GH4 Good RAID 5 setup for 4K editing?

Jaime Valles

Jaime Valles

Veteran
Hello, all.

Shooting in 4K is taking its toll on my storage, and I'm in need of a good RAID 5 hard drive solution ASAP. Do any of you have experience with this enclosure?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2IVT12.0S/

If so, how is it working out for you? If not, do you have any other recommendations for external RAID 5 solutions? I'm using a MacBook Pro and editing on Premiere, so a Thunderbolt connection is probably best.

Thanks!

:bath:
 
I used the older non-Thunderbolt version of this RAID box for a few years, and overall it's performed perfectly. When I upgrade to a Thunderbolt 2.0 PC motherboard, I was thinking of buying the "empty" version of this RAID box and installing my own drives into it.
 
TheDingo said:
I used the older non-Thunderbolt version of this RAID box for a few years, and overall it's performed perfectly. When I upgrade to a Thunderbolt 2.0 PC motherboard, I was thinking of buying the "empty" version of this RAID box and installing my own drives into it.
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Thanks for the info!

Here's the OWC "empty" enclosure:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2SRKIT0GB/

It appears less expensive to buy the "pre-filled" enclosure ($959) than just buying the "empty" enclosure ($579) plus four of these 3TB drives ($411.96 for four drives):

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B005T3GRLY/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Unless we can find significantly less expensive 3TB 7200rpm drives, I think I'd rather go for the full package from OWC. But let me know if there are better drives to buy separately.

Thanks again!
 
I just bought the 3 drive version of the CALDigit RAID and I must say it is fantastic. Runs 4K untranscoded rushes on my macbook pro very well, even better when transcoded to Pro Res. I can only imagine what the 4 RAID and SSD options would be like. Great value too.

http://www.caldigit.com/t3/
 
The ThunderBay 4 is a software RAID so it will use your computers resources as opposed to a hardware RAID. The benifit of software versions is cost. They tend to be almost half what a hardware RAID cost and usually dont come empty. This is an issue since most of the popular companies dont use big TB drives yet. They seem to like 4TB and smaller.
I'm in the same boat and for now I keep putting bigger drives in my Drobo 5N and transfer media from it to my RAID when I need to edit. This way I have a backup off all the media on the Drobo and live projects on my smaller RAID 5.

I'm saving my pennies for the new G-Tech Studio XL
 
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Erik Naso said:
The ThunderBay 4 is a software RAID so it will use your computers resources as opposed to a hardware RAID. The benifit of software versions is cost. They tend to be almost half what a hardware RAID cost and usually dont come empty. This is an issue since most of the popular companies dont use big TB drives yet. They seem to like 4TB and smaller.
I'm in the same boat and for now I keep putting bigger drives in my Drobo 5N and transfer media from it to my RAID when I need to edit. This way I have a backup off all the media on the Drobo and live projects on my smaller RAID 5.

I'm saving my pennies for the new G-Tech Studio XL
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That looks amazing, but is probably going to be quite expensive. I'll probably have to start with the OWC unit and then graduate to something like this later. :)
 
Erik Naso said:
The ThunderBay 4 is a software RAID so it will use your computers resources as opposed to a hardware RAID.
Click to expand...

Hi Erik,

Are you 100 percent sure of this, as I had their non-Thunderbolt RAID box ( that looks identical ) and it performed all of the RAID functions without being connected to anything. ( i.e. build RAID, repair RAID, re-build RAID, without being connected to any other hardware device )

And you did not have to install any special drivers, you could use whatever partitioning software you like on the RAID once the RAID box had initially built the RAID all by itself.
 
TheDingo said:
Hi Erik,

Are you 100 percent sure of this, as I had their non-Thunderbolt RAID box ( that looks identical ) and it performed all of the RAID functions without being connected to anything. ( i.e. build RAID, repair RAID, re-build RAID, without being connected to any other hardware device )

And you did not have to install any special drivers, you could use whatever partitioning software you like on the RAID once the RAID box had initially built the RAID all by itself.
Click to expand...

I think Erik is right. The non-Thunderbolt 4 bay RAID is a hardware RAID while the new Thunderbolt RAID is software RAID. You can easily see that there is no dial for RAID setting on the enclosure of the new OWC Thundbay4 RAID.

Anyone has experience on the OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Edition? I am not too sure to spend good money on a proprietary software for RAID 5.
 
You don't really need a RAID to edit 4K. I edit 175 Mb/s DNxHD files off a single drive without issue. The 4K's 100Mb/s media should be fine. It's the codec and processor that'll give you more of an issue than the hard drive.
 
I use a little different workflow. I start by offloading my cards to a job specific Rugged drive for protection. (500gb-1TB depending on the project) I then copy all that same media to my active working drive (link below) where it stays until i'm done with the project. At the end of every day, I drop a copy of my current project files onto my desktop. That way if my active drive were to have a problem, i'm just reloading media. When I finish a project, I offload all assets back to the Rugged for storage. I include the cost of the rugged drives in my production estimates.

This drive works great and is Thunderbolt 2. works like a champ with the new mac pro.

http://www.macmall.com/p/G-Technology-External-Hard-Drives/product~dpno~13022811~pdp.igdfefj
 
Hey Jaime,

I recently bought the OWC Thunderbolt 2 enclosure you are looking at. I went for just the bare enclosure as I wanted to spec my own drives ( which I have only just ordered ). Its a really well built piece of kit. I researched the pro & cons of hardware versus software raid and I preferred the flexibility of the software raid as it allows me configure 2 or 3 drives in a raid as opposed to all 4 in the enclosure. Speed wise BareFeats or MacPerformance Guide have shown in some cases Soft Raid can be faster. I've used it down throughout the years and its been very solid, and the support is incredible. Lots of info here on configuring the OWC http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html#OWCThunderbay
 
I'm using an Areca ARC8050T2 enclosure with 8 3TB Barracudas.

Running as RAID6 (2 drive failure) I've got 18TB running at about 550MB/s R/W off my 6-Core Tube.

runs like a dream, with peace of mind.
 
A word of warning about buying a bare enclosure from OWC. It's not hard to find a lot of complaints about the customer service run-around you will receive if you have a problem and you did not purchase your drives from them. Not saying it will happen to you, but it seems to be a pattern with them.
 
joe12south said:
A word of warning about buying a bare enclosure from OWC. It's not hard to find a lot of complaints about the customer service run-around you will receive if you have a problem and you did not purchase your drives from them. Not saying it will happen to you, but it seems to be a pattern with them.
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Thomas Smet said:
I have also heard they are less supportive of units where users add their own drives.
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Good to know. Thanks!
 
I've had one of the older versions (USB 3 and eSATA ports) since February without any issues. It's hardware RAID though, so different than the Thunderbolt versions. I bought it from B&H as a package deal with 5400RPM Seagate drives. It was cheaper than OWC since I believe they use 7200RPM Enterprise Class drives. I don't like Seagate and I kinda wish they were Hitachi or WD drives but so far no issues. I get 170MB/s Write & 190MB/s Read speeds over USB 3.0

The thing to know is if one drive fails you need an identical drive to plug back into the system, firmware identical too, so when you order those 4 drives be sure to order an extra 5th as a cold spare.
 
I just placed an order for a PROMISE Pegasus2 M4 4TB at $1500 (this is a 2.5" disk version), and now Im thinking I could have purchased a 3.5" version from another company with more TB installed for the same price. Could anyone recommend a better prices/deal and reliable 8TB or higher raid drive with thunderbolt for video editing?
 
I've used the pegasus M4 for a couple days now and although the speeds are nice, the premium for the small package is a bit excessive. So yesterday I purchased an OWC 4 bay raid with thunderbolt and locally (on sale) 4x 4tb WD red nas drives, giving me 16bg raid for $1300 (that's the OWC enclosure and the 4 drives altogether) vs only 4tb for over $1500 with the pegasus.
 
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