Firewire or SATA raid dirve

OK I notice my 250gB firewire G-drive is a little slow time to switch to raid drive I already have a firewire 800 PCI card install in my mac but should I just go ahead and get a SATA or will firewire 800 be fast enough HDV and other formats?

well, firewire 400 is fast enough for HDV!

what other formats are you thinking of working with?

FW800 is fast enough for DVCProHD,
even fast enough for uncompressed (although im not reccomending that)

SATA does seem to be the way of the future

what sort of projects do you see yourself doing?


nick

"well, firewire 400 is fast enough for HDV!"
Really! I am reading all kinds article about fast hard drives for example video guys web site need at least raid drive for HD especially if you use a lot of effects. I am confuss now. But I do know with my 250gig FW800 drive when I add some effects I guess layers you here the hard driver working hard and my work flow slows down.

There is no such thing as a Fire Wire drive. There are IEEE1394 FW host bus adapters that convert the data from IDE drives to conform with that spec.

SATA is a real data standard like SCSI. The reason this makes a difference is that in real life FW800 is generally slower than FW400 because the drivers and chips in the HBA's are the same. Some of the FW800 RAID drivers are using TCPIP which makes the data transfer rate faster but TCPIP was designed for small packets of data which will cause the CPU to work much harder unpacking the data - which kind of defeats the purpose.

Most of the SATA RAIDs use encapsulated SCSI so the more spindles the faster the array. If your thinking of purchasing new drives go SATA [or Fiber Channel if you can afford it] but FW is quickly reaching the end.

>>need at least raid drive for HD<<

But HDV is not true HD. It is a highly compressed format which comes in at roughly the same file sizes as mini DV. The problems with HDV come more in the monitoring and delivery (conforming time) realm.

chuck, let's not confuse this guy with technicalities. as far as many users know, the "drive" IS what it states it is on the outside - so in effect there IS such a thing as "fire wire drives."

as jude said, HDV is HD in general resolution only. it works in a very limited colorspace and is highly compressed (again as jude says) to fit in roughly the same size files as standard dv.

i have used firewire400, firewire800, and stata drives with hdv and all were fine.

if you really want an affordable and very speedy drive setup get you an e-sata (external sata) raid setup. if you go with a firewire "raid" setup you will be limited by the weakest link in the chain, which in this case is the firewire segment.

I'm not trying to confuse anyone, but anyone who is serious about editing [and there are two things I'm fairly certain of, 1 if your trying to edit HDV, if not already you will soon become serious about editing, and 2 you'll edit HDV natively a couple of times after which you'll either commit suicide or convert HDV to something other than HDV [like DVCProHD]] which again forces you to become more serious about editing.

So you may as well start the education before you spend the money.

:chuck, let's not confuse this guy:

Ok looks like I have started something. First of all when I say Firewire I mean the interface I know G-tech has a raid drive that uses FW 400 FW-800 and USB-2 but the drives them selfs our SATA II drives I guess my question should have been for a raid for now a future HD content would FW-800 interface would be good enough or SATA interface?

Don't worry, you didn't start anything. Sorry if my reply came off a bit trite.

If your going to build a RAID that will remain attached to your FCP desktop I'd recommend getting rid of the FW800 card in favor of the SATA RAID/Card.

If, however, you need to move drives between editing systems then I'd go with the FW800, FW is a lot more portable. You can even get IEEE1934a/b cable so if you have to attach to a computer that only has FW400 it will work fine, just a bit slower.

But if your mot moving the RAID from one system to another I'd go SATA.