What type/speed of hard drive do you EDIT with?

[Andy Wilkinson]

I've just decided to wait a little while longer on a Mac Pro.... so as a stop gap I've just bought a 'G-Raid3' 2TB Quad interface External (Raid 0) double drive and a Sonnet eSATA Expresscard 34 adapter. This is for my July 2008 2.5Ghz MBP 200GB/7,200rpm with 4GB RAM and running FCS2.

I'm hoping this new external set-up will work OK (should have it all later this week so then I'll know for sure.....) EDIT: Note that the Sonnet card is NOW showing 1-2 month delivery! - maybe I got the last one in stock! Other suppliers I've found (e.g. the all mac shop) have it but for more money.

The plan is to only put current editing in progress projects on this G-Raid 0 setup and keep all things backed up (in duplicate) on multiple separate external 1TB FW800 drives I already have (as well as the original EX3 BPAV and/or QT files on optical DVD+R DL's).

Hopefully that will all be as disaster proof as I need to go! Links for UK members below:

Sonnet Technology Tempo-e SATAII Express 34 Card Slot 2: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Buy G-Technology G-RAID3 2TB 7200rpm desktop RAID-0 storage solution (eSATA/FW400/FW800/USB2) Mac/Win (GTECH-922303-01) with Free UK Mainland Delivery | AllMacShop

Note that the Sonnet card is NOT the brand new super fast Pro version - the budget did not stretch to £232 ('ish' - currently on amazon uk) - although the review on AMUG for it does looks very good).

AMUG Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard/34 Review

EDIT: and another review http://macperformanceguide.com/Revie...etSATAPro.html

UPDATE 20th Jan: Well the G-RAID3 arrived this morning!!!! Very nice! :-)

Currently, I've got it hooked up to my MBP with FW800 (in a daisy chain with some other drives, all FW800) and it seems pretty quiet and runs cool. I must admit I've not really pushed it yet as I've only just transferred a 100GB project onto it to start editing with. Hoping the Sonnet eSATA Expresscard Adapter will turn up tomorrow so I can try that to see if I can get it to work. My plan is to put all the raw (already backed up elsewhere) EX3 media files on the G-RAID3 (which will be connected with eSATA I hope - but FW800 for now), edit with FCS2 and then save the projects/rendered media files on one of my Freecom Pro FW800 1TB external drives (i.e. not back to the G-RAID so it does not have to read and write at the same time). I will then regularly (daily) back up the project folder on the Freecom Pro 1TB FW800 to another identical drive. If I was rich I would buy a G-SAFE or similar RAID1 device to do this HDD backing up all automatically but me methodically and regularly doing it manually will have to do for now!

I'll post again when I've got the Sonnet adapter - tomorrow is what amazon are promising it's delivery day.

And in case you were wondering, the reason I went for the G-RAID3 is I wanted the eSATA connection option not only for MBP editing connection but also into my Mac Pro - when I eventually get it.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Well, the Sonnet card arrived this morning. I had some trepidation (as an earlier post in this thread from Tom specifically suggested only another eSATA Expresscard would work with some G-RAID type units, G-SPEED). I did not see why that would be and from my experience today I can confirm that's not true at least for a G-RAID3. I installed the Sonnet driver, rebooted the MBP, the G-RAID3 shows up on the desktop and all seems to be well/I'm editing!

G-RAID3 HDD's 'in use' light is very bright and distracting (someone elsewhere in a web review called it a beacon!). To make sure I'm not staring at it all the time my G-RAID3 is now orientated so that part is facing away from my desk position!!!! Either that or you'd want to put some tape over it to dim it down a bit.

Anyway, I'm happy I've now got a fast, effective and pretty quiet (it makes occasional noises of course when very active) multi-external hard disk solution for EX3 editing on a 15 inch MBP. This will see me through the next few months (until Apple hopefully announce a much awaited update to the Mac Pro, whenever that will be...don't waste time speculating on that one!). I also have a load of small WD My Passport 250GB bus powered HDDs (USB2 only) which are good for in the field backups of BPAV folders etc. Sure they are slower than FW800 etc. but perfectly adequate for backups rather than editing off - and very cheap to buy (about £53 on amazon uk at the moment).

Hope this info is useful for anyone contemplating something similar.

[Don Miller]

With eSata expresscard/34, be sure to use a solution that uses both connectors (two esata cables). If you use one cable to a port multiplier it will only run at half speed.

Some of the less expensive raid 5 boxes are not any faster than a single drive. For best performance it's probably best to not use raid 5 on a MBP. Raid 0 with good backup is considerably faster than a single cable raid five.

Except for the newest Sonnet Pro card, one fast desktop hard drive maxes out one expresscard eSata connection. I can get ~150MB/sec with two Samsung 1TB drives on raid 0 (2.4ghz MBP). Four drives was not meaningfully faster.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Don Miller

With eSata expresscard/34, be sure to use a solution that uses both connectors (two esata cables). If you use one cable to a port multiplier it will only run at half speed.

Thanks for the information Don - I'm still getting up to speed with understanding eSATA/RAID etc. (please forgive the pun!) so this kind input is very useful. Thanks!

Even at half speed on an eSATA connection, the G-RAID3 is still going to be faster than if I use the FW800, correct????? (albeit not as fast as I'd hoped!)

[Brian Boyko]

I'm living dangerously, I know, but I edit on 2 internal 1TB 7200RPM Seagate drives, internal via SATA. I backup to a 1TB drive that connects via FW400 (a WD external drive)

Indeed, the reason I switched over to a PC/Windows workflow from FCP was to increase my HD speed. Previously I was editing on a MacBookPro, but I couldn't get eSATA stable on the system via expresscard (despite trying three seperate cards,) and I was stuck editing via USB. SLOW AS HELL.

Never going back to Mac again, I can tell you that now.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Well I'm 24hrs into editing with this new disc set-up and I must admit I've had at least 6 crashes of FCP even though the project is not (yet) that complex and only 1 minute long so far. EX3 1080p video on the timeline (mainly 2 streams and 6 streams of audio). Not had these issues before, at all, when using just a MBP on a similar project.

So now, after Brian's comments I'm wondering if I need to hook the G-RAID3 up via FW800 and see if that's more stable.....

My MBP is also driving my 24-inch Dell 2408WFP (which it typically does just fine/rather well). It seems that as of the last 24hrs if I edit around (at the typical fast speed I can work in FCP) the processor or graphics card.... or something.... can't keep up and it crashes ("OSX Quit Unexpectedly" etc.). Maybe I'm doing something wrong somewhere/need to change some settings in FCP?

I don't want to hijack this thread and make it a FCP/eSATA/G-RAID problem solving one for my specific set-up but, just in case the solution is obvious to someone right now, I'd love to hear some suggestions!!!! Anyone got any ideas/experiences to share?

Depending on how I get on I might start a new thread on this specific problem soon.

Edit 1. Up and running on FW800 - so far so good.

Edit 2. Been hard at it for 9 hours and now I've an increasing complex/fast moving and exciting corporate video project which is now 3 minutes long (involving a major UK pharmaceutical company). Not one crash and everything is running superbly well, fast and stable. The acid test would be for me to switch back to the eSATA link (from the current FW800) and see if the problems return. However, I'm on a great roll with this video so not today!!!!

Edit 3. 12 hrs in and still rock solid on FW800/superb performance. The client is going to really love this video too!

[Don Miller]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

Even at half speed on an eSATA connection, the G-RAID3 is still going to be faster than if I use the FW800, correct????? (albeit not as fast as I'd hoped!)

Probably a little bit faster than FW800. It depends on the drive. But I don't think it's giving up much spped to use FW800 over a single cable eSata drive(s).

A note on drive speed.

The specs on a 7200rpm 360GB drives look at bit better than the specs on a 5000 rpm 500mb. But if the 500GB drive is partitioned to 360GB (the first partition, the faster outer part of the drive), it will be faster than the 7200rpm drive.
The outer part of a 1 TB drive will probably be faster on eSata than FW800. But a two year old drive will probably be about the same on either connection.

I've had no eSata instability at all. It's disappointing to hear of problems. (for me, 2.4ghz MBP, Penryn I think). It extremely frustrated to get going on an edit and have it crash. I use Raid 0 in OSX.

[Don Miller]

A note on USB:

Earlier I said that USB is not O.K. for drives. But I've read test results from the newest MBP that says USB is now about as fast as FW400. So Apple seems to have finally fixed their problem.

But still the only way to get desktop-like drive speeds is with eSata or FW800.

[Greg Voevodsky]

I love and use g-raids on my Mac book Pro. I just got their new 3T drive and cloned my 1T g raid to it with the same name. I already have and filled a 2T already. Everything works great - fast no problems with 5T now. 2 Drives (2T and 3T) daisy chained with firewire 800 and no problems. New drives are even more silent and rock!

[Andy Wilkinson]

Well, curiosity got the better of me so for this morning's work I returned to using the eSATA connection to my MBP for the G-RAID3 (rather than FW800 - see details in my posts above).

Yep, you guessed right. Two crashes of OS-X in one hour. Luckily, I've been saving the FCP6 project every few minutes in case of this.

Returned to FW800 connection and all is well again/have been editing for several hours and on another roll. I'm not wasting any more time on this eSATA card (assuming that's what's at fault - certainly would seem to be the case) as the large Cambridge based client is pressing for a viewing of the corporate video I'm nearing completion on....

I'll try and return the Sonnet to amazon uk for a refund I think....FW800 rules, at least for now!

[Attila Cser]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

FW800 rules, at least for now!

E-satas have long way to come to become stable. Editing systems working with e-sata cards might crash often.
I have had a e-sata cardbus card which was fine for copying, and for basic stuff, but kept crashing every 20 sec under video editing. (WIN XP)
I decided to replace the e-sata card with FW800 cardbus. Not a crash since that.

I presume that the latest generation of laptops equipped with native e-sata port should work fine but you'll not see those to appear on Apple laptops I think.

Bottom line:
For editing stay with FW 800, for copying content - e-sata could do.

[Andy Wilkinson]

So as not to hijack this thread (which is on hard drives) any longer I've started a discussion specifically about eSATA and MBPs in the Mac Editing section, link below.

eSATA Stability / Instability with MBP and Mac Pro - The Digital Video Information Network