RAID 5 and FCP how to>???

Hi -
So i have a G5 with 4 sata drives of 400gigs inside - raid together (raid 0) and final cut works awesome from it...the thing is that if one of those drives fails I loose everything - I am looking for an enclosure to put those drives in so I can do a Raid 5 and conect them with a Sata Cable to my Sata Card. I want this to be SATA because FireWire has always given me problems with FCP.... I always get droped/black frames when using a FW drive. most times just having the drive conected gives me these problems - even if I am not reaing from it.

does anyone know of a good enclosure to create a Sata Raid 5

G5 Dual2.5
OSX.4
FCP5.0.3

thanks

Arod -

There is a new RocketRaid PCI card that can be used as RAID 3 or 5 that will work inside your G5 as it is configured. You obviously have either a Sonnet or a Firmtek SATA controller card now. Check out www.barefeats.com for more details. Check www.highpoint-tech.com for the product.

That really IS the only answer to going RAID 3 or 5 with SATA drives unless you spend nearly 10 grand for a true Fiberchannel RAID or get a SCSI RAID for around 6 Grand.

Have a look at these guys - I got some of the eSATA adaptors shipped over to the UK so I could retrofit a 8 Drive SCSI tower

[www.cooldrives.com]

I used some of their products to put together a 4000GB Striped then Mirrored RAID ending up with a high performance 2000GB Drive (including 2000GB backup) on a Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 8 in my 2GHz G5 PCI-X.


If you are interested here are the links to the parts to my SATA II Array:

Case + PSU: [www.starmount.co.uk]

Adaptors: 4x [www.cooldrives.com]

Drives: 8x [www.hitachigst.com]

Card: [www.sonnettech.com]

Internal SATA Cables: 8x [www.cooldrives.com]

External eSATA Cables: 8x [www.cooldrives.com]

HDD Vibration Dampers & 5.25" to 3.5" adaptor: 8x [www.maplin.co.uk]


Yes it is fast...



Post Edited (12-19-05 11:06)



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Hi all.


Question.


I read some specifications on the Rocket Raid 2320, and it says that this card will allow each drive port a bandwidth of up to 300 MB/s.

If I used this card, it should allow me to do SD editing in FCP. However, is this bandwidth high enough to do HD editing in FCP? Or, do I really need a XServe RAID solution to do HD in FCP?


Thanks.

-DH

Hey - awesome -
Ben: how much did the whole thing cost you after all installed?

John: do you mean, I can leave the drives in the G5 the way they are (with the G5 Jam) and just install this card and it all acts as a RAID 5?



what do you guys think is bette Raid 5 or Raid 3? - I am not doing HDV right now but I will buy an HDV camera very soon.

thanks guys

HighPoint's RocketRAId is the way to do RAID 5 right now. FYI there is a 3rd party adapter that allows the "inifiniband" external connector (RocketRAID 2224) to go to 4 SATA cables.

RAID 5 is slower than RAID 0, but a whole lot safer.

HDV would be more than fine with a RAID 5 4 drive array.



- Justin Barham -

The total cost was c.£2000 including card & cables which is about $3,500 - you must remember that most of the cost for me is in the UK VAT & shipping to the UK plus the fact we pay much more for kit anyway. I did get an extremely good deal on the 500GB SATA II drives though - best bet is to look on eBay or ask about volume discount at a retailer.

If you buy in the States most if not all of the components can be purchased much cheaper than in the UK even with State Tax and delivery.

The only downside to the case I used is that the drives are not easily removable. However I am as versed in the screwdriver as I am in the FCPing... so it matters not.

Because I did 2 sets of 4 drives as Raid 0 then RAID 1 on both of the RAID 0s I have the performance with the backup and is extremely simple to do in Mac OS X

However on 4:4:4 10bit jobs I may have to RAID 0 all of them for that added oomph!

Will be doing some serious speed tests in the New Year so will post the performance data ASAIA.

Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

That is what the Highpoint-Tech RocketRaid card implies by their tech specs. I don't know anyone who is using it yet, but there is a test of the PCIExpress version on www.barefeats.com.

It is a simple card swap out and setup, as I understand.

The SATA II bus specification is up to 3 Gbits per second but that is theoretical at best. Most solutions using 7200 rpm drives are capable of about 60-70MB/sec per drive/port. So the more drives in the RAID stripe you have, the faster the overall speeds are.

With 8 drives and an aggrerate rate of over 450 MB/sec, can be used for one or two streams of uncompressed HD. The problem of this is that once those drives are filled up about one half way, the data rate drops in half.

But 8 x 400 or 500 GB SATA drives is really an economical way to store a huge amount of video data at a very realistic cost.

ok ok ok....I am so confused now...so really...to do HDV what is the best solution out there -
RAID 5
RAID 1 OR
RAID 0

I want the performance, but I also want to be backed up so that if i drive goes down, I can just swapt that sucker out and keep editing....any suggestions -

Alex Rodriguez -

RAID 3 or 5 have both performance and backup. I use RAID50 which is two RAID 5's RAIDed 0 for more performance and still backup.

RAID 1 is mirroring - no performance gain, only backup.

RAID 0 is performance only, low data integrity, getting lower as you add more drives.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X