Seagate

Hi All,

I'm prepping a documentary where we're shooting on the Sony EXCAM EX1 and cutting in FCP.

Our producer has purchased several Seagate drives to offload footage on in the field and eventually to edit with.

My preference for hard drives is G-Technology, but being that we're using Seagate drives, I wanted to know if anyone here had any reviews for them. I suppose my most important question is have they been reliable for you? And how do they fare in travel/shipping? Has anyone here used them in the field (ie. shot with them as well as cut with them)? If so, how did they do?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

-Hoku

G-Tech used to be THE drive company when it came to firewire drives and firewire RAID drives. But lately, not so much. Reliability has dropped. And Seagate enclosures might be fine for field archiving and such, but I wouldn't trust them for editing.

CALDIGIT is the company that most of us like here. CalDigit VRs are coming out soon, or are out now. I have their Firewire VR and S2VR Duo...and HD One. Heck, even their RAID CARD (oop, sold out) and internal drives on a MacPRo with the HD Element is a great option.

I also like Maxx Digital and their EDIT VAULTs...


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
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What Seagate drives? What models? I like Seagate drive units...but not Seagate enclosures. There are no better external RAID enclosures than CalDigit for me. I have 2 Firewire VRs and I am waiting on the CalDgit VR to be released (around MacWorld I hear). They use Hitachi internal drive units and they are very fast / dependable / hot swappable (GRAIDs aren't - open the casing & you void the warranty). RAID 0, 1 & JBOD configurations (GRAID - RAID 0 only). They do not lose performance when daisy chained (GRAIDs do). The hero is the enclosure...excellent ventilation with a ball bearing fan so the unit stays quiet, drives stay cool and last longer than, say, LaCie externals... which are just giant heat sinks (no fans = DRIVE DEATH).

I also have a G-RAID2...and it's on it's last legs. It is starting to click like mad and the fan is rattling. They have gone WAY down hill since G-Technology was purchased by Fabrik.

That's my 2 cents

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hey all.

The wait for the highly anticipated CalDigit VR is almost over, it'll be a little belated Christmas present.

The 1st run of product will be in house 12/29 to begin shipping that week. We're very excited, with many units pre-sold around the world, it's going to be well worth the wait.

Hit me up if you're looking to buy or review.

Thanks & Happy Holidays from all of us.

Thank you all very much!

I really appreciate the advice. I've asked the producer what the model numbers of the Seagate drives are that she purchased and once I find out I'll likely be back to ask about them.

Just to clarify, when Mr. Morelli and Mr. Ross referred to SeaGates, you spoke of "enclosures" and "drive units". Are you referring to the drive casing vs. the actual drive inside the casing respectively? In other words, Mr. Morelli, when you said you "like Seagate drive units, but not Seagate enclosures" does that mean you like Seagate manufactured drives within a casing (or enclosure) not manufactured by Seagate?

Thanks!
-Hoku

COrrect. The drives themselves are good. But the enclosures that Seagate makes isn't all that good. Not for video editing anyway.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Quote

ust to clarify, when Mr. Morelli and Mr. Ross referred to SeaGates, you spoke of "enclosures" and "drive units". Are you referring to the drive casing vs. the actual drive inside the casing respectively? In other words, Mr. Morelli, when you said you "like Seagate drive units, but not Seagate enclosures" does that mean you like Seagate manufactured drives within a casing (or enclosure) not manufactured by Seagate?

Exactly...been using Seagate drives for 12 years & happy as a clam. Since they have ventured into the enclosure market, not so much. I will stick with the drives themselves.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

...and quit calling me Mr. Morelli. That's my Dad. Joey will do fine

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hoku,

As Shane & Joey pointed out, there are enclosures & there are the drives that go inside the enclosures. It's important to have both a GOOD ENCLOSURE & GOOD DRIVES inside the enclosure.

I would like to point out another very important factor when making a decision on your storage, SUPPORT. If you look around out there you'll find that some websites for some "Storage providers" do not have any support section on their website (or it's quite void of information), that is a place where you can download drivers, get answers to FAQ or frequently asked questions and the like.

Also, what's the company history? Are they a "me too" storage provider that buys an enclosure & puts their name on it selling it as their own, or are they a MANUFACTURER like CalDigit, designing, testing, supporting and producing their own product?

Oh & we use Seagate drives as they have proved to be the best drives for video editing.

Support is just as important as the storage itself.

>I would like to point out another very important factor when making a decision on your storage, SUPPORT

Jon, I personally prefer storage solutions that never actually need support ... but I think I know what you mean ;-)

Andy

Hi Hoku,
If you have the recently released 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives, be aware that they were released with a firmware bug.

Seagate came out with a firmware update at the end of November 2008. You email them, tell them your setup and if you've had problems. Then they send you a link to download, and offer some bad documentation and terrible customer phone support.

re: the firmware ---
[www.macworld.com]
article/137179/2008/11/seagate.html?lsrc=mwweek

If you do have these drives, hopefully they were purchased WITH the firmware already updated, and hopefully the firmware actually fixed the issue. If you do have them, test test test....

I have four of these 1.5 TB drives in a Burly 4-bay enclosure as a RAID-0. I'm pretty sure these Seagates were erratically causing FCP to hang, and then crashing my entire system. I can't speak to the firmware update YET.

I also have been using a few OWC Mercury Elite AL-Pro 1.0 TB drives since October. Some of them have 1.0 TB Seagate Barracudas inside (most have Hitachis inside). These 1.0 TB Seagates have been fine for data transfer and archive, no problems at all. They were primarily used in the field/ on-set for transfer of RED R3D files.

However, now they are my backup drives. These were too slow to edit 2048 x 1024 ProRes HQ with.

Would I recommend Seagate? Sure, depending on what you're doing with it. For support, no.

But if I can afford it, I have humbly learned to cast my eyes toward
CalDigit. Worked on a show for a year where we practically man-handled them
and they were a dream. Sigh.

all my best,
Susan

(Jon, I put that comment back just for you. Just didn't want to make anyone think we were putting the CalDigits in the microwave or something... in case they wanted to hire me in the future... Cheers.)

Susan E. Kim
Mac Pro 2 X 3 ghz quad-core,
8 gb ram,
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT,
FCP 6.0.5

Quote

Jon, I personally prefer storage solutions that never actually need support ...

Of course not, Andy...BUUUuuuuuUUUUt if you DO need support, better to have a company that can support the entire unit and FAST. I will spend more for hardware if I get the peace of mind that comes with worry-free support attached to it. Caldigit has taken the lead in this department in the "external enclosure" arena IMHO.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Heee ... Of course, of course, I was only teasing. Knowing you've got quality support available even though you won't necessarily need it is always a good thing. :-)

Hi All,

Thank you very much for all your generous advice.

It turns out that the production has purchased Seagate FreeAgent Desk (1 TB) and Seagate FreeAgent Desktop (1 TB).

It ALSO turns out that the production would only like to use these drives in the field, so we'll be getting other drives for post. After everything I've read, I'll likely be requesting CalDigit :-)

Although we're using the Seagates mentioned above for production and not post, if anyone has had any experience with them and can share thoughts on reliability/stability, I'd appreciate it (though my general sense from what I've read is that the drives are likely good and the enclosure, are likely not so good).

Once again, thank you.

-Hoku

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It turns out that the production has purchased Seagate FreeAgent Desk (1 TB) and Seagate FreeAgent Desktop (1 TB)

You will have problems with these. These are NOT video drive enclosures...you need a RAID array.

Good luck.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Something else to consider. Since they are shooting XDCAM EX, and since you can not edit XDCAM EX footage in FCP [without using Sony's Clip Browser or Shotput Express software to convert it into a format that FCP can use] I would characterize the drives the producer purchased more as archive drives.

If this were my project I would have two drives connected to my MacBook Pro and use ShotPut Express to create two identical copies of the "BPAV" files from the SXS cards.

Once shooting is complete bring the "Archive" drive in and use Sony's Clip Browser software to import the footage onto the drives you will use for editing.

>and since you can not edit XDCAM EX footage in FCP [without using Sony's Clip Browser or Shotput Express software to convert it into a format that FCP can use]

I'm glad you edited that statement...because I was gonna have a bone to pick with you. But using your logic here, you can't edit P2 DVCPRO HD nor AVCintra with FCP either...(need drivers for the cards and stuff).


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I have done a lot of HDV editing in FCP, which I do not recommend. Even though XDCAM is a long GOP, editing it in FCP is MUCH MUCH BETTER than HDV and I do recommend editing it natively.

However if you try to import the BPAV folder into FCP it won't even see it and the Import XDCAM footage plug-in for FCP just invokes the standalone XDCAM transfer software.

My point was more that the first thing that should be done with XDCAM EX footage is to archive it, if the producer wants to view it then use the Clip Browser software to browse the clips and use the XDCAM transfer software to import the footage into FCP to different drives than you archived on.

In this workflow you don't need an expensive RAID to make your initial Archive, just two reliable drives. They can even connect via USB since the archive process is not realtime anyway.

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In this workflow you don't need an expensive RAID to make your initial Archive, just two reliable drives.

Disagree.

1: You need RAID for video...period. The OP never mentions "archive" in the original post.

2: They are not expensive anymore: CalDigit FirewireVR



The updated version (Quad interface) called the CalDigit VR will be released soon with Seagate AS drives in the larger versions - some units under $1000. You can get a FirewireVR 1 TB unit right now for less than $500:

[www.proflixsales.com]

You buy cheap...you get cheap. It's no time to be cheap when dealing with your data.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

This is a guess, but I didn't get the impression that the OP has worked with XDCAM EX. You do not transfer/capture XDCAM EX the same way that you do from tape. It is a file transfer from cards that does not require a RAID.

In fact you can capture directly from an SxS card at more than six times real speed via USB, again not requiring a RAID.

RAID obviously doesn't hurt but you don't need the additional expense if you don't already have one.

Part of the reason RAID is not required is because FCP does not recognize the file generated by the EX it has to be encoded into a Quicktime that FCP can use and that is a file conversion that is none realtime.

I still hold firm that you do not need a Raid for video editing. Internal SATA drives are fine and plenty fast. And I have two esata drives that are single drive enclosures. Never had any issues.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

...then we'll agree to disagree. There's no protection on a single drive so it's play at your own risk.

Happy New Year!

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Good points here.

If you're not coming from or going to tape, drive performance isn't absolutely critical.

On the other hand, I love working off RAID 5/6s. There have been occasions that I've gone to tape with very little space in the scratch drive (somewhere under 10% space). Not something I'll recommend, and I doubt solitary drives will allow you to do that, or if you'll even risk filling them up, as you don't have the redundancy.

Also, it's tapeless. Although you don't need the real time capabilities, you may want the redundancy which a RAID provides. You don't have the source tapes to fall back on, and depending on your archival system, solitary archival/back-up drives and solitary edit drives may not be something you want to rely on for your projects. Although not critical (eg. dropped frames), something has to be RAIDed, and it's going to be either the archival/back-up drive or the edit drive.

Then there's performance... I'm working on XDCAM-EX footage (rendering out to ProResHQ) off FW400/800 drives right now off a quad and it's not exactly breaking any speed limits.



www.strypesinpost.com

Interestingly enough I'm not sure we disagree. The difference, I think, is when you use the RAID and what you mean by redundancy.

As I mentioned earlier I use ShotPut Express to "archive" from the SxS card concurrently to two drives (I also do a tape back-up to LTO3). There's no need to transfer this data to a RAID because this is a file transfer, not digitizing, that actually happens faster than real time and as you can see there's plenty of redundancy.

Then using the Sony Transfer software I convert the BPAV files to Quicktimes for FCP and store the resulting files on a 16 drive RAID where a bunch of editors have access to the data.

From a workflow perspective the camera original BPAV files are like a MS Word document, although the transfer can consume all the bandwidth you can throw at it, it does not transfer large contiguous streams of data in the same way you do when digitizing. This is simply a file transfer, in fact you can even pause and resume if you like.

The need to use a RAID is still an integral part of the process from the "video" post production perspective but not required from the "IT" perspective.

The thing that I like about this the most is that I can completely archive, convert and transfer the footage without using FCP on a much lower end (less expensive) system.

Also keep in mind that RAID 5 works very well with large blocks of contiguous data and the performance of RAID 5 suffers when there are a bunch of small files requiring many fast short reads. So although for most people this might not be an issue, for this reason I would recommend that you do not place the BPAV files on a RAID, only place the resulting Quicktimes on the RAID.

I'm looking at the drives now. I agree with Shane on this. The enclosures don't look very reliable as media storage devices- where are all the fans, cooling system, and rugged construction? The drives may be good, and the casing is fairly stylish, but you're not going to be looking too good when they overheat or fail.

For the portable units, the Caldigits look extremely solid as well as the G-Techs. OWC looks okay too.



www.strypesinpost.com