G-raid/Seagate in a 500GB

1

10fingers10toes

Member
Okay, so it's up between G-raid2 and a Seagate esata, both 500gb. The latter being half the price of the former. The former having the RAID capability, but no eSATA. Some have said, "RAID is far more than you need for DV". How about the SATA on a macbook pro?

2 questions, ultimately are:
1) Does anyone have experience with the Seagate option?

2) I've only heard good things about G-raid, but I've heard people speaking ominously of the difficulty in data recovery from the RAID configuration. Question: As long as I exercise proper media management in FCP, a failed drive will only cost me the time to re-digitize, correct (albeit, depending on the size of the project, that could be a major hassle, i know)?

Oh and I'll be editing w/ FCP 5.1 on a Macbook Pro Core2duo 2.16 gHz, 3gb RAM

Any input, opinions, scoffs would be appreciated.
 
Never used the Seagate.

As for the Raid. If you do a true backup of your project files (so like burning it to a CD, copying to a flash drive, whatever, and storing somewhere away from your editing station), then yes if the drives fail you'll be able to recover your edit, but you'll just need to re-digitize everything. However, also keep in mind that if you bring in anything weird (web videos, photos, etc.) they will need to archived carefully (like a master tape), such that they don't only exist on the hard drives (that have now fried in your example case).
 
I've been using the G-Raid for a year, carrying it with me in a soft bag, travelling a lot, and so far it has work flawlessly.
 
I've been using internal Seagate HDDs for a couple of years now. No complaints - they've been solid, reliable equipment for me. I'm not familiar with their external HDDs, but if their internal ones are any indication - they should be fine.
 
Thanks for your responses folks! The vote is split evenly whith only positive things to be said. I guess if I mentioned Lacie, things would be different.

Hoping someone can speak to the performance difference between the 2 distinguishing traits of the drives - RAID and eSATA.

I'm wondering if price is the only difference at the DV level. Is there much of a performance boost with the RAID config on the G-raid? And how about the eSata on the Seagate. 3gb data rate sounds nice, but will I see that advantage editing DV?
 
G-Tech has a 500GB SATA RAID. I don't know about the performance differences but I generally get about 3 to 4 RT streams of DVCProHD on the G-SATA.
 
Have two G Raids and three Seagates, also the LaCie d2 extremes (3 of them at the moment).

They all work fine.
 
If you want eSATA, just get internal drives, and put them in an eSATA enclosure. I use a Thecus 2050. I have two seagate 320gig drives in there in a raid 0. Internal drives are cheaper. And, if you use them in an enclosure, you can always swap them out for bigger one's in the future, or add an additional enclosure and drive setup to your raid. I use eSATA on my laptop with DVCPRO HD, and so far, I swear by it (knock on wood).

Never used G-Raid, so I can't comment on it.

Jason
 
Is that G-RAID really using RAID or is that just the brand? Does 500GB mean it has 2 internal 250mb SATA drives or 1 non-raided 500GB internal SATA.

I'm looking for an external drive as well, and soon. What about the LaCie TWO BIG 1 TB drive enclosures? Anyone used them?

It would be nice to have the mirroring since I'm going to be doing live capture from camera to external HD via laptop w/ HD monitor pro.
 
G-Drive or G-Raid?

G-Drive or G-Raid?

I've heard that it is less reliable to get a RAID like the g-raid because there are 2 striped hdd's and if either one fails you lose your stuff, so it basically doubles your chances of it failing. Would it be safer then to get a regular g-drive that is not a RAID? Would you basically be sacrificing speed for more reliability?
Also what is the opinion on HDD storage in general? There is no drive that is entirely reliable, right? So would we be best off just going for 2 cheaper drives and constantly having a back-up? I was thinking like 2 Lacie 500GB or 2 Maxtor or something.
I'm a little confused why Seagate doesn't offer any firewire 800 drives, which is why I'm not going for those.
Input appreciated...
sns
 
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