Fastest P2 Offload Workflow

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evans235

New member
Okay, here's the deal. I want to know how fast I can possibly get the data off of my P2 cards and onto a hard disk. Unlike most other peoples' posts I have read on this forum, I will most likely be using a workstation tower (a mac pro), and not a laptop. Currently I have one of Panasonic's AJ-PCD20 readers and its speed is a continual disappointment. Don't even get me started about price to performance ratios. In the studio and in the field, I get around 15MB(megabytes)/s transfer off. This is pitiful and because P2 cards are ungodly expensive it's slowing production down. So:

A) I want to know if anyone is getting better than 8-9min for an 8gb card and/or double that for a 16. If you are what are you using (I think it's usually Macbook Pro with an expresscard splitter, a PC Card to expresscard adapter, and some fast hard drive solution).
B) How fast is the transfer speed off of P2 Cards really? 8gb cards are spec'ed at 640mbits/sec (so like 80mbytes/sec).. I'm getting a max of like 23mbytes on my buddy's powerbook g4 and I just know it has to be a lot faster.
C) Does anyone have any reccomendations about PC Card to PCI Express adapters? I can find PC Card to PCI, and then a big four slot PCI to PCI Express, which is cool and attractive because it's gotta be faster than the PCD20 and it's a heck of a lot cheaper (totals about $500ish). Basically anything over FW800 since I'd like to be able to dump two at full speed because..
D) What do people reccomend for a portable RAID10 setup? I think I'm probably going to do a 4 drive RAID10 solution so I can make use of the mirrored drives as pseudo-backups (since I can put them in another RAID 10 if my original two die in a fire and see all my original data, right?). Since the Addonics portable towers with hardware port multipliers will hold a max of 5 drives and are about $250, I think 4 is kind of the sweet spot for me, which in RAID 10 puts me at a write speed of about 120Mbytes/sec with..
E) What SATA drives do people reccomend in about the 60mbyte/sec write range? And has anyone used those Western Digital Raptors for more than a couple of months? Are they at all reliable? I think they're the fastest SATA drives on market still?
F) What is the speed difference between the esata off of the computer motherboard and using like a sonnet tempo or whatever? I would like to not have to buy a dedicated ESATA controller to run my RAID if at all possible. Also if there's an Addonics-like portable and cheap RAID box with port multiplier solution that runs on Fibre Channel that works too. Most Fibre stuff is way expensive though. And SCSI ultra 320 isn't an option, and really neither is SAS, since that's mad expensive too. Under a grand is the key.

Here are my times so far just in case anyone else is wondering how different hardware changes things:
From PCD20 over FW800 to Lacie Quad interface d2 on FW800 on separate bus: 15Mbyte/sec so like 8-9 min for an 8gb P2 card.
From PCD20 over FW800 to big ol XSAN capable of above 160Mbyte/sec sustained write (as in I've captured uncompressed 10 bit 1080i HD in the studio to it with no real problems before) on dual Fibre Channel: 20Mbyte/sec so like 6-7min for an 8gb P2 card.
From powerbook G4 PC card slot to OWC 250gb quad interface hard drive on FW800: 15-23Mbyte/sec so like 6:40 for an 8gb card.

Thanks all. Am I the only one that bought this reader? What did you all know that I didn't..
 
I'm also concerned about my p2 offload times. It takes my welland USB on the go drive about 2 minutes per gig which is hopeless (5400rpm drive). I'm sure I've heard of people using the same drive with better times.
 
A) To a Windows laptop, I can offload an 8GB card in 4:15, and a 16GB card in 8:30. That's to a laptop. I would expect a Mac Pro should be able to do much better. I don't know why you're not getting better transfer speeds, but they're definitely possible.

B) They say the theoretical maximum speed is 80 megabytes per second. But it's limited by what you're copying to -- most hard drives can only handle a real-world 30 megabytes per second or so. If you were offloading to a fiber-channel RAID, you should be able to get maximum throughput to that (as long as you're not connecting through USB or FW400!) I'm talking about 2GB/min on the laptop, and that's going to a 4200RPM SATA drive... hardly a fiber-channel RAID.

C) PCMCIA->PCI would give you the fastest transfer, and is much cheaper; I've seen 'em for $75 to $150. But I don't know of one that has Mac drivers; all the ones I've seen are for Windows.
 
tmnt said:
I'm also concerned about my p2 offload times. It takes my welland USB on the go drive about 2 minutes per gig which is hopeless (5400rpm drive). I'm sure I've heard of people using the same drive with better times.
Click to expand...

OTG seems dog-slow. I have tried a half-dozen enclosures or so, and cannot find one that is faster than 2min/GB. Now, I take the exact same hard disk out and put it in a FW enclosure, and it offloads at 1min/GB. So it's something to do with the USB/OTG chipset that's slowing it down very artificially.
 
Has anyone had experience with laptops that have both an expresscard and pcmcia slot...I'm curious if using the pcmcia slot for the p2 card and using an esata expresscard adapter with an esata drive/array would be a speedy way to go...

RJS
 
My laptop has both, yes. I don't have an esata drive, but I do have a FW800 G-Raid. Unfortunately the ExpressCard->FW800 adapter I got is useless; it works fine for FW400 but is extraordinarily pig-slow in FW800 mode, so I can't run that particular test...
 
RJS, I remember reading a thread here where someone had done just this, and their times were similar to the ones Barry is reporting if I remember correctly. I would think you could do this faster with a similar setup, maybe with a faster internal bus and write drive.

Tmnt, USB has a terrible sustained transfer rate. 480mbits/sec is a burst speed, I think, not sustained. 5400rpm hard drives also tend to be slower than their 7200rpm (or 10K or 15K) counterparts.

Barry, there's a PCMCIA (/PC Card) to PCI adapter on B&H that claims to be mac compatible, and I found this cool PCI-E to PCI breakout box on some european site (also claimed to be mac compatible) so I think I'll try that. I'm wondering about your statement that most hard drives can only really take like 30MB/sec in the real world. I tend to see nice 7200rpm SATA drives (Seagate Barraccudas, Maxtor Proline) spec'd as having about 60mb/sec write speeds when mostly empty. Do you think that's unrealisitic to expect in the real world? I am thinking RAID 10 over esata with all this.

Also, Barry, what were the specs on the laptop you were using? What kind of hard drive (5400rpm,7200, etc) and what system bus speed?
 
I'm not sure if there are other vendors who do this, but I saw that alienware has a laptop configured with a 32gb solid state drive and a 200gb 7200rpm sata drive.

I haven't decided whether I will be going the mac or pc route, although I do use FCP.

So far I've been shooting to a FS or tape...but the last shoot I did, we were shooting to tape, we ended up shooting onto P2 for a greenscreen setup and some slo mo scenes...It was quite slick to have that flexibility...it has motivated me to get up to speed with the cards and a laptop.

I've found it difficult to find laptops with both slots, on line anyway...most models(dell, toshiba) that were reported to have both slots list expresscard only in their specs...anyone know specific models still available with both slots?

RJS
 
Go to the Newegg website and search their Laptop/Notebook section for PCMCIA -- there are quite a few models from Sony, Toshiba, ACER, Fujitsu, and ASUS that have PCMCIA slots, and some also have ExpressCard slots.

Newegg Search Results

There are a few Open Box items in there. On the plus side you get a better price, but you may find that whoever returned it registered the OS and other software that comes with the system in their name. If the system comes with a Emergency Restore CD/DVD, I would wipe out the drive and start over.
 
RJS said:
Has anyone had experience with laptops that have both an expresscard and pcmcia slot...I'm curious if using the pcmcia slot for the p2 card and using an esata expresscard adapter with an esata drive/array would be a speedy way to go...

RJS
Click to expand...

My laptop has both, and I use it in exactly this manner.
I get 4-5 minute offload times for an 8 gig card straight to my eSATA setup.

Also, if you check out tigerdirect, you can find a configurable laptop that has both slots that starts at 699. I configured it up to a core 2 duo 2GHz, and pretty much added all the extras. Even added the docking station and some other things just to see. It came out to about 1500 bucks. A great deal in my opinion. You could get a 2ghz core 2 duo, with 2gigs of ram, 160gig hdd, etc, et for probably 1200. It's a Systemax. I didn't buy it. I was just looking around, and passing along the link.

But,yeah. my p2 via pcmcia to esata via expresscard esata works great.

Jason
 
Not all 4200RPM drives are the same. The current crop of high-capacity laptop drives have a much higher data density than drives from a few years ago, especially the perpendicular recording technology drives.

That means that they can read or write more data with every revolution of the drive than their predecessors could. The slower rotational velocity still hampers random access somewhat, but sustained transfer rates are actually very good, and the drives consume less battery power.
 
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