RAID SOLUTIONS FOR EPIC WORKFLOWS

 

For eSATA cards CalDigit is excellent. Especially their FASTA-2ex  For desktops/workstations, go with ATTO.

Do-It-Yourself, 2-Disk RAID 0 (Fastest)
Hard Drives:
Two Seagate Barracuda or Barracuda XT drives, depending on the capacity you want.

If you want the total available space to be 6TB, use two 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT's (model ST330005N1A1AS-RK)
For 4TB, use two 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT's (model ST320005N1A1AS-RK)
For 2TB, use two 1TB Seagate Barracuda's (model ST310005N1A1AS-RK)
For 1TB, use two 500GB Seagate Barracuda's (model ST3500641AS-RK)

Hard Drive Enclosure: OWC Mercury Elite Pro RAID

Take the two drives and install them in the enclosure. The enclosure supports RAID 0, so it'll strip the disks together. This is the fastest solution, but it requires you to buy the hard drives and the enclosure separately and put them in yourself (which by the way, is extremely easy). It's also the most expensive solution, depending on what size drives you choose. Connect the enclosure to one of the eSATA ports on the eSATA ExpressCard/34 card in the notebook. Connect the REDMAG station to the other eSATA port and transfer your footage directly from the REDMAG to the external array (the hard drive enclosure).


Ready-Made, 2-Disk RAID 0 (Fast)
G-Technology G-RAID. It's an enclosure with two hard drives preinstalled and preconfigured in RAID 0. Easy and fast. They have capacities in 2, 4 and 6TB.


Do-It-Yourself, 1-Disk No RAID (Slow)
Hard Drives:
I'd recommend using the same hard drives I mentioned above for the do-it-yourself, 2-disk RAID 0 array, but just get one instead.

3TB: Seagate Barracuda XT ST330005N1A1AS-RK
2TB: Seagate Barracuda XT ST320005N1A1AS-RK
1TB: Seagate Barracuda ST310005N1A1AS-RK
500GB: Seagate Barracuda ST3500641AS-RK

Hard Drive Enclosure: OWC Mercury Elite Pro

Take the hard drive and install it inside the enclosure. Connect the enclosure to one of the eSATA ports on the eSATA ExpressCard/34 card that's in the notebook. Connect the REDMAG station to the other eSATA port.

This is a slow solution because the speed of the single hard drive can't keep up with the speed of the REDMAG. So, the drive is going to be slowing you down (a lot).


Ready-Made, 1-Disk No RAID (Slowest)
G-Technology G-Drive. It has a single drive, so you have no RAID (so basically no speed). Available in 1, 2 and 3TB models. This is the slowest, but most "budget-frienldy" solution.


The reason why ready-made drives/enclosures are typically slower than the do-it-yourself solutions is because you don't always know what drives the manufacturer's (like G-Technology) are using. G-Tech, for example, almost always uses high-performance Hitachi disks, so they're a better bet than others. But, you still can't be guaranteed that the disk inside is of high quality. Whereas if you go the do-it-yourself way, you know exactly what model hard drive you're using.

 

Doing a simultaneous backup is, of course, much safer but it's also much slower. You're decreasing your speed dramatically because you're transferring data from one port and to two ports at the same time. The ExpressCard interface can only handle so much data. Transferring to and from three devices simultaneously is too much. Again, it's much safer because you now have your footage on two drives, so if one fails, you have your backup. But, it's slower.

An alternative solution is this:
Connect the REDMAG station and Hard Drive Array #1 (I'll refer to this as Array #1) to the eSATA ExpressCard. Transfer your footage from the REDMAG to Array #1. Unplug the REDMAG. Connect Array #2. Transfer the footage from Array #1 to Array #2 so that you now have a backup.

That alternative solution is not really 'fantastic', however, because you're wasting time while backing up Array #1 to Array #2.

I can recommend to you a RAID 5 solution if you want. With a RAID 5 array, the chance of data loss is much, much less than with RAID 0. And, you only need one array (instead of two [one primary and one backup] with RAID 0).

For those of you here with a current Mac that has Thunderbolt (especially a 17" MacBook Pro with an ExpressCard/34 slot), this issue is nonexistent. You connect your REDMAG station to an eSATA ExpressCard and connect your hard drive array using Thunderbolt. You'll never run out of bandwidth.

OFFLOAD SPEED FOR 64GB REDMAG TO SINGLE HARD DRIVE

 

On the latest 1TB 7200rpm drives with 64MB cache, you should be able to sustain 80MB/s or more, some will do 90+ for at least a portion of the drive area. I would say your 90MB/s is a safe bet +/- 10%. And under 15 minutes is a reasonable expectation. At 90MB/s sustained, a full 64GB SSD should unload in just a bit over 12 minutes. Even if the sustained rate is 80MB/s, you should still be able to unload that SSD in under 14 minutes.