Mitchell, here's a link to the test software that Aja offers for testing purposes. There are a couple DMA tests in there that normally require a Kona card (or similar) to be installed, but the throughput tests should help to establish some benchmarks for you.

http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_System_Test_v601.zip

Nice! Thanks! (I'll give it a try when I get to the office today)

I think it comes down to how many video streams you are trying to work with. I've not noticed any lag using my Macs standard drives at all. My scratch disk is an external FW connected G-Tech G-Raid drive.

For some reason my Mac didn't like the G-TECH G-SATA drive and would often lock up when it was connected so I opted for the more reliable FW800 drive.

Hi there
Do this for a living.

Have used everything from Fry's 1TB Buffalo drives (not recommended) to LaCie and G-Raid 2TB FW800 units on my latest Bravo TV show. (nine cameras, HVDPro HD100 streams).

This works on my G5 as well as the Intels - BUT it's a matter of gross buss bandwidth. The show I'm working on is around 75 hours of HD material across maybe 6TB of drives, all FW800. But in three bus streams of 2TB apiece. In other words, all the built in FW connectors on your computer are going to one bus. I bought slot/bus expander boards for my machines and put two more FW800 cards in each computer, bringing the bus total to 3 per computer. Two TB connected to each proved to be the trick.

When working in Avid, I turn the playlength buffer command down to 1 minute ahead and have been able to get away with editing 9 HD streams off a single bus, but it won't play an entire act or program that way.

Push come to shove, I've cut a show in small pieces, put them together into one timeline, and exported Quicktime (same as source) to get something I could actually watch, top to tail, with no stuttering, etc.

(yes, been there, done that. I actually prefer to do some longer shows this way, and use the Aja TV applet to output the QT to DVD recorders, large screens, whatever. With one simple QT stream, I can then sit back and watch the show, and not worry about will this or that render stack play properly, etc.
I guess I like it because this was the way I first learned to cut sprockets, in the British system with picture synchronisers, squawk boxes, tall editing benches and upright Moviolas with no arms. We only really used the flatbeds for viewing, they didn't have the synch worked out at the time...)

Running one G5 duo and two Quad Intels (Avid 2.8 and FCP 6.0.4 on all) with eSATA backplanes and 4-and 8-drive enclosures with Frys drives (usually Samsungs or whatever 700GB+ drives they've had on sale) and because of the RAID redundancies and the Frys exchange program I simply take the crashed drives back and exchange them.

One old (but maxed out) mirror door G4 is running an LT03 tape backup for long term archiving and also a lightscribe DL-DVD for BPAV and edit project backups. It's also got the Toast .dmg, scanning and printing duties. And it's the firewalled one for Internet connections, but I have laptops on wireless too.

Everything is linked via simple high speed Ethernet. Yes, I have XP and Vista machines running too, a lot of the VFX stuff is on that platform. Common formats are Quicktime and Targa

Transitioning now to something more reliable (I usually have between 8 and 16 drives spinning 24 hours a day when a job is in the house).

Will be switching everything now to drobos. (drobo.com), to do it all more efficiently and with less heartache, no regrets. Don't get the drobo add on ethernet system, they don't have it together properly yet. But the basic system is very nice, especially if you have others working on your computers.

The only ExpressCard for MBP that will work with G-Speed
 

One posed the question of the card that will work with the eSATA RAID from G-Speed. Only the FirmTEK will work right now, $119 USD, per G-Tech. Although true, it would be safer to have a five-drive RAID, I back up everything as I go, as this RAID only has four drives configured at RAID level 0 for highest speed. Also, with that card, you could connect two G-Speed eS units, although you cannot ''RAID'' them.

Tom Parke
ProScan DP

Matt, and all of you with experience on this, which Lacie rugged or other external to you use?
Nowadays you have 500GB but 5400 RPM or 320GB with 7200 RPM

The 500 GB seems to be also really fast via FW800 and some think that because of the high density of the plates it's also almost as fast as the 320GB 7200RPM?

Your inputs are more than welcomed on this, thanks

I've gone with the 7200 RPM because the MacBook Pro internal drives I have are always 5400, and I've historically found editing material on the internal drive to be less pleasurable than editing on a faster external drive. There's lots of reasons for this to be so, but suffice to say that the faster drives handle a few layers of video and I can ingest and lay off DVCAM and HDV to tape whilst doing other things.

As for the lower capacity, Ruggeds are not for long term use. I ingest and edit in the field, then transfer them to mains powered higher capacity drives (and BluRay backup) as soon as I can.

500GB/5000rpm vs 300BG/7000rpm tests:

fast, high capacity notebook drives

Thanks guys,

I'm trying to figure some reasonable plans for longer "field trips" where you can't have too much cargo so might need the large drive for economical offloading the cards and process some footage you have to send out while on the move, as TV field reporters do.

At this point I'm just trying to decide if those 500GB would be better investment versus the 320Gb. This however would work only if the 5400RPM is also able to handle few video streams while editing, and this is the field where I'm lacking of experience.

...perhaps some more inputs will hit in too :-)

Drobo.
 

Chris, can I ask about your proposed Drobo-based system plans? I have been waiting and will wait until Jan/Feb to put together an HD desktop editing suite to replace my last Avid affair. Currently using a MBP but want to accommodate my FLASH XDR system and data rates up to 160 mbps and possibly 10 bit uncompressed.

I'm considering a system nowhere near as elaborate as your studio needs but perhaps with elements which may be similar - a striped (but backed up) system/apps drive (nested in an unused optical bay); internal raid system for current projects (thinking of using Transintl Pro Drives in the internal 4 hard drive slots); and a few Drobos for archive/backup of original media and edits. Is this what you had in mind, albeit on a larger scale?

Jus.

I'm using the free version of HDTune

HD Tune

Personally I never liked the idea of my "RAID" residing inside my computer (internal drives). It seemed to me that it would create a lot of additional heat in a location that's already having to deal with heat issues caused by the CPU and such.

Just my opinion....never actually tried it.

There are so may options with external drive cases, why not build your own external RAID instead of doing an internal RAID?

I am using a EasyRaid with 8 1TB drives set up as raid-5 (7 drives working, one can fail and is replaced with the spare drive) connected to a MacPro via SCSI 320. So far I have edited 1920x1080 in 10bit uncompressed and I get very little dropped frames and such. For editing anything lower than that I had no speed problems whatsoever. I did a gig with 14 Streams of DV multicam with no problems.

Hi Florian
Nice to see you here as well. Got an EX-3 myself.
Haven´t seen you since London Film School. Nice house by the way
I´m looking to get a RAID for my Mac Pro as well, your solution sounds pretty good

It doesn't appear that EasyRaid is currently available here in the States?