multiple external hard drives
 

I'm adding 3 more external hard drives to my editing work station. I've read that with firewire, you can connect them in "series" off of one firewire port on the computer.

My question: is this the best/fastest connection? better than connecting each to it's own computer firewire port?

and problems with multiple HDs in series for video editing?

also, any advantage to having all the same brand/model of HDs?

thanks!

Hi Robert...........
 

Guess it depends...........

Great answer huh?

If the drives have daisy chain capability (like my Maxtor) and you're not hammering more than one at a time, everything should be cool.

If they don't have daisy chain capability then it ain't going to work, nach.

If you try hammering more than one in the string at a time, things could slow to a crawl.

If you think you may need to access files on two of these drives at the same time, they would be better on their own port.

As for the same flavour of drive, guess it wouldn't really matter, tho' think with some judicious shopping around, 3 of a kind should get you a better deal.


CS

Yes. The limit of the current 1394 spec is a max of 480Mbps. This is slower than the combined data rate of more than one contemporary hard drive. Like Chris said, one should work fine on a single port. More than that and your system will fall to its knees.
On top of the previous issue, if you're using Premier, Adobe specifically state that they do not support 1394 except for footage transfer from a camera.
Aside from they'll all look better sitting on a shelf, no. Faster and bigger are generally better and drives have been getting bigger and faster.

I have 3TB of WD MyBook storage (USB) spread across 6 drives connected to my edit station, mostly used for near-line storage plus two more drives used for archiving. I have used them for DV editing without problems. HDV from those drives gets a bit dodgy. Not enough throughput.

thanks for the responses.

tripp - I currently edit DV on premiere pro with firewire drives, and they work fine. I think it has more to do with the speed of the computer than the firewire architecture.

HD video might be too large...

I just found this info online:

HD video converted into the cineform intermediate streams at aprox 20 MB/s, and firewire 400 transfers at 49MB/s, so it sounds like firewire Hard drives will work okay.

question:

If I'm reading files from one FW drive and I'm sending temp storage files to another FW drive, does it matter if they're daisy chained? or can info move both ways at the same time on FW cable?

I've found it's easier to use a single swappable enclosure. It cuts down on all the extra cables & power supplies. Makes life simpler for me. These are the ones I use:
WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - RTX™ 100 Series - External FireWire and USB SATA hard drive Enclosure

and a set of hard drive cases to store extra drives:
WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - Protective Hard Drive Cases

So Michael, how many drives do you have in your enclosure? they all are accessed via one firewire cable? does that slow things down? what format are you editing?

thanks!

I only need one single-drive enclosure. Every project gets it's own hard drive, and I swap them out of the enclosure as needed. Over eSata and Firewire 800 I get good performance editing HDV, DVCProHD, Cineform, & ProRes. I wouldn't recommend it for ProResHQ.

Generally for multiple drive enclosures, you will need a separate cable connection for each drive in the enclosure. There are some eSata enclosures that let the drives run over one wire.

Have you thought about RAID? I don't mean a real one with special controller cards and a separate enclosure with 8TB... I have two WD 500gb fw400 drives. One is connected to the computer, the other to the first drive. They're set up as a striped array (RAID0), so they share data between them. RAID0 generally speeds up drive performance, and I've not had a problem yet.

Robert - I strongly recommend USB 2.0 over Firewire. USB is, in my experience, just as fast, and sometimes faster than FW 400. Firewire is very sensitive to static electricity, and in New Mexico this is a frequent problem. USB is relatively immune to small static charges. My computer friends tell me that in theory, a single USB port will handle over 100 divisions to additional USB ports without problems. I'm not smart enough on this topic to be able to confirm or deny the last statement, but feeding six USB ports into one should be no problem. Finally, the very near future (a year or so), USB 3.0 will very likely make Firewire a thing of the past.

Probably not and no. Each drive will create it's own path to the computer. I seem to remember that each 1394 device will maintain maximum data rate. It's an old memory so it may be untrue. Sounds like blue smoke and black magic to me.

You might want to look up 1394 in wikipedia, or if you're a real glutton for punishment, read the IEEE spec. I think that some technical research on your part will give you some lasting understanding of the environment. This will be helpful in the long run if you stay with this architecture.

Also, Mark's comment may be accurate from his observations but others have said to stay away from USB 2.0 drives for editing, particularly HDV files. Truth is, if you have a machine that supports SATA internally, you'd be better off adding additional drives inside the box as you will double your throughput to disk over USB. You will also get good performance editing HDV without the cost, complexity and more importantly the vulnerability to data loss of an external RAID 0.

I disagree with this statement. Depending on the number of USB devices connected, but using a general number (mouse, keyboard, printer, 1 or 2 other devices and a USB drive), you can use the following rule-of-thumb figures for sustained transfer rates:

1. USB2.0 ~ 20 MBps
2. Firewire 400 (1394A) ~ 30 MBps
3. Firewire 800 (1394B) ~ 50 MBps
4. SATA or eSATA ~ 80 MBps

USB is the slowest connection you have and it is very susceptible to the number of devices attached, since the total bandwidth must be shared. It is OK for backups, but for editing it is not suitable. In some cases you may be able to edit DV with it if you have a limited number of tracks in use, but for HDV or multiple tracks it is severely lacking.

thanks for the responses. I'll read up on Firewire to see if extra peripherals bog the total speed down.

Do you know, is it possible to attach multiple additional hard drives via SATA?

Sure. You can run the SATA cable out from your motherboard to the external enclosure or you can get an SATA card. I've seen them in both PCI and PCI express for the PC. For instance, here's one option. Iogear | 2-Port RAID eSATA 3Gbps PCI Express Host | GICE702S3R5

There are also cardbus and PC card adapters for laptops.

I would expect to see SATA becoming much more prevalent as a means to attach external hard drives and even optical drives in the future for high throughput applications. It's a specialized interface for storage and therefor optimized for it. It also mitigates the limitations in USB and 1394.

Hey Michael, your hard drive setup seems interesting and I just might copy you! I was originally going to just use a few internal hard drives but this seems more practical in the long run especially if I don't want to delete any footage.

I have a couple of questions for you. Do you use FW800 or eSATA out of the external enclosure? Your next post then suggests you use both.

Is your enclosure quiet? I got a Mercuty Elite-AL Pro from OWC which I'm pretty happy with. It came with it's own hard drive so I'm going to take it apart tonight and see if I can put other hard drives in there too.

Keep in mind that a Firewire bus will slow down to the slowest device on that controller. For example, if you daisy chain 2 FW800 drives and then tag a FireWire equipped camera to the end of the chain, your drives are going to behave like FW400 drives.

As well, find out if there are multiple controllers for multiple busses on your computer: even if you have FW800 and FW400 on your case you MAY be slowing down your FW800 buss IF there is only one controller for both busses and you plug in a FW400 device. I'm not sure if this is an issue anymore or not...

Yes I've found it very practical. The main advantage is that the Wiebetech enclosures are designed to work with bare drives, so it's plug, play, & swap. They also have a 5.25" internal enclosure for desktops, which I couldn't live without. Works the same, just plug, play & swap.

On my computers, I always connect with the eSata port. But when working on other people's machines, I almost always have to use the firewire port. It's a small detail, but it's important for me to have both ports on the external enclosure.

And yes I've found the external enclosure to be very, very quiet.

solution?
 

I don't need to set up a RAID array. I just want to attach a few more Hard Drives with good connection speed.

I'm thinking of getting a card with 4 external sata ports that attaches to the computer thru a PCI Express x4 slot.

does this seem like the best way to go?

thanks -

That is very good. An alternative might be - if you can find it (I never looked, so I don't know if it is easy to find) - a ML (Multi lane) card, meaning one ML cable going out of the PC to the enclosure and at the end splitting into 4 SATA connectors. Easier and tidier cabling.

the right choice?
 

I don't know much about what I'm doing here - so can anyone tell me if this card -

Sonnet | Tempo SATA E4P SATA Host Adapter for PCI | TSATAII-E4P

is the right choice to allow me to attach several esata hard drives in a JBOD, non-raid array?

I'm hoping to attach HDDs of various sizes and perhaps different makers.

Thanks ~

Well I finally got to open my Mercury Elite-AL Pro external case and I'll post my findings if anyone's interested.

It does take a little more work than the WiebeTech one mentioned earlier in this thread (which, as I read, you just have to slide the drive in and close the door. No cables or nothing). First, it's closed off with 4 small screws that's shaped like a star or hexagon, which was hard to find a screwdriver for (my screwdriver set says T10). Slide it open, and the drive is screwed it with another 4 philips head screws (just like it is in a desktop). Other than that, the SATA cables were easy to plug and unplug, which is nice because I've only dealt with IDE drives before this and they were kind of a pain to unplug sometimes! So all in all, it'll take around 5 minutes to swap a drive.

I emailed OWC and they said their "enclosure only kit" (about $100) is exactly the same as ones bundled with a hard drive.

Oh, and if anyone was curious, they used a Western Digital drive inside.

So I'll just be sticking with this enclosure and finding some anti-static drive cases from WiebeTech (also mentioned previously)...unless I can find cheaper ones elsewhere? Maybe I can find some old VHS or beta tape cases, hehe.

That's kinda asking for trouble if you ever change your mind and decide to build a RAID. In an array, performance will be limited to the slowest drive in the array and usable capacity of each drive will be no larger than the smallest drive.

Just something to consider before you plunk down your money.

Am I correct that a RAID array needs a controller of some kind? (hardware on a board?)

and if I purchase this PCIe x4 card with 4 esata ports, if I decide later that I want to use the drives as a RAID array would I need to add a controller?

On the other hand, if I buy a PCIe card that says it's for RAID, could I still use the Hard Drives in a JBOD arrangement?

The reason I'd like one of my hard drives to be smaller on this project is that we're taking video from a sony EX1, and I'd like to archive the footage and a backup of the project on the small hard drive by disconnecting it and storing it when we're done.

any advice is appreciated - I'm rather confused!

To answer your questions in order, yes (but not necessarily as you described), probably no and probably yes.

1-Some mobos have RAID built in. I don't know how prevalent they are but the last two machines I bought in the last 12 months both had it. But, you can get an add-in card.

2 & 3-Any decent card should be able to do both RAID and JBOD. Just buy one that does and you can go either way.

How would i find out if my motherboard has the option to do RAID? there must be some settings under "control panel"?

I had read that WinXP can't do Raid 1. would this defeat the motherboards ability too?

thanks

In the BIOS settings. Not in Control Panel.

I've decided to get a WD My Book Studio Edition II. It's a dual disc HDD with esata out that can be configured as RAID 1, and it has a 5 yr limited warranty.

and I'll also get a smaller esata drive to use as an editing cache, and ultimately to archive the project's footage and project files.

thanks for all your comments!

Hi I thought I'd ask a question regarding external hard drives rather than creating a new topic...

I'm now editing a new project on my external HDD and it's a bit noisier than I remember it to be (haven't edited on it for a few months). In fact, I don't recall it ever making sounds. Every time I scrub through the FCP timeline, it would make a light clicking or buzzing sound, and I would hear it for segment I scrub through. The LED also blinks each time it makes the sound (as it normally does when the HD is doing some heavy reading or writing)

Is there something wrong or is this completely normal? Is it a sign of it crapping out?

Hard to tell just from that description. If your disk is 2/3 full or more and hasn't been defragmented lately, it will probably have the heads flying all over the disk looking for the files.

Try defragmenting the drive. If it quiets it down, then you should be fine. Remember, a defragmented drive is a happy drive, and will save you grief down the line.

YIKES, I'd be backing up footage BEFORE trying to defrag a media drive.

Is this a dedicated media drive or do you have system files and such on it as well? A dedicated media drive SHOULDN'T become fragmented (as far as the media files are concerned), at least in my experience.

If you can back up the files OR can recapture them from tape easily, go ahead and defrag, as Tripp recommends. Otherwise, I'd recommend not doing a thing until you can either get the project out the door or back up the files to another drive.

I've never defrag'd a drive on any of my FCP Macs in 9.5 years, for what it's worth BUT my media sits on dedicated externals and my render target is usually a different drive still.

That's almost a yikes for me. File fragmentation can significantly slow disk I/O due to large head seeks and latency issues. All of my internal drives have a full defragmentation scheduled weekly.

Louder than normal sounds will emanate from a disk when performing long-range seeks. It's really nothing to worry about. Now if you hear a mechanical clicking in combination with head movement, that's called head banging and has nothing to do with rock and roll. That's bad. Immediate backup is imperative because the risk of data loss is large. That drive is losing it's mind.

Shaun's comment about backing up data is always on target because once data is lost it's wicked hard to get it back, if you can at all. That said, there's no reason to fear defragmenting a healthy drive. There is no more risk to your data in doing that as there would be with normal disk I/O. If you want to increase your margin of safety before your defragmentation, perform a full disk check complete with sector scan. That should ensure that the defrag program won't move your data to a marginal sector somewhere.

This "wisdom" comes from many years working for disk and storage manufacturers.