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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 :)

Which RAID?

David J. Buchanan

David J. Buchanan

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What RAID do I need for 8K footage?

Right now I'm running and internal RAID-0 but it must have a bottleneck because it's stutters on some XAVC 4k footage and of course the 6K RAW my Red Dragon does. I'm looking to upgrade and I see people doing PCI-E internal and some have raid array bays?

Anyway just wondering what y'all are working with out there. Thanks
 
I'm using an Areca 1882i SAS/SATA card internally using RAID3. The new 1883i cards are out. Areca raid cards are excellent. I have also successfully transplanted my 1882i and drives into a new workstation without a hitch. You can also have a look at LSI raid cards. I used an LSIMegaRaid at work in RAID5. If you do go internal you should seriously consider a hardware raid card, rather than just using a windows software RAID (if you're on a PC).
 
I’m on a custom build PC. I believe it’s the ASUS X79 WS-E. But I was wondering if there’s a possibility for a PCI-E card that would go externally. Reason being is, changing and achieving drives.

I’d hate to open my computer every time I want to change a drive. And really, even if I offload internally from the raid to an externally storage for achieving, wouldn’t that be slow? Unless I get a NAS or something, but I’m trying to eliminate the amount of hardware I have to buy.
 
For external RAID towers I'd look at Promise. I looked at G-Tech, but in the end chose Promise R6 for our external RAID at work. The new Thunderbolt3 units are out now. Colleagues, online reviews, and reputation drove my choice. I haven't had a chance to hook it up yet though. For a PC I think your connection choices might be limited to Thunderbolt or SAS via an internal PCIe card (that has a connection out the back of the computer) . You might want to look at LTO Tape for archiving instead of archiving HD's, if that's what you're planning. Hard drives just don't have a good shelf-life. Also, I'm not sure why you'd be changing drives frequently if you have a RAID configuration - apart from swapping failed drives. Anyway, fast storage is great (at least 700MBs/s), but for 8k footage you should also be looking at your processor, and GPU to get the best performance.
 
I just built an unRAID 48tb.. its great for backing up footage. I would use raid 0 SSDs for a cache/temp drive and raid 5 for a workstation.
 
I found a good resource for RAID in video editing is the Adobe Premiere forum on Adobe.com. Guys like Harm Millard, and Bill Gehrke seem to be quite the authorities there.
 
Do you mind elaborating on why you went promise over g-tech, anything other than thunderbolt 3? I've been looking at those two brands as well.


Edwin Perez said:
For external RAID towers I'd look at Promise. I looked at G-Tech, but in the end chose Promise R6 for our external RAID at work. The new Thunderbolt3 units are out now. Colleagues, online reviews, and reputation drove my choice. I haven't had a chance to hook it up yet though. For a PC I think your connection choices might be limited to Thunderbolt or SAS via an internal PCIe card (that has a connection out the back of the computer) . You might want to look at LTO Tape for archiving instead of archiving HD's, if that's what you're planning. Hard drives just don't have a good shelf-life. Also, I'm not sure why you'd be changing drives frequently if you have a RAID configuration - apart from swapping failed drives. Anyway, fast storage is great (at least 700MBs/s), but for 8k footage you should also be looking at your processor, and GPU to get the best performance.
Click to expand...
 
XAVC stuttering on playback is not abnormal in many current editors due to the complexity and limiting threading capability of the codec. That is not due to disk speed. The R3D 6K raw would be though. You would want atleast a raid 0 for the R3D depending on compression level. Raw would require far more for example. Atleast 1 SSD would probably be a cheaper solution for working with the 6K raw depending on volume space required. Raiding the SSD's in a raid 0 would definitely offer the performance for any R3D. If mechanical drives are required then 5 or 6 drive raid 5 would be the least recommended due to the higher latency of mechanical drives. 4 in a raid 5 would probably handle 1 stream.
 
Drew Thomas said:
Do you mind elaborating on why you went promise over g-tech, anything other than thunderbolt 3? I've been looking at those two brands as well.
Click to expand...

I really didn't have much to go on. Looked at buyer reviews on B&H (Promise reviews seemed more favourable), and asked a colleague who had a Promise R4. I had heard good things about Promise RAIDs and got good communication from Symply. No word from Gtech when I inquired. I had also chatted with Promise staff at NAB. Obviously the GTech Studio series are more slick-looking, but that didn't matter to me. Tough call as it's hard to "try" both and I was pressed for time so I had to take the Thunderbolt 2 Pegasus2 R6.
 
Eric Bowen said:
XAVC stuttering on playback is not abnormal in many current editors due to the complexity and limiting threading capability of the codec. That is not due to disk speed. The R3D 6K raw would be though. You would want atleast a raid 0 for the R3D depending on compression level. Raw would require far more for example. Atleast 1 SSD would probably be a cheaper solution for working with the 6K raw depending on volume space required. Raiding the SSD's in a raid 0 would definitely offer the performance for any R3D. If mechanical drives are required then 5 or 6 drive raid 5 would be the least recommended due to the higher latency of mechanical drives. 4 in a raid 5 would probably handle 1 stream.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was speaking with a few members on the FB group for Epic-W. And I figure the best solution is RAID 5 with HDD. SSD's would be awesome but the price is too outstanding. And I'm in the upgrade for the 8K for I need something that could handle that at 5:1.

As for swapping drives, I just figure it'd be easier outside of my computer. Please HDD creating shit tons of heat doesn't sound too good in my system.

So I'm looking at getting a PCI-E card going to a Bay with 5 drives in a RAID 5... You think that'd be fast enough?
 
You might want to look at MAXX Digital, they are RED savvy so they could advise per your specific requirements.
http://www.maxxdigital.com/thunderraid-mini-r6.html
The controller card lives inside the tower and it supports USB3 & TB2, so they are handy for moving your storage from system to system.

FWIW, if you can wait a bit, a RAID with USB-C/TB3 ports will support higher bandwidth and is poised to be the dominant connection standard for years to come.

Cheers - #19
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
You might want to look at MAXX Digital, they are RED savvy so they could advise per your specific requirements.
http://www.maxxdigital.com/thunderraid-mini-r6.html
The controller card lives inside the tower and it supports USB3 & TB2, so they are handy for moving your storage from system to system.

FWIW, if you can wait a bit, a RAID with USB-C/TB3 ports will support higher bandwidth and is poised to be the dominant connection standard for years to come.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...


Yes. I do plan on waiting for the USB-C/TB3 ports... I just got a MacBook Pro and hopefully my windows machine will be able to take a PCI-E card with the USB-C type connection. I'm still doing some research on that as it's a few years old.
 
I'm a big fan of the G-Tech Studio XL RAIDs and use those in my office. I believe they go up to 96TB. Note these are all Thunderbolt 2, so you'd need to have a motherboard capable of a Thunderbolt 2 connection.
 
Marc Wielage said:
I'm a big fan of the G-Tech Studio XL RAIDs and use those in my office. I believe they go up to 96TB. Note these are all Thunderbolt 2, so you'd need to have a motherboard capable of a Thunderbolt 2 connection.
Click to expand...

Yeah... *sigh* I just looked up my mobo specs and it won't work with TB3 or USB-C... I'll check on TB2, but now by the looks of it I'll just wait another year and upgrade my mobo and CPU along with the TB3 connections... I hate that tech goes obesolote after a freaking month.
 
And honestly, I don't mean to turn this into a rant but c'mon. I buy something one day, turn around and they got something a billion times faster the next and not even allow for compatibility upgrades? That's the whole reason I'm on a PC... Jeez.
 
David J. Buchanan said:
Yes. I do plan on waiting for the USB-C/TB3 ports... I just got a MacBook Pro and hopefully my windows machine will be able to take a PCI-E card with the USB-C type connection. I'm still doing some research on that as it's a few years old.
Click to expand...

I have the 2016 MacBook Pro too. I plan on using an AKiTiO Thunder3 Quad 4-Bay with 4 x 8Tb enterprise drives. https://www.akitio.com/desktop-storage/akitio-thunder3-quad

AKiTiO support inform me they should have this case Apple certified in early 2017. I predict the Raid speed to be ~ 700Mb/sec. BHphotovideo sells it.
 
The question is not what raid do you need, but what do you want to do with your storage? 8K @ 5:1 x the number of streams. That'll give you the figure to aim for, then double it! Don't get too hung-up on SSD vs HDD, the bottle neck is your connection between the raid and the disks. Take my TB2 Raid 6 speeds for example....

 
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