SxS and EX1R: the ultimate way to save

Last night I built the video drive system using an Acomdata 2.5" Tango USB/eSATA Enclosure (same as suggested Acom with esata port added) and a WD Scorpion Blue drive and a BC268. This combination doesn’t work with the EX1r. It’s fine on PC and Mac. Probably the chip for USB and eSATA ports. Also somewhat loud. I think it would be audible on a quiet set.

I also picked up a Seagate 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive ST905004EXA101-RK to try. Recorded for 2 1/2 hours straight with no trouble and nearly silent. Screen shows 1765 min, that’s 29 1/2 hours.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expan...ST905004EXA101-RK/dp/B001UHWHO4/ref=pd_cp_e_2

I was going to buy the USB only Acom enclosure, but I think I’ll stick with the $50 Seagate Portable Drive. This drive comes formatted as NTFS and has some PC utilities preinstalled. guiformat time.
 
yes! Thank you so much for this thread and discovery, it is crazy to believe that for only SEVEN DOLLARS (!!!) you can have a usb port on your camera that allows almost any usb drive to be plugged straight in. Has anyone tried a usb flash drive? I'm sure it would work
 
... wait a minute... Yes! My little Maxell 16GB thumb drive works! And – since its really small, it doesn't stick out much! Thanks for the hint!
 
This is an interesting thread. I wonder if the Western Digital Passport works in this case. I do a lot of live events shooting and sometimes it could last up to 10 to 12 hours. This would come in handy for some of my shootings.
 
Lor said:
I wonder if the Western Digital Passport works in this case.
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If I am not mistaken, somewhere in this thread we discovered that Express Card to USB 3.0 Adapter doesn't work. (Yes, please read about in on page 3 of this thread!) Since the drive you have link to is USB 3.0, it does require appropriate adapter, doesn't it? The ultimate way to test wheather things work or don't is trying them to work. This is how this interesting thread was established.


Lor said:
Shipping cost of the Express Card Adapter BC268 is way too expensive than buying it off eBay for $9 to $14.
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The shipping price from that link starts at $ 5.08, bring the total price to "huge" $13.07. This, of course, is a disaster. Initially I bought 2 cards ($7.99 x 2 = $15.98) and they were shipped for $ 6.26, totaling expenses to $ 22.24. Buying from eBay would probably save me a dime or two, but it is too late for me. Any specific links to eBay Express Card Adapter that you'd liker to share, Lor?.. Because (at the time of writing this) I am not finding any Express Card to USB 2.0 Adapter on eBay.
 
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Yes, I may have to try it. However, that particular drive backward compatible to USB 2.0. Another word, I can use it in USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. I'm just not sure if the EX1 will take that extra feature.

This is the one I purchased: Item# 170681768322.

I can't wait to give it a try. Although, I still have to decide which drive to purchase. By the way, what do you use to make it so that the portable hard drive can be used on the camera's hot shoe?
 
USB 2.0 two drive RAID for redundant recording?

USB 2.0 two drive RAID for redundant recording?

With more people posting about SSD failures, all of the posts about SxS to SDHC problems and the widespread fear of recording to a spinning drive, I've started to wish for redundant recording.

I haven't found a way to trick an EX into recording to both slots at once. Anyone found a way for that?

I'm too cheap to add a Nano just for safety. That sort of defeats the point of using lower cost media than SxS.

Has anyone tried recording to a USB 2.0 two drive RAID? If one of the dual 2.5" drive portable enclosures will talk to the EX SxS port, I would like the option for RAID 1 redundant recording. If one spinning drive does flake, the other would still playback.

I have three desktop systems like this for file storage. Testing with the ones I have wouldn't be a very useful test though. It's most likely the controller chip in the enclosure that would be the issue. Who has done some testing?
 
"... widespread fear of recording to a spinning drive"? Well, here always is some fear of loosing your footage, but lucky I am never having any problems with SxS and SDHC. With HDs spinning atop of my EX1Rs I had not (yet) experienced any problems as well. I can't remember If I ever see 2.5 drives-based RAID that would be powered over USB bus, but such one (if existed) would probably drain too much power...
Back to fears, failures and crashes:
one can NOT be ever 100% insured. You might bite a bullet, buy Nano, have parallel recording and – drop your camera accidentally... Life s full of surprises. Some of them are unpleased.:)
 
abereut said:
"I can't remember If I ever see 2.5 drives-based RAID that would be powered over USB bus...
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Here is a link to to one (2) 2.5" drive USB RAID - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WV5DJM/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_4?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I have found a few others. I was hoping some had already tried this.

"but such one (if existed) would probably drain too much power...
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The RAID and drives would certainly require external power, either stepped down from camera battery voltage, or with an AC plug when stationary. No big problem there.

The questions are -

What RAID enclosure chip sets are compatible?
Would a RAID 1 (redundant mode) record fast enough?
 
As I described in a few posts here, you have about 90MB/s (about 900% of what the camera is spitting out) of headroom, speed of the drives is no concern. You'll hit the limit of USB far before the limit of any modern drive. I'm assuming you only want raid for redundancy? I honestly don't see the controller on the aforementioned pci-e card supporting any raid controller, as no raid controller I've dealt with shows up device wise as a plugnplay mass storage device with no further drivers needed. You could try though, I know a lot of usb raid controllers are designed specifically to be as plug-n-play as possible, which in this case is what you're aiming for as the pci-e card only creates a bridge to the cameras controller, the camera itself has to recognize, have a way of communicating with, and initialize the drive. I haven't messed around with any newer usb raid controllers so it's worth a try.

I'm pretty sure we just got lucky. For sony to support their add-on hard drive device, they loaded the new ex1 firmware, and the ex1r out of the box, with a driver capable of communicating with and utilizing storage devices via usb. any USB storage device that is designed to show up as a standard usb mass storage device with no additional support SHOULD work. The fact he was able to plug his flash drive right in and use it makes me pretty sure of this.

edit: just realized this while shopping around. Almost every usb raid controller out these days has esata as well. As a previous poster reported, the controllers used for creating both connections on one device are not compatible with this setup :(
 
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Fohdeesha said:
speed of the drives is no concern.
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Agreed.

I am more concerned about bottle necks in the controller, if we can access them at all.
If anyone out there has already tested a 2.5" portable, light weight RAID please let us know what did or didn't work.

I have a few two drive USB desktop RAID 1s. For this discussion we only care about write speed. so here are some video transfer tests.

Using KONA System Test the write speed of a single internal SATA 2 drive, using our codec, is 76.5 MB/s and a clean chart with no big data rate excursions. No problems here.
Testing the 500GB Seagate I use with the BC268 shows 28.0 MB/s and the chart shows some big but brief data rate drops. The BC268 works so it's handling these transfer pauses.
Testing a WD two drive RAID 1 over USB 2, the speed drops to 26.1 MB/s and the chart shows big drops in data rate that last about 4 to 5 times as long. Maybe within EX buffer range?

None of these drives came close to the rated 3.0 Gb/s, but all still have enough overhead, if that was the only issue.
The RAID has more and longer transfer rate slowdowns and that may case recording to stop or bad data to be recorded.
I'll transfer data off of one of these RAIDs and see if the EX can format it, then try to record.

abereut said:
lightimages, the whole point (as I saw this raid discussion) is bus-powered raid enclosure. What your links shows is something else.
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Cameras have batteries as well. On my EX1r rig I use an Anton Bauer brick and D-Tap cables to power the EX and other gadgets. Fairly easy to power the RAID from the brick, though some testing will be needed to select the donor parts.
 
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Fohdeesha said:
edit: just realized this while shopping around. Almost every usb raid controller out these days has esata as well. As a previous poster reported, the controllers used for creating both connections on one device are not compatible with this setup :(
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Links to two EX-SSD recorders with usb and esata -
http://mxmexpress.com/product.php?id_product=40
http://e-films.com.au/shoppingcart/products/e%2dHDR-(Hard-Disk-Recorder).html

The developer of the second system has shared the secret for selecting a USB/eSATA bord that is compatable -

"The chipsets that we tested that work fine are JM20336 SATA II 3GB/s and Initio 1608 and 1611 SATA I 1.5GB/s.There are some others but they are less reliable, and we gave up on them.
Apart from pulling your drive apart and using a magnifying glass, I can't offer you any way to tell what chipset it has in it. Maybe contact the manufacturer, they should be happy to help." RH

I don't know if these chip sets are SSD only or any 2.5 esta that fits the connector.
 
lightimages said:
Links to two EX-SSD recorders with usb and esata -
http://mxmexpress.com/product.php?id_product=40
http://e-films.com.au/shoppingcart/products/e%2dHDR-(Hard-Disk-Recorder).html

The developer of the second system has shared the secret for selecting a USB/eSATA bord that is compatable (...)
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Look,
I started this discussion exactly because these guys are charging almost 8–to–1 of what they spend. From my point of view, they are rather salesmen than developers. The most productive way of learning the "secrets" is to test and to share your results.
 
abereut said:
Look,
I started this discussion exactly because these guys are charging almost 8–to–1 of what they spend. From my point of view, they are rather salesmen than developers. The most productive way of learning the "secrets" is to test and to share your results.
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I think if the price weren't that bad compare to "do it yourself", I would go for it. In this case, it's a bit pricy for me.
 
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