EX1 SxS Files Straight to the SATA Drives? at DVinfo.net

Jonathan Bland · July 21st, 2008, 10:47 AM

Macbook Pro 17"
Firmtek 5 Bay SATA
EX1 SXS Cards

What is the best way to get the files off of the cards and to the Firmtek SATA drive WITHOUT having to first copy the cards to the internal drive first?

in other words....

I would like to NOT have to copy the SXS cards to the Macbook Pro's internal hard drive to get the files to the Firmtek SATA drives.

Could I use some kind of SATA/ Firwire adaptor like this?

http://www.wiebetech.com/pressreleas...ease.php?id=81

What I really would like is a Macbook pro with 2 Express 34 slots :)

Any thoughts?

Jonathan Bland · July 22nd, 2008, 04:31 AM

Bump bump.....

Anyone?
ASAP please :)

Paul Kellett · July 22nd, 2008, 05:42 AM

I'm using pc but when i offload the cards using clipbrowser, i can choose the destination folder/drive.

So sxs card goes into sxs slot on laptop, external hard-drive gets plugged in via usb and then i transfer from sxs card to external drive.

So as long as you can plug the Firmtek 5 Bay SATA into the mac then I presume you can do the same .

Paul.

Jonathan Bland · July 22nd, 2008, 05:48 AM

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your help :)

The thing is that the Firmtek connects to the Mackbook Pro via the Express 34 slot so I can't have an SxS card in the same slot at the same time.

Anybody else want to take a shot at this?

I know there must be some kind of SATA to Firewire connector cable. Sure the transfer speed might not be as fast but thats not an issue.

Jonathan Bland · July 22nd, 2008, 09:22 AM

Here we go!

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...UTS225&cat=CCD

Now..... can I just pull the files off of the SxS cards to the SATA drives connected via the USB 2.0 port?

Sure hope so.

Noah Yuan-Vogel · July 22nd, 2008, 12:01 PM

well, what firmtek drive is it? does it require a controller that support port multipliers, is it RAIDed? OSX software raid (diskutil)? the sata controller in that usb-sata converter device seems to support PM and software RAID, but it might be a problem switching between two different SATA controllers on the same software RAID, but it might be fine, i guess its hard for me to say for sure. USB will certainly be up to 10x slower than SATA in this case (250MBps max vs ~25MBps max)... but you say you dont care, so i guess thats fine. could always just buy a separate usb hard drive, but i suppose you have a reason you want to go straight to this firmtek drive and not another drive.

Jonathan Bland · July 22nd, 2008, 04:05 PM

Good questions Noah.

I wish I had the answers.....

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/

It won't be raided.

latest Mac OS

"could always just buy a separate usb hard drive, but i suppose you have a reason you want to go straight to this firmtek drive and not another drive."

yep, carrying enough heavy gear and hopefully this is the last little piece of the puzzle.

Pretty tough to be a one man band and be fully dialed on every little piece....

A big beer if'n you can sort this :)

George Kroonder · July 23rd, 2008, 09:28 AM

Simple.

You need the ExpressCard for the SxS, so you want the fastest connection for your external drive. That is FW800. It can be almost as fast as SATA in practical terms (for single disks).

I presume you also want to use a bus powered disk for mobility. Unless you can plug into AC power.

Get a 2.5" sata disk and put it in a housing like this or get a complete drive. Get a 7200rpm drive if you also want to edit or just if you want speed more than space. Larger 2.5" drives are 5400rpm and a bit slower (but fast enough for quick SxS offloading).

George/

Noah Yuan-Vogel · July 23rd, 2008, 09:46 AM

hmmm.... so a 5 bay drive enclosure but without the speed of esata or redundancy of RAID... whats the point of lugging something so large around then? is it that you dont care abotu copy speed but then when you arent offloading sxs you use the firmtek for on-set editing?

id check the chipset on the usb adapter but it should work as its probably the silicon image sata controller that supports PM and is compatible with the firmtek which also uses a silicon image controller.

theres always the option of using the EX1 as a usb sxs card reader and then using your expresscard sata for the firmtek... but that would tie up the camera.

whats the deal with firmtek anyway? isnt it like $500+ for the enclosure? ive used a similar 5bay enclosure with the same chipset that i got for about $200... whats so special about the firmtek?

Jonathan Bland · July 23rd, 2008, 10:35 AM

Well done Noah.

"hmmm.... so a 5 bay drive enclosure but without the speed of esata or redundancy of RAID... whats the point of lugging something so large around then? is it that you dont care abotu copy speed but then when you arent offloading sxs you use the firmtek for on-set editing?"

Bingo!

I will be shooting/ editing a doc around the world for the next few years and will have a flat to set up in.

"theres always the option of using the EX1 as a usb sxs card reader and then using your expresscard sata for the firmtek... but that would tie up the camera."

But doesn't the USB 2.0 only transfer the footage as 25mbs even when it's 35mbs???

"whats the deal with firmtek anyway? isnt it like $500+ for the enclosure? ive used a similar 5bay enclosure with the same chipset that i got for about $200... whats so special about the firmtek?"

I went with Firmtek because of the great reports and the size. Apparently it was started by a bunch of ex-apple guys.

"id check the chipset on the usb adapter but it should work as its probably the silicon image sata controller that supports PM and is compatible with the firmtek which also uses a silicon image controller."

I don't know how to id the chipset of a usb adaptor. Any thoughts?

One big beer coming right up...... you'll have to come to Amsterdam to get it ;)

Paul Kellett · July 23rd, 2008, 11:03 AM

You could always get the sony sxs card reader, plug that in via usb and transfer from the card reader through the laptop into the firmtek.
An 8gb card will take aroung 7 mins to transfer using the sony card reader.

Paul.

Jonathan Bland · July 23rd, 2008, 11:07 AM

Nice one Paul :)

Any idea how much for the "SONY" card reader or where I can find one?
I'm currently in Amstedam.

Jonathan Bland · July 23rd, 2008, 11:12 AM

Sony card reader is $250 at B&H. Plus it needs AC power

USB 2.0 to SATA adaptor is like...... $8.

Hmmmmmmm........

George Kroonder · July 24th, 2008, 02:54 AM

That's because the SxS cards implement the ExpressCard PCI Express interface so they need to be connected to a PCIe host (like the Sony reader or a notebook) and then it can be bridged to USB. A little more complex than the SATA-to-USB bridge (and manufactured in different quantities as well).

If you need a stationary setup, a RAID-ed eSATA (via ExpressCard) in combination with reading the SxS cards via USB is the easiest solution. You can use the camera USB connection to read the data from the cards just like with the external reader, albeit a little slower.

You can also capture SP-mode (HDV) video from the camera's firewire, but why would you want to.

George/

Jonathan Bland · July 24th, 2008, 03:13 AM

Big thanks George :)

Please tell me:

Does the USB 2.0 only transfer footage as 25mbs even when it's shot at 35mbs???

July 21st, 2008, 10:47 AM	#1
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	EX1 SxS Files Straight to the SATA Drives? Macbook Pro 17" Firmtek 5 Bay SATA EX1 SXS Cards What is the best way to get the files off of the cards and to the Firmtek SATA drive WITHOUT having to first copy the cards to the internal drive first? in other words.... I would like to NOT have to copy the SXS cards to the Macbook Pro's internal hard drive to get the files to the Firmtek SATA drives. Could I use some kind of SATA/ Firwire adaptor like this? http://www.wiebetech.com/pressreleas...ease.php?id=81 What I really would like is a Macbook pro with 2 Express 34 slots :) Any thoughts?

July 22nd, 2008, 05:42 AM	#3
Paul Kellett Trustee Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Bristol UK Posts: 1,273	I'm using pc but when i offload the cards using clipbrowser, i can choose the destination folder/drive. So sxs card goes into sxs slot on laptop, external hard-drive gets plugged in via usb and then i transfer from sxs card to external drive. So as long as you can plug the Firmtek 5 Bay SATA into the mac then I presume you can do the same . Paul. __________________ Round 2 GH5,FZ2000

July 23rd, 2008, 11:03 AM	#11
Paul Kellett Trustee Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Bristol UK Posts: 1,273	You could always get the sony sxs card reader, plug that in via usb and transfer from the card reader through the laptop into the firmtek. An 8gb card will take aroung 7 mins to transfer using the sony card reader. Paul. __________________ Round 2 GH5,FZ2000

July 22nd, 2008, 04:31 AM	#2
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Bump bump..... Anyone? ASAP please :)

July 22nd, 2008, 05:48 AM	#4
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Hi Paul, Thanks for your help :) The thing is that the Firmtek connects to the Mackbook Pro via the Express 34 slot so I can't have an SxS card in the same slot at the same time. Anybody else want to take a shot at this? I know there must be some kind of SATA to Firewire connector cable. Sure the transfer speed might not be as fast but thats not an issue.

July 22nd, 2008, 09:22 AM	#5
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Here we go! http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...UTS225&cat=CCD Now..... can I just pull the files off of the SxS cards to the SATA drives connected via the USB 2.0 port? Sure hope so.

July 22nd, 2008, 12:01 PM	#6
Noah Yuan-Vogel Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: New York City Posts: 613	well, what firmtek drive is it? does it require a controller that support port multipliers, is it RAIDed? OSX software raid (diskutil)? the sata controller in that usb-sata converter device seems to support PM and software RAID, but it might be a problem switching between two different SATA controllers on the same software RAID, but it might be fine, i guess its hard for me to say for sure. USB will certainly be up to 10x slower than SATA in this case (250MBps max vs ~25MBps max)... but you say you dont care, so i guess thats fine. could always just buy a separate usb hard drive, but i suppose you have a reason you want to go straight to this firmtek drive and not another drive.

July 22nd, 2008, 04:05 PM	#7
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Good questions Noah. I wish I had the answers..... http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/ It won't be raided. latest Mac OS "could always just buy a separate usb hard drive, but i suppose you have a reason you want to go straight to this firmtek drive and not another drive." yep, carrying enough heavy gear and hopefully this is the last little piece of the puzzle. Pretty tough to be a one man band and be fully dialed on every little piece.... A big beer if'n you can sort this :)

July 23rd, 2008, 09:28 AM	#8
George Kroonder Major Player Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Utrecht, NL \| Europe 3rd Rock from the Sun Posts: 612	Simple. You need the ExpressCard for the SxS, so you want the fastest connection for your external drive. That is FW800. It can be almost as fast as SATA in practical terms (for single disks). I presume you also want to use a bus powered disk for mobility. Unless you can plug into AC power. Get a 2.5" sata disk and put it in a housing like this or get a complete drive. Get a 7200rpm drive if you also want to edit or just if you want speed more than space. Larger 2.5" drives are 5400rpm and a bit slower (but fast enough for quick SxS offloading). George/

July 23rd, 2008, 09:46 AM	#9
Noah Yuan-Vogel Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: New York City Posts: 613	hmmm.... so a 5 bay drive enclosure but without the speed of esata or redundancy of RAID... whats the point of lugging something so large around then? is it that you dont care abotu copy speed but then when you arent offloading sxs you use the firmtek for on-set editing? id check the chipset on the usb adapter but it should work as its probably the silicon image sata controller that supports PM and is compatible with the firmtek which also uses a silicon image controller. theres always the option of using the EX1 as a usb sxs card reader and then using your expresscard sata for the firmtek... but that would tie up the camera. whats the deal with firmtek anyway? isnt it like $500+ for the enclosure? ive used a similar 5bay enclosure with the same chipset that i got for about $200... whats so special about the firmtek?

July 23rd, 2008, 10:35 AM	#10
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Well done Noah. "hmmm.... so a 5 bay drive enclosure but without the speed of esata or redundancy of RAID... whats the point of lugging something so large around then? is it that you dont care abotu copy speed but then when you arent offloading sxs you use the firmtek for on-set editing?" Bingo! I will be shooting/ editing a doc around the world for the next few years and will have a flat to set up in. "theres always the option of using the EX1 as a usb sxs card reader and then using your expresscard sata for the firmtek... but that would tie up the camera." But doesn't the USB 2.0 only transfer the footage as 25mbs even when it's 35mbs??? "whats the deal with firmtek anyway? isnt it like $500+ for the enclosure? ive used a similar 5bay enclosure with the same chipset that i got for about $200... whats so special about the firmtek?" I went with Firmtek because of the great reports and the size. Apparently it was started by a bunch of ex-apple guys. "id check the chipset on the usb adapter but it should work as its probably the silicon image sata controller that supports PM and is compatible with the firmtek which also uses a silicon image controller." I don't know how to id the chipset of a usb adaptor. Any thoughts? One big beer coming right up...... you'll have to come to Amsterdam to get it ;)

July 23rd, 2008, 11:07 AM	#12
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Nice one Paul :) Any idea how much for the "SONY" card reader or where I can find one? I'm currently in Amstedam.

July 23rd, 2008, 11:12 AM	#13
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Sony card reader is $250 at B&H. Plus it needs AC power USB 2.0 to SATA adaptor is like...... $8. Hmmmmmmm........

July 24th, 2008, 02:54 AM	#14
George Kroonder Major Player Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Utrecht, NL \| Europe 3rd Rock from the Sun Posts: 612	That's because the SxS cards implement the ExpressCard PCI Express interface so they need to be connected to a PCIe host (like the Sony reader or a notebook) and then it can be bridged to USB. A little more complex than the SATA-to-USB bridge (and manufactured in different quantities as well). If you need a stationary setup, a RAID-ed eSATA (via ExpressCard) in combination with reading the SxS cards via USB is the easiest solution. You can use the camera USB connection to read the data from the cards just like with the external reader, albeit a little slower. You can also capture SP-mode (HDV) video from the camera's firewire, but why would you want to. George/

July 24th, 2008, 03:13 AM	#15
Jonathan Bland Major Player Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Way Far Away Posts: 230	Big thanks George :) Please tell me: Does the USB 2.0 only transfer footage as 25mbs even when it's shot at 35mbs???