Seeking Advice for Raid Purchase

[jkaz]

Hi,

I'm looking for advice on purchasing a RAID for a new Mac Pro for the purpose of editing video.

It's been a while since I've shopped for this so any tips or advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

[LethalWolfe]

What's your budget, what do hope to get out of a RAID and what codecs will you be editing with?


Lethal

[jkaz]

Budget: somewhere in the middle

Using an AJA Kona-LHe Capture Card, any codecs that
would come with that. Would be editing off of the RAID.

[jkaz]

is there a general standard brand for RAID's that FCP users generally use?

[bigbossbmb]

"in the middle" isn't really helpful as a budget... do you have an actual $ figure?

with the LHe you can edit pretty much any format you want... if you want a RAID that will support uncompressed HD, then it's going to cost more than one strictly for ProRes workflows.

you also need to think about what the goal of the RAID is... speed and/or fault tolerance

[anthemus]

Here's what I use at home: http://eshop.macsales.com/Customized_Pages/Framework.cfm?page=mepal_splash_raid.html

Usually running 3 cameras multi-clip. Filters and Color Correction. They keep up with no problems.

[matteusclement]

anthemus, does that box contain the RAID card that will deal with the info?
I am running my mac pro with two 500 gig drives using apples software raid. would I get any better with this box?

[matteusclement]

here is what I get on xbench with the current RAID 0 setup I have using the software raid:

Results 114.04
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L30)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type fast
Disk Test 114.04
Sequential 217.72
Uncached Write 244.47 150.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 236.06 133.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 141.01 41.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 338.53 170.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 77.25
Uncached Write 28.75 3.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 396.73 127.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 118.41 0.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 165.96 30.79 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[anthemus]

anthemus, does that box contain the RAID card that will deal with the info?
I am running my mac pro with two 500 gig drives using apples software raid. would I get any better with this box?

There is a hardware raid inside of the external case. The case handles the raid functions. They will ship it pre-configured for your type of raid.

Your internal software raid would be faster than the firewire ports. However the esata would give it a run for the money and could get you better performance. But then you will need an esata card...

[matteusclement]

I do have an e-sata card. but Unless the performance bump was drastic, I don't see much point of spending that kind of coin.