Professional editing drives

Any recommendations for reliable editing drives or is it just a crap shoot? I hear people that use a certain brand with no issues for years and then I hear someone else say they had 4 out of 5 of that same brand fail within a few months.

It seems a lot of the consumer brands (Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, Iomega) fail a fair amount but most come in plastic housing which does not let the heat dissipate so they are more prone to failure.

I've heard these are all good, reliable but cost a little more: Rocstor, Glyph, G-Raid, Drobo, Sonnet, and Avastor.

Any recommendations? These would be for editing on Final Cut Pro 6 with HD ProRes HQ footage.

You forgot my favorite:

[www.caldigit.com]

Do a forum search for more.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I rely a lot on CalDigit. I have the HD One and the Caldigit VR, and VR Mini. I also have a couple G-Raids, but I hear that lately they are being flakey, so I avoid recommending. iStorage Pro are good guys new to the scene. OtherWorldComputing if you want less expensive...but CalDigit have been downright reliable.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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

And Promax is back with a whole new range of storage solutions:

[www.promax.com]


www.derekmok.com

Long discussion here a week ago...

[www.lafcpug.org]



www.strypesinpost.com

What about the Drobo? does anyone have a droboPro? how are you sharing it between two editing systems?

I own a Drobo. Love it. Never in a million years would I ever consider using it as a framestore. It makes more sense to use flash drives.

what do you mean by framestore Jeff?

He means media storage drive. "Framestore" is a bit of an old-school term, apparently. I've never heard it used, but I've seen it around.


www.derekmok.com

then I really don't understand. Why would you NOT use it as a media storage drive? and why does it make more sense to use flash drives?

I'm confused.

Are you saying is not a good idea to make the DroboPro a scratch drive?

"Framestore" is a REALLY old school term used by Broadcast Facilities (in my experience). In my experience, it was an old tank of a computer (PC) that stored stills and graphics one frame at a time to be pulled up by the TD (Switcher Operator). Now-a-days, they are used to prop open the door on the machine room Jeff associates the term "framestore" with storage (I think).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

grafixjoe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Framestore" is a REALLY old school term used by
> Broadcast Facilities (in my experience). In my
> experience, it was an old tank of a computer (PC)
> that stored stills and graphics one frame at a
> time to be pulled up by the TD (Switcher
> Operator). Now-a-days, they are used to prop open
> the door on the machine room Jeff associates
> the term "framestore" with storage (I think).


I associate it with the indigo2 and EditBox (age of the dinosaurs).

The Drobo is meant as data storage and data backup...not video editing. The rather unique way it does it's raid makes it slower than the typical video raid. Some people have used the DroboPro with success...but I have heard of a few failures that were unrecoverable. RAID 5 solutions are better. Tested a GOOD one from Raidon. www.raidon-usa.com/stardom. THe Sohotank ST8. Get it empty for $640...get the Atto card for $1050...then get your own drives.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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

I just got a Stardom SohoRaid today.

[www.stardom.com.tw]

I'm running a pair of 2TB 7200 RPM Hitachis on RAID 1. Ran the AJA speed test on it at around 90% capacity, and read speed was at 100 MB/s. Write speed was at around 70 MB/s. Good enough for most compressed HD codecs.



www.strypesinpost.com

I wanted to use my DroboPro as the scratch disk, but I guess I won't be doing that now

Not recommended as stated. Drobo units are geared towards Archival / backup...as stated. Stardom is a good product I have heard (I have not used...just heard). Caldigit is a good product that I can vouch for because I use them all the time in RAID 1 for mirrored redundancy. Handles Uncompressed SD and all forms of compressed HD with no hiccups at all. Another nice thing with my CalDigit VRs is they can be daisy chained without taking a performance hit like other units (G-RAIDs and others are notorious for bad performance in a daisy chain). The CalDigit VRs come with a dual eSATA output card in the box...FOR FREE. I purchased the FASTA-1ex SATA ExpressCard (affordable - like $75) so I can run these beauties from my MBP.

[www.caldigit.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.