New Mac PRO Internal Raid

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OlWiseRedEye

Active member
I recently bought 3 xtra 250gb hitachi internal hard drives to add to my mac pro. I intend to Stripe them RAID 0 and use it as the scratch disk for FCP. I was wondering if anyone here had any reccomendations as far as BLOCK size. The choices go from 16k to 256k. I want this to run as fast as possible.
 
David S. said:
Any reason you are striping them for DVCProHD?
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Why not? I do. Editing DVCProHD on a raid is much snappier than from a single disk. Heck, I run all my DV projects from a raid. If you can, do so I say.
 
David S. said:
Any reason you are striping them for DVCProHD?
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It is seems uch more responsive when the info is accross the three drives. Especally when I start to fill up 1 drive. Anything that s faster is better in my opinion.
 
I do all my DVCPRO-HD editing, even multiclip editing, from an extrnal FW800 drive. Why? Cuase I used a RAID array and got no extra performance out of it. I find with my consulting clients, RAID is just overkill. Unless you're doing massive projects with massive graphics and compositing, and really doing a DVCPRO-HD "Sin City", FW800 drives are just fine.

The SATA drives internally to a Mac are even faster. With them, I honestly don't see the need for RAID in most editing shops.
 
OlWiseRedEye said:
It is seems uch more responsive when the info is accross the three drives. Especally when I start to fill up 1 drive. Anything that s faster is better in my opinion.
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If you're filling up a drive, you need larger drives. FCP accessing a single drive is physically faster than accessing several. When drives fill up to capacity, they slow down. So, yes, several almost full drives can "seem" faster, but one larger drive that's not filled to capacity will in fact be faster.

I'd say get yourself one or two 500GB SATAs to install internally. When you're done with a project, archive it, don't let it sit there contributing to the slow down of your system.

Yeah, if you're filling up a dirve on a project, you simply really need to get bigger drives. Also remember that the bigger the hard drive, the faster it is.
 
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If you are doing any type of multicam editing of DVCPRO50 footage for more than 3 angles you will need some type of raid. Multicam needs it. If you are working with dvcprohd in 1080p24 then you will definitely need it so if you plan on doing any of that then yeah raid it on up.
 
BenB said:
FCP accessing a single drive is physically faster than accessing several.
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I am not an I.T. tech, but isn't a RAID "seen" as one drive, with faster access and read/write speeds than a single drive? The benchtests at barefeats.com seem to show that.

BenB said:
When drives fill up to capacity, they slow down. So, yes, several almost full drives can "seem" faster, but one larger drive that's not filled to capacity will in fact be faster.
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So are you saying if you had a 500gb single drive with say 350gb of media on it, it would be faster than if you had two 250gb drives striped as a raid 0 with 350gb of media on them?

BenB said:
Also remember that the bigger the hard drive, the faster it is.
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All things being equal (except capacity), ie. the rotational speed, the seek time, buffer etc. etc. can you explain why the larger capacity drive would be faster?

BTW, which FW800 drive do you use or recommend?
 
RAID is faster, I never said it wasn't, I just said it's overkill for most DVCPRO-HD editing situation. I do 4 angle multicam edits with DVCPRO-HD and a FW800 drive with not a single problem. So, why would I spend the money on RAID if it's not really nessisary?

Nik, read what I just typed here, you do not "need" RAID to do multiclip edits. I do it everyday on a FW800, no problems.

ozduc, you're twisting what I wrote. Faster drives have faster motors, faster access speeds, it's been a fact of life ever since hard drives have been made. And I never said a single drive was faster than a RAID array. I said, in most cases I've worked with, RAID is overkill, that's all. But if you compare a 250Gig drive to a 500Gig drive, the 500 will handle the workload better, that's all.

And you can't fit 350Gigs of data on 250Gig drive. I never brought RAID into that equation, you did.
 
BenB said:
ozduc, you're twisting what I wrote. Faster drives have faster motors, faster access speeds, it's been a fact of life ever since hard drives have been made.
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Ben I didn't twist anything you said, all I did was copy as a quote what you said. and I was just asking for some clarification on
BenB said:
Also remember that the bigger the hard drive, the faster it is.
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Meaning if you had a 250gb drive and a 500gb drive with the same seek times, rotational speed, buffer, etc etc. why would the 500gb be faster?

BenB said:
And I never said a single drive was faster than a RAID array.
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Sorry but I found the following statement was confusing being that this thread is about raid.

BenB said:
FCP accessing a single drive is physically faster than accessing several.
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BTW Ben, your G-tech FW 800 wouldn't happen to be a G-Raid drive would it?
 
No, my 1TB is RAID, my 500 is a single dirve.

"Meaning if you had a 250gb..." The 500GB drive HAS to be faster to produce the same seek times. This means more robust motor, more durable moving parts, more reliability, better buffering schemes, etc. Bigger is faster is better is more durable, just the opposite of cars...
 
BenB said:
I do 4 angle 1080 on a Quad Core G5 with a 500Gig G-Tech FW800, no problems.
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Huh I am on a dual 2ghz g5 maybe that is the difference.

I tried to edit 4 DVCPRO50 clips in multicam mode for the incubus contest and it crawled. I was using 1 main internal drive with about 40gb free and 1 internal 250 gb media hardrive with about 80 gb free.

UPDATE: Okay after reading this review LINK I realized that I have never defragmented my hardrives nor do I know how to. And my media drive could possibly be over 75% full.

With all that said DVCPRO50 is still half the size as DVCPRO100 and I would have thought 4 streams would be possible I will check and get back to you. I have always reccomemded to people to get 2 hardrives raided together but if 1 can do 4 streams of DVCPRO100 then hey I guess you don't need it. Also LINK This does state that you should be able to edit 4 streams of DVCPRO100 on a internal SATA drive. Even 720P24 uncompressed should work on a internal SATA drive easy.
That is pretty amazing! How do I defrag my system?
 
There's nothing wrong with overkill. :D If I had a billion dollars I'd run DV projects off of X-Raids... then again if I had a billion dollars I'd be shooting 35mm film. :D
 
All hard drives must have 10-15% free space to function properly.
It's not just a good idea, it's the law of physics.

And no, nothing wrong with overkill, but, when you're on a budget...
 
For what's it's worth, I've also edited off a USB2 bus powered TravelStar 100 GB/7200 rpm using a MacBook, not Pro.

Only did 720/24pN, but it never dropped a frame
 
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