CalDigit
S2VR Duo Review...and Firewire VR
By Shane
Ross
Let's
start with the question on most people's minds: Who is
CalDigit? Where did this company come from? Because it seemed
liked they came out of nowhere last year at NAB. Well, they used
to be an OEM company...meaning that they designed products for
other companies to sell. In fact, they helped design quite a
few G-tech products
in including the G-RAID....the drive that won BEST IN SHOW at
MacWorld the year it was introduced. I have two of these drives
and love them. Very solid drives. That solidity continues with
their current products. Anyway, the company decided it would
be better business to stop making drives for other people and
start selling their products themselves. So really they didn't
come out of nowhere, they just came out of hiding.
For THE MEXICAN AMERICAN WAR, I
used G-Raids
to store all the footage. I have three drives totalling 1.2 TB,
and that was plenty of space. But, I now had other projects occupying
them and I needed another solution. I was about to get more G-Raids
(now G-Raid 2) but heard from a Creative Cow forum leader that
he was having HUGE issues with those drives when he daisy chained
them. The performance would drop from 65MB/s...down to 16MB/s.
a HUGE hit. Well, that left me stuck. I needed more space but
couldn't go with a company that I liked. Because the G-Raid 2
was unreliable, and the G-Speed
was out of my price range. I did make the Quiet
Tower and set that one up and was all set to use it when
CalDigit asked me to review their S2VR
Duo eSATA solution.
They heard about my need for drives
on the Cow, and
offered me a 1.5 TB unit...containing two 750GB Seagate drives...and
I leapt at the chance.
The S2VR Duo is an eSATA drive
unit. The "e" stands for EXTERNAL...and being a direct
external SATA connection, it is far faster than a firewire drive...even
firewire 800. When I initially raided it I checked the read/write
speed with the AJA Hardware Test application. On the box it claims
140MB/s...well, fully empty I got 148/MB/s read and 142MB/s write.
Darn good numbers. Plenty for 6 streams of DVCPRO HD. But, as
we all know, you don't get those numbers with the drive full
or partially full. At 85% capacity I still got over 100MB/s.
106MB/s read and 101MB/s write. VERY respectable.
The S2VR Duo (as well as CalDigit's
entire eSATA line of drive units) all employ "port multiplication"
technology. That means that you only need one cable to communicate
with up to five drives, instead of the one cable per drive. And
since the card that ships with the drive units (that's right,
it is included in the cost) has four ports, you can connect up
to four drive units to one machine. Four S2VR Duo units for a
total of 8 drives, or even four of their 5 drive S2VR HD units
for a total of 20 drives!
The unit is capable of Raid 0,
1 and JBOD. Raid 0 is called PERFORMANCE, and basically makes
both drives in the unit appear as one large one (adding together
the capacity of each). So with two 250GB drives, you get 500GB
at RAID 0. Raid 1 is a PROTECTED Raid....meaning that the footage
is mirrored on both drives. You Raid two 250GB drives and you
get 250GB of storage, and performace drops. This is ideal for
backup up footage, but not for video editing. JBOD is, literally,
Just a Bunch of Drives....meaning that if you have two drives
that you raid JBOD, they appear as two separate drives. And then
you can either use them separately, or use the drive utility
to raid them.
The drives are removable, so if
you working on multiple projects, you can swap out drives. It
is as easy as unscrewing a screw, flipping a handle down and
pulling.
Now, note that CalDigit sells complete
drive solutions, meaning the unit comes populated with drives,
and if you want more drives you must order from them. This is
for many reasons. If you have a failure of any sort, you only
have one company to call to figure it out. You don't have to
call the SATA case manufacturer, drive manufacturer, cable maker
and card manufacturer to try to figure things out. Often when
you have multiple vendors like this, they play the "blame
game" and point fingers at the other guy. With the Duo,
you only have one company to call. CalDigit also is a stickler
for perfection. They want to make sure you get the best performance
possible, so the firmware on the drives is updated to match the
controller cards. One of the reasons they get the performance
they do out of the drives.
I know, I am a build it yourself
guy too...note the Quiet Tower. But I also do this for a living
and don't want to deal with calling a lot of vendors when things
go awry. That is lost time. I also want to get drives that I
know are solid and reliable. So it is worth a little extra money
for me to get that piece of mind. Yes, they cost a bit more than
the competition, but as I said, I find it worth it. And they
aren't TOO much more expensive.
Now, one of the really handy features
of this drive unit is the GUI...or graphic user interface. It
ships with a drive setup utility called the S2VR Manager. This
is where you configure your raid, and input some user info, such
as your e-mail address. E-mail address...why that? Well, if a
drive gets too hot, or shows signs of failure, then the S2VR
Manager sends you an e-mail warning you of this. VERY handy.
I have yet to receive this e-mail, and I hope to avoid it in
the future.
When I recieved my test unit I
was pleased to see how it was packaged.
The drives are separate from the
unit, surrounded by padding. Very smart.
Here are a few more pics...
The empty Duo case:
The drive module:
I have a 1.5 TB unit in my edit
bay and in use on my latest History
Channel show. Raid 0 for speed...storing 78 hours of DVCPRO
HD 720p 23.98 (with some 720p60 footage thrown in for slow motion).
I am using my home built Quiet Tower as a backup unit for all
the footage, just in case a drive fails or something happens
(like the occasional clip vanishing in FCP....which is more common
than I'd like to admit). So I have the S2VR Duo for editing,
in a RAID 0 configuration, and it all backed up to another RAID
0 unit...a manual RAID 1 setup if you will. If I lost any footage,
or ALL of my footage, all I'd have to do is copy the footage
from one raid to the other...an overnight deal (6 hours)...instead
of having to rent the DVCPRO HD deck again and spend days recapturing...and
reimporting all the P2 footage and trying to relink. Having your
footage backed up is a VERY wise thing. Get cheap non-video drives
for this, or assemble an inexpensive drive raid. The money you
invest in this will save you time and money in case you ever
lose footage and need to recapture.
Anyway, back to the Duo. I have
been using this drive unit since January and only had one hiccup.
That hiccup being that I lost 2 files...the "vanishing clip
syndrome" that I mentioned FCP does from time to time. That
isn't a drive issue, but an FCP one, as I have seen people complain
of this for quite some time on the forums. And I solved this
hiccup by copying the clips over from my backup raid. So really
no issues whatsoever. A very solid drive unit that has seen HARD
work. Editing for 10-16 hour days...6 day weeks.
AND, I even took the drive on the
road. I had to travel to Montana (see the blog
archives) so I took the drive with me. I have a PCMCIA eSATA
card so that I could still hook up the unit. Not quite the same
performance that I see with the card in the tower, but it works
fine, and still got me 3 streams of DVCPRO HD. I took the unit
with me for two reasons. 1) I wanted to show the graduate class
at MSU the steps I use while cutting, and I wanted to show them
my current show as an example. 2) I just knew that I would get
a call to do something with the show. I always do. And sure enough,
while I was in Montana my producer called and said the network
needed Act 1 on digibeta, for promotional reasons. Oh, and they
needed a few changes. I was able to make the changes, export
a Quicktime movie and burn it to a data DVD and FedEx it to my
producer, who had it laid to tape and sent off.
So the unit worked perfectly on
the road. I stored it in my suitcase, surrounded by clothes.
Even with that I saw that the unit had a ding in it. The baggage
handlers don't treat luggage well. I was worried that the drives
wouldn't work, but they spun up fine and worked well. I did also
find 3 Homeland Security notes in my bag. Guess it looks like
an explosive device. For the trip home I decided not to risk
it, and I bought a Pelican case for the trip home.
The S2VR Duo is a solid unit that
retains drive performance, even while nearly full. This allows
me to work with multiple streams of DVCPRO HD (where a firewire
drive would not) and allows for more realtime effects. I recommend
this unit to everyone who edits DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM and
even uncompressed SD formats.
Now, I'd also like to touch upon
the Firewire
VR drive unit, also from CalDigit.
This unit is a triple interface
unit, sporting Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and USB 2.0 connections.
For best performance use the firewire 800 option. Empty I got
65MB/s read and 57MB/s write. Good for 3 streams of DVCPRO HD.
And this unit can also be configured for Performance (RAID 0),
Protection (RAID 1) and JBOD (just a bunch of drives). The difference
with this unit is that the RAID is a hardware raid that is configurable...it
has a switch on the back where you set these options....there
is no GUI like the Duo has. You can use the unit for editing,
again it is good for DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM, and uncompressed
SD. You can work with uncompressed 8-bit fine, but uncompressed
10-bit would be pushing it.
Again, its drives are removable
(hot swapable) so that you can easily replace the drives. This
is good if you have multiple projects and want to save money
by only getting drives, and makes this unit perfect for archiving.
CalDigit pushes it as an archive solution for photographers who
want to back up their photos. I myself use this unit to back
up my P2 footage...Raid 1 all the way. And one cool thing about
this unit is that because the RAID configurations are HARDWARE
raids, not software, if a drive happens to fail, all you need
to do is get a replacement drive (Caldigit offers a 3 year warranty)
insert it into the slot and the Raid is automatically rebuilt...information
copied over without you doing a thing. It doesn't even need to
be connected to the computer.
As of the time of this posting,
the Firewire VR has another advantage over all other Firewire
raids. It is daisy-chainable and doesn't lose drive performance.
Other firewire raid units (such as the G- Raid 2 and LaCie
options) lose performance once you daisy chain them. They'll
go from 55MB/s down to 16MB/s the instant you chain them....a
HUGE performance drop making them unusable for DVCPRO HD. Which
is a shame because I used the original G-Raids for my first show,
and they are still reliable. What gives? Well, It is a combination
of factors. The Oxford 924 bridge (just an aside, the Oxford
group names their chip after Porche models...911, 924), the drives
used in the box, the drive firmware and the onboard RAID controller.
Other companies are having issues getting them to all work, but
CalDigit figured out the special sauce...and have the only firewire
drive raids that work without losing performance.
There you go...glowing reviews
for the CalDigit S2VR Duo and the Firewire VR units. I like the
units so much I use them in my bay on the shows I am editing.
Shane Ross
is a freelance editor residing in Los Angeles. He edits shows
for The History Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic
and Nickelodeon.
copyright © Shane
Ross 2007