I'm thinking of buying the Kona LH capture card but it seems it requires a fast raid setup in order to work correctly. Can anyone suggest me a solid and low cost (the card is expensive!) solution in order to get the most from the camera? I'm targetting smooth DVCPROHD editting or uncompressed 4:2:2 (if there's such a thing).

The upgrade route to smooth HD sure is expensive! :)

How much storage space do you want/need?

I would buy an ATA or SATA control card with two buses, a couple of large internal drives, and then use Apple's own Disk Utility to stripe them in a RAID.

What's your definition of "low cost"?
How much storage are you going to need?

A PixelCorps, a Huge Systems MediaVault 4105 has worked very well for us on CineAlta F900 and F950 shoots. Not sure if these qualify as "low cost" though.

Thanks for the suggestions. my budget is about 1500 USD for the raid system. I believe I can only go for a Sata setup like Tim suggested. I really would like to have the possibility of using such system like you suggested, Nick, but it sounds just too expensive...

Tim, any idea how much storage/performance I can get from a 1500 dollar setup?

We just got a seritek kit from firmtek. It comes with a 4 port card, an external housing for four drives, 4 SATA cables and an internal power supply with 2 fans $649.The unit is SATA 2 compliant. We also got 4 hitachi 250gb SATA 2 drives $100 each. With tax the whole setup cost a little over 1100. When it was fresh and the drives were relatively empty I tested it with Decklink's Disk Speed Tester and got anywhere from 240mBps-260mBps. That's fast enough to do something silly like 160fps of uncompressed/4:2:2 SD. It's even fast enough for some HD resolutions.

Since you said LH and not LHe I'm assuming your system is a PCI-X one.

Mike Curtis over at HDforindies.com have posted lots of PCI-X sata cards that should do the trick. Their are several from highpoint that are realitively cost effective.

Sonnet tempo-x 8 and 4+4 could be a good choice. I think the 8 is 299 and the 4+4 is 199 (find youself a interal sata to esata bracket and its just like the 8) which should also do the trick. They also sell the Fusion 4 drive e-sata enclosures for 399 I think, but I would suspect that their would be cheaper drive boxes with a power supply around.

I'm using a rocket raid pci-x card with 4 maxtor sata 250's mounted internally. 1TB and SCREAMING fast. only editing HDV, but loving it so far. total cost around $1000.

check out the new stuff from Sonnet. I'm probably going to get the eSATA 5 bay enclosure with port multiplier (new) and the pci-x card (others available depending on your computer). SATA II compliant. Total about $800 before adding drives. Can be used as jbod or RAID. The best feature I think is the port multiplier which allow for tons of expansion.

I'm getting close to buying but haven't heard feedback yet from anyone using this.