around the bush Jeff, tell us how you feel! :)
Click to expand...

Sorry, I just get tired of so called "experts" and "tech journalists" who make stuff up, just so they have something to say. Too much of that out there these days.

How are you connecting the Red Station 1.8" to the Thunderbolt RAID via Esata? Is there a new Station out that supports Thunderbolt? I'm confused.
Click to expand...

The RED Station module connects via eSATA to the ExpressCard slot. I'm using the CalDigit FASTA-1ex ExpressCard34 to eSATA adapter. The ThunderBolt RAID connects to the ThunderBolt port, obviously. ExpressCard34 has a theoretical maximum throughput of 250MB/s, which in real-world situations, maximum sits around 215MB/s... I'm seeing 205+MB/s offloads from the RED SSD's with this configuration.

If the RED Station module had a ThunderBolt port on it, it would still be limited by the interface speed of the SSD mags, which is 3Gbps SATA. A ThunderBolt port on a RED Station module at this point would just be a convenience factor, not so much a performance thing. Internally, they would still need a ThunderBolt (PCIe) to SATA interface in order to talk to the SSD mags. Connecting the SSD mags to a good SATA host on a Mac or PC workstation, the SSD's can saturate the 3Gbps interface for reads, I can get around 280MB/s read from them. Writes are obviously slower, but seem to be very, very stable and flat-lined. If the RED Station happened to have a ThunderBolt port, your maximum SSD read times would still be around 280MB/s.

The Thunderbolt RAID (Promise Pegasus 6-bay with 6x1TB HDDs) connects via Thunderbolt and uses one of the two available channels, so it can still daisy-chain to other devices or another display. Using one of the two 10Gbps channels, it can theoretically go to (800MB/s), which is what Promise claims as the top speed. Given the drives that are in it, and based on other RAIDs with the same drives, I should be seeing about 580MB/s in RAID-0 and 450MB/s in RAID-5. I haven't benchmarked it yet and have no other systems to plug the RAID into other than two Macbook Pros with ThunderBolt (one 15", one 17"). I actually bought the RAID to use with a new iMac, but ended up not buying the iMac and I think I'll wait for the next revision, which should hit by October/November...

On another note, I was beta testing a ThunderBolt to eSATA adapter. The company that makes it is planning to start shipping in October. I sent it back though, should get a revised model next week. As of last week, it was still too flakey to really use. I had to send it back so I could get one with updated firmware.

I have a dual port Sonnet Pro ExpressCard to eSATA adapter in addition to my CalDigit ones. The card works just fine. I don't have much experience with any other Sonnet products.
 
Last edited:
It's the Sonnet Expresscard E-sata Pro that doesn't work very well... Because its Marvell chipset, and Sonnet doesn't usually want to update their driver to support new hardware. There is a $200 version and a $40 version. The $40 version is a standard sil3132 chipset, absolutely no issues. Being reliant on only SiliconImage is great, but relying on Marvell and Sonnet is almost a joke... In this case the expensive one really sucks. It only supports some Port Multipliers, and companies don't always want you to know which Port Multiplier they use in their Raid enclosure. Use the Silicon Image 3132 it's nearly 100% compatible with ALL hardware.
 
Could possibly be the MaxPower eSATA card maybe? Or the media you're copying to? Seems you have a bottleneck somewhere. I'm consistently in the mid 200's on my ATTO SAS/SATA cards copying to fast RAIDs. So, I don't know, hard to say without more info or seeing the system in action.
 
Those speeds were the results I obtained using Aja's disk speed tester, 1GB files. The MaxPower is not supposed to be a slouch...but who knows... Which ATTO card are you using (or is there only one SATA card?)
 
Predominantly using the ATTO H680 and it's big brother, the H6F0. But I can also get 200MB/s froma CalDigit ExpressCard transferring to a Promise Thunderbolt RAID.

I've never tested the cards with AJA's speed test, it's reliability seems to vary with different types of media. But what is it that you're copying to? Regardless of the reliability of the AJA test, I think it's a bit odd that your read speed would be so close to your write speed in the way it is unless there wasn't something amiss with with the controller or the test.

Have you just shot an entire card full on the camera and then offloaded it? How long does it take to do that if you offload to a fast RAID that can handle 300MB/s+ ?
 
Were currently looking at the very near future with our Avid set-up here.
Thinking maybe sharing a workstation with Resolve.
The proposed set-up is Mac Pro 12core with AMD 5870 | Cubix Host | Avid Nitris | DeckLink HD
Then a Cubix 4 | Quadro 4000 | Quadro 4000 | RED Rocket | ATTO R380.

Not really knowing what lies ahead for TB, is it safe to say that TB cant do higher than 4x PCI?
I think were going to need 16x for the above specs.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
But I can also get 200MB/s froma CalDigit ExpressCard transferring to a Promise Thunderbolt RAID.
Click to expand...

http://firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-6g/perform/
http://www.barefeats.com/ssd6g04.html

If the linked specs are accurate, and this Firmtek E34 card works with the RED SSD reader, I think you can almost double your download speed with the MacBook Pro 2011 17" and two Red SSD readers going to a Thunderbolt RAID. It's above the maximum theoretical speed that Apple publish for their MacBook Pro Expresscard slot, which probably means the 2011 model secretly has the 2.0 version E34 slot...? Or the linked tests are fuzzy? Who knows. If you try, please let us know how it works.
 
I'm not sure what is up with the ExpressCard slot in the 2011 MBP. I don't have one of the new ExpressCard SATA adapters like this Firmtek one to test. There's nothing to indicate It's an EC 2.0 slot in the profiler or anything like that. But FirmTek is not the only one making these sorts of speed claims. And they state clearly that on 2010 and older MBP systems, the top speed is significantly lower -- 200MB/s or less. So, there does appear to be some form of speed increase. I guess I'll have to figure that one out... If it is an EC 2.0 slot, we should see similar speed gains with the CalDigit 6G EC34 card too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top