Video Editing hardware workflow Query

[ChrisA]

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I could go a lot cheaper and buy 2 or 3 7200 rpm HDDs and diasy-chain them via the single firewire port? But I've heard that daisy-chaining reduces the speed even further. This would still be faster than my current setup though I'm guessing (1 500rpm HDD firewire 400 for previews, cacheing and exporting; 1 500rpm HDD USB 2 for raw video files; software ran from internal iMac local drive). ..

No not "'daisy chain" That would be slower. What you want is a hardware RAID. That means several faster hard drives inside the same enclosure. The RAID hardware will spread the load over the multiple drives and you get a faster over all rate. But this kind of RAID (called "striped" or some times RAID-0) is a bit risky in that if one drive fails you loos all the data. So, you'd need a second RAID to run Time Machine.

Plan an upgrade path and the total cost is less. You likely will need a bunch of bare hard dries to hold backup and archive data and for an off site backup. You will need enough of them to rotate around so that always there is at least one copy off site so these so you can use the drives in the RAID box then figure in three years you out grow it and you use those drives for backup rotation or Time Machine (User RAID-5 for TM)

 

[DragonToe]

Thanks for the tips ChrisA

Would this RAID-0 setup be as fast as a single internal SSD? I ask because the single SSD seems to be a lot cheaper. Also, if we are comparing an external RAID to an external SSD, wouldn't they both perform similiarly because of having an upper limit of speed due to the firewire bus limitations? In which case the SSD would surely be preferable as it would be cheaper?

If I run Time Machine on a 550rpm USB 2 1TB HDD it will be ok won't it? What's the benefit of using fast hard drives for backups?

Oh, and did you manage to perform the SSD in DVD drive, iMac upgrade Chad3eleven? If so how did it go?

 

[DragonToe]

Anyone?

 

[Chad3eleven]

Just buy an external firedrive and be done with it. If you are looking for ultimate speed for your workflow, buy a tower. You are and will be bottlenecked by your machine.. Its like asking what tires will make your 2004 dodge neon run faster.. its the engine that sucks, not the tires.

I'm currently editing from a Lacie rugged, via firefire 800 on a mac pro tower, with a mix of h264, go pro and pro res footage.. all is fine. Is it as fast as our fibre network? No.

Is it enough to get the job done. Of course.

And no I havent installed an SSD in my iMac yet. my plan is to keep the optical drive in there, and install the drive behind the disc tray, using the 3rd un used Sata port inside the iMac (i like to keep things clean, and not clutter my desk with a USB external dvd drive)