G-Raid or no G-Raid

[Michael Armao]

I do video editing on a mac pro with FCP I have 2x2.8ghz Quad core intel xeon with 16 GB of ram with 2 internal hard drives. One is a 500GB Hd that my operating system is on and all my programs are on the other HD is 750 Gb and I use that only for my video editing. I am looking into getting a G-drive because I want to do my video editing on an external Hd. I need a drive that is safe, fast, and that would back up my data. I don't know if i should get a G-Drive and partition it to 1 of get a G-safe drive or get a G-Drive mini.
Does anybody have any answers

Thanks Mike Armao

[Chris Hurd]

Moved here from Industry News.

[Michael Armao]

i Dont understand your reply Chris

[Chris Hurd]

You had originally posted this to our Industry News forum, which is reserved for the discussion of industry press releases, etc. We don't have a dedicated support forum for G-Tech products (yet), so I have moved your post to the next best place, which is here -- our Final Cut Studio forum. Although I should probably branch this section out into two areas, one for FCS software, and the other for hardware, including peripherals such as yours.

At any rate, I hope you'll draw some helpful replies here.

[William Hohauser]

And here is one.

You need to understand the differences in drives and RAID configurations and how those relate to your editing needs.

A single 7200rpm drive hooked up by FireWire800 will probably suffice for your needs if you are editing HDV or simple ProRes projects.

A RAID 0 single drive unit (such as the G-RAID which contains two regular drives formatted together) is better for HD editing but you need to back up the data on your own to another drive.

A RAID 1 drive unit (such as the G-Safe) is a mirrored drive so all data written to the first drive is simultaneously duplicated to the second drive which slows down performance and might make your editing experience frustrating. You certainly can't use one of these to capture from tape but it will probably work for file based editing.

A RAID 5 unit is faster than a RAID 1 unit but you will occasionally experience dropped frames as the drive performs it's automatic data back-up routine. RAID 5 units have to have a minimum of three drives formatted together for the data protection to work. If a drive goes bad a RAID 5 unit will repair the lost data itself when the bad drive is replaced. RAID 5 units are also not so good for live capture or printing to tape but for most editing they are great.

[Gary Nattrass]

HI Mike as you have a mac pro why don't you just buy two or three esata drives and put them in your tower as a raid 0 array, you will get far faster speed and it will cost less and be more reliable than an external drive.

I have a g-raid for use with my macbook pro via firewire but my mac pro which is the same as yours but with 8gb ram has three internal 1tb drives formatted as a raid 0 and I am pulling over 250mbs disc speed off that set-up.

I use low cost USB drives as a back-up for all my raid 0 systems.

[Michael Armao]

Thanks Gary for the response

Forgive me as i am not so up on computers and computer lingo. Is a internal sata Hd the same thing as a esata drive., or is there a difference. Can you send me a link to a good one if poss. I have 2 open bays for Hd on my mac pro right now. So if i was to buy 2 Esata or sata drives I would fill the existing empty bays and then would have to set them to raid 0 (which i don't know how to do). Now this would help me with speed but while editing if i have a HD failure I would loose my project, do you have any solution for that. One piece of the puzzle that I left out that is important is that I shoot my video with a Sony PMWEX1R so all my video is on a S x S card, and thats why Im so concerned about having a back up. Its not like I have a tape to go back to. Once the S x S cards are erased all of party is gone...

[Michael Armao]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

And here is one.

You need to understand the differences in drives and RAID configurations and how those relate to your editing needs.

A single 7200rpm drive hooked up by FireWire800 will probably suffice for your needs if you are editing HDV or simple ProRes projects.

A RAID 0 single drive unit (such as the G-RAID which contains two regular drives formatted together) is better for HD editing but you need to back up the data on your own to another drive.

A RAID 1 drive unit (such as the G-Safe) is a mirrored drive so all data written to the first drive is simultaneously duplicated to the second drive which slows down performance and might make your editing experience frustrating. You certainly can't use one of these to capture from tape but it will probably work for file based editing.

A RAID 5 unit is faster than a RAID 1 unit but you will occasionally experience dropped frames as the drive performs it's automatic data back-up routine. RAID 5 units have to have a minimum of three drives formatted together for the data protection to work. If a drive goes bad a RAID 5 unit will repair the lost data itself when the bad drive is replaced. RAID 5 units are also not so good for live capture or printing to tape but for most editing they are great.

William thank you for the response.
I understand what you are saying as to use a Raid 0 system to edit my sd and hd video on, Then you said to back up data to another drive. At which point should I be backing up data. Do I do it when the project is complete or do it at intervals. Also if i use a Raid 0 system and the drive fails I then loose that work that i did. Im looking for the best of both worlds... lol I want to edit on a fast drive that backs up my data (with out dropped frames) and then want to store it on another drive.

[William Hohauser]

There are many discussions regarding backup prochedures on this site available with a search. I use a combination of Apple's Time Machine and this program File Synchronization. What I do is store all the video files on my RAID 5 drive and keep the program files on my main system drive which is backed up by Time Machine. Even though a RAID 5 is protecting the data I use File Synchronization to back up important project files to a cheap USB drive which I take to a different location. You never know.

[Gary Nattrass]

Yes it is the same, all you need do is buy two esata hard drives and put them into you two free bays, the size of drive is up to you but I personally would put two 2tb drives in which will give you a 4gb raid 0 array. Replacing the drive you already have would give you more disc space and speed but unless you are doing major HD work two should be enough for most things.

All you need to do is go into system set-up and the disc utility and set up + format the two drives as a raid 0 array.

Internal drives in tandem will give you more speed than a firewire external g-raid and as you have two bays free will be cheaper.

I use the western digital green drives that are 7,200 rpm:

Western Digital 2TB SATA 6Gbps Power Saving Internal Hard Drive OEM - Caviar Green: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

Western Digital 2TB SATA 6Gbps Power Saving Internal Hard Drive OEM - Caviar Green: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

I paid the same for my 1tb drives two years ago so you should be able to get two for less than $200, here are some on e-bay in the USA: http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Western-Digi...d=p3286.c0.m14

[Michael Armao]

Gary one more quick question.

If I use my two open bays and put in 2 HD and set them to raid 0 can I then install an external HD set to Time Machine just for the raid drives so it backs up the data. If so can I use a one drive G-Drive to do it or does it have to be a G-Raid 2 drive system to back it up.

[William Hohauser]

You want to use a fast drive for video file back-ups just so that it doesn't take days for the first backup to complete but a RAID is overkill for a backup. A standard FireWire drive will do. And you want a backup drive that is around twice the size of all your files that you are backing up including your system drive. So if you are backing up 250gb of data, the drive should be at least 500gb, The thing about RAIDs is that they can be way larger in capacity than any single drive available although individual projects usually are within the confines of available technology. This is why I manually backup individual projects to their own drive. Yes you can back up to another RAID but that can get expensive to set up..

[Gary Nattrass]

What I do is use multiple drives for pre and post edit back-up.

1: I shoot panasonic P2 cards
2: Verified card clone to small self powered 160gb USB drives
3: Ingest to FCP onto my 3tb raid 0 array or to an ext Firewire 800 drive if the client is editing it.
4: Back-up to clients USB drive if I am editing it or to my 160gb usb drives for my own material.

As said you really don't need a raid drive as your back-ups system but if you are working for external clients get them to provide you with drives for their media if they wish to take it away with them.

I always keep the card clone USB drives until the programme is transmitted or once the client confirms that they are happy and have arranged their own back-ups of their media.

[Nigel Barker]

You don't say what you are actually editing but unless it is uncompressed HD then you don't need a RAID-0 array in any case. It will be far better to have your two new disks in a RAID-1 (mirrored) array. Loss of a single disk due to hardware failure in a RAID-0 loses all your data. Even if you have RAID-1 you still need backups as mirroring protects you against hardware failure but not file corruption or accidental deletion.

[Gary Nattrass]

Not strictly true Nigel as it depends on how many layers you are wanting to edit on the timeline, yes a raid 0 will do uncompressed HD but at limited layers, even HDV at 25 mbs will benefit from a raid 0 array and allow you to get several layers of video and if you are doing pro res at HQ or even LT levels you will also need fast disc speed to get several layers of playback in real time.