Hi all,

Any recommendations for a good, fast, redundant RAID for use with FCP?

Need a few TB and would like to keep it under £1000.

Thanks!

Hi Mike,
You should forget at the word "best" since that term is very relative and can cost many USD.
I am using two systems, one based on a sonnet tempo and the second with a RocketRaid. Both are connected to external racks with port multipliers what allows me to plug up to 25 hard disks on each card.
I didnt like the Sonnet even if many users says that are top notch i found the RocketRaid much more stable and faster.
Anyway both works good enough as entry level RAID and give you many possible configurations.

Mike,

RAID setups vary greatly in physical architecture, speed (both initial and continuous) and cost. There is no "best" setup because system and individual needs vary so much.

There is a ton of information about the various RAID configurations, connectivity types etc. etc. here on the forum. I'd highly suggest using the search feature and spend some time reading up on the wealth of data.

In less than a week a new "how to" website specific to pro AV users will be up which will outline all this information in a singular contiguous source; when it's live I'll ping you back with the info.

Please ping me as well!!

Ping us all!

To be more specific, I just need a need a simple, redundant (3 disc minimum I guess) raid. I was planning on using FW800. I don't want rack mount, just a stand alone desktop as I sometimes need it to be portable but mainly office bound.

I've already read a lot about it is hard to pick a model as such. I've heard good things about G raid...?

you can't go wrong with g-raid... very good quality stuff. it's expensive, but you do get what you pay for.

if you are looking for something a little more cost effective i have had my eye on the "mercury elite-al pro" it's a desktop enclosure that offers raid 0,1,5,and 10. it will take up to 4 drives and has firewire 800 as well as e-sata. from what i have heard it works well, is quiet, and is very fast.... 240 megabytes read/write a second on e-sata and about 80 megabytes read and write on fw800.

anyone have one of these want to chime in and confirm this... i would really like to know for myself.

anyway,Hopefully it's okay to post a link here...
OWC Mercury Pro Qx2 4-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10 eSATA, FireWire 400/800, USB2 Desktop Removable Bay Storage Solution - up to 8.0TB (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/)

A platform independent article abouts the basics for editing: Adobe Forums: To RAID or not to RAID, that is the... (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/525263?tstart=0)

To be more specific, I just need a need a simple, redundant (3 disc minimum I guess) raid. I was planning on using FW800. I don't want rack mount, just a stand alone desktop as I sometimes need it to be portable but mainly office bound.

I've already read a lot about it is hard to pick a model as such. I've heard good things about G raid...?

G-Raid setups are "OK" but highly overrated, just as LaCie products are.

If you've only got 3 disks to work with then there's no point in setting up any RAID at all; you're much better off with leaving them as single drives. You'd need a minimum of 6-8 HDD's to really have an appreciable benefit in the cost and efficiency of a RAID.

The article Harm has copied from the Adobe site is a must-read for anyone not familiar with or wanting to bone up on RAID technology and "how to".

Ping us all!

Roger-Wilco.

you can't go wrong with g-raid... very good quality stuff. it's expensive, but you do get what you pay for.

if you are looking for something a little more cost effective i have had my eye on the "mercury elite-al pro" it's a desktop enclosure that offers raid 0,1,5,and 10. it will take up to 4 drives and has firewire 800 as well as e-sata. from what i have heard it works well, is quiet, and is very fast.... 240 megabytes read/write a second on e-sata and about 80 megabytes read and write on fw800.

anyone have one of these want to chime in and confirm this... i would really like to know for myself.

anyway,Hopefully it's okay to post a link here...
OWC Mercury Pro Qx2 4-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10 eSATA, FireWire 400/800, USB2 Desktop Removable Bay Storage Solution - up to 8.0TB (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/)

I use the OWC 4 bay raid. Simple, inexpensive and built like a tank. Here are two reviews:

Macintosh Performance Guide: Reviews ? Other World Computing Mercury Elite-AL Pro QX2 4-bay Hardware RAID enclosure (http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-OWC_QX2.html)

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (http://www.barefeats.com/hard126.html)

I use 4 Hitachi 2 TB drives in a RAID 5 configuration. Generally I use it connected via FW800 to a MBP, but when I want to transfer data faster between it and another drive, I use eSATA via an Express34 eSATA card.

I have been very happy with my Dulce RAID 3 working drive. And will be adding additional Dulce RAID towers this winter.

Dulce Products (http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/products.html)

I use LaCie Biggest S2S 2.5 TB. You can get the 5 TB version now for about $1500 US.

Comes with PCI-X or PCI Express card.

3 years now 16 hours a day 6 days a week nary a hiccup.

Don't forget about including a full backup.

If your work is important, and you have deadlines, there's nothing like having a full backup of your projects and the media.

The worst I've heard lately is an independent producer who lost an entire season of work because a RAID system failed. The only backup for all this HD programming was on DV tape.

So when you design your workflow, consider the consequences of that system going into complete failure and what would be left in the aftermath.

Great point Dean,

I use:
Raid 3 for working drive.
Internal hard drives for apps and extras.
All drives backed up on Raid 1 removable drives that store off site.

BTW, I also have a backup operating system/boot drive that I created with Super Duper. So in case the startup drive goes bad I have a second startup drive already in place.

This second startup drive is also used as a backup whenever updates and upgrades are installed. If the "improvements" create problems, it's easy to go back to where things were.

If you've only got 3 disks to work with then there's no point in setting up any RAID at all; you're much better off with leaving them as single drives. You'd need a minimum of 6-8 HDD's to really have an appreciable benefit in the cost and efficiency of a RAID.


Surely redundancy on my working drives? RAIDs that large aren't really portable. A 3 disc RAID I can take with me if I need to visit a client, edit in the field etc.

Speed wise, I am currently use single drives and simply backing up onto externals. The speed isn't really an issue as they can handle Prores fine. It's okay but I'd like to have a constant redundancy.

As I say, this is one of those instances where personal preference and workflow comes in. You can certainly create redundancy for your working drives w/o going through the expense and hassle of setting up a RAID and in fact a RAID setup specifically to be used only as a backup has it's own caveats, especially if you're migrating the contents of more than one HDD source into a RAID however, if you've got need for a singular, portable solution that's data requirements are larger than any single-drive can handle then that's something you'll have to ferret out for yourself.

What you seem to be after is an archive/backup solution not necessarily a RAID. In which case keep this in mind: an archive or backup is something that is only powered-on and accessed when it's time to swap data. If it's running and hot all the time along with your working computer then you can't consider it an archive, but another working set of HDD's.

Dean that sounds like a smart drive to have. How does it work?

Hi Robert,

I'm after a redundant working system. My archive depends on the project. Some don't need it, others it is critical and requires separate off site storage. The archive I can handle, I'm just looking for recommendations for a 3 or 4 disc RAID system with FW800 as a must and eSATA ideally. It will be in frequent use and needs to be reasonably portable - ie not rack mounted.

I also know I don't want anything Lacie after previous failings and horror stories.

Check out the offerings from either:

Sonnet: Products & Solutions - Fusion Family (http://sonnettech.com/product/fusionfamily/index.html)

or

FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0, eSATA External Hard Drive Storage for Apple Mac and PCs - Desktop, Rack, and Portable Models (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/)

OWC likes to showcase the firewire stuff up-front but they have every connectivity available - excepting fibre which you don't need anyway.

I haven't done any HD edits on my LaCie HD's.
But I have NEVER had any HD crashes with them, so I will gladly spend a bit more.

I'm hunting for a solution at the moment myself and looked at the rugged portable drives and the G-Raid solutions. I'm pretty much set now on buying a G-Raid mini for the capture and poratble solution to go with the Macbook Pro I use for editing, and also intend on picking up a Western Digital sharespace NAS for backups.

This means I'll have a fast, redundent drive for capture and editing (postable when I need it to be), and also a redundent solution for archiving back at the office. The NAS is dirt cheap ($898AU for 4TB) and gives me that peace of mind.

p.s. I've had many disks fail with Lacie and it's usually not the hard drive but the enclosure/circuit board before I binned the lot.

Damian I use the G-Safe as my backup drive but am always looking for better options.

For NAS applications, I like the Thecus N7700 Pro with iSCSI. Portable, affordable and reliable.

http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=198&set_language=english

Ping us all!

So here's the website I mentioned, it's finally online:

http://www.go-go-godzilla.com

You can thank Chris Hurd for it's name - he's responsible for my DVinfo nickname!

The stuff about RAID setups and other info wont' get posted until just after the holidays but it's a start.

Don't hesitate to put in requests for either product reviews or "how to" guides.

Happy Holidays to all.

Great timing Robert thank you.

And thank you Chris for DVinfo and now go-go-godzilla.com