MacPro RAID card advantage?

B

BrianF

Member
Getting a new MacPro. I plan to install 3 1TB media drives in addition to the system drive. For editing DVCPRO-HD 1080 and 720 footage (from the HVX200), is there enough of an advantage to the RAID card to make it worth buying, or is a software RAID good enough?

I don't plan to do any uncompressed HD, although I'll be rendering to ProRes HQ.
 
No raid is even needed. The internal drives are plenty fast for DVCPRO HD on their own. Multiple streams.

The advantage is that you can have a protected raid...RAID 5...so if one drive fails, you are fine. RAID 0 is the best you can get via software, and that means that if you lose one drive, you lose everything. Bear in mind that CalDigit sells a Raid card that is not only cheaper (half the price), but is also something you can install and UNinstall yourself. The Apple card can only be installed by Apple...and uninstalled. VERY restricting.

But, you don't even need it. Save your $$. Internal SATA is blazing fast. And the requirements for DVCPRO HD are low.
 
Best 1 TB hard drives?

Best 1 TB hard drives?

Thanks much for info, Shane. That's exactly what I was seeking.

Sounds like a RAID card would provide me with little to no benefit, the Apple RAID card would be a potential liability, and a software RAID (0) would be unnecessary for DVCPRO HD.

My plan now is to use two of the internal 1 TB drives for footage transfer, and the other one for rendering color-correction and effects. I should be able to use less than 75% of each drive this way, which should give me plenty of extra headroom on the data rate. For backup, I'll use FW drives that I will take off site, which should be more security than a RAID 5 anyway.

Anyone have an opinion on the most reliable 1 TB internal drives for MacPro, and the best place to buy them?
 
for the best place to buy the drives, i suggest newegg.com. they seem to be the cheapest and very reliable. i get my stuff like 4-5 days after i order it. which is a lot quicker than everywhere else i've tried.
 
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