External SATA raid performance

Can anybody tell me what a good average transfer/write speed should be from a Win 7 64 PC to an eSATA RAID0 device that shows 185 MB/S write speed in Blackmagic's speed test.
When I transfer 130 GB of XDcam data across to a 1TB G-Raid device that has no previous data on it, the speed stars out at about 120 MB/s and gradually slows until it maintains 20-24 MB/s for the majority of the transfer.
Should I be expecting higher transfer rates than that?
Thanks.

Jon, that is lousy, I do not know your RAID configuration, but one good internal drive would do much better than that 20-24 MB/sec! Here are my Read and Write benchmarks on a single SATA3 Seagate 7200.14 2 TB drive with HD Tune Pro (all with my Areca 1880). Sorry I do not have the Blackmagic test while a good end to end test it does not tell you if it is a read or write problem
Here are four of them in SATA3 RAID 10

Similar Messages

External SATA RAID no longer works after 10.5.5 update

After updating to 10.5.5, my external RAID (Sbox) (RAID 10) is no longer recognized – The SATA card is functioning correctly – I can attach a single external SATA drive without problem – all ROM has been updated (working with Sonnet) and we confirmed the proper operation of the card. When the system is attached to the external RAID (with port replicator in enclosure) the card reports an error (both green and amber steady lights) and no activity on the transfer lights. Worked great under 10.5.4 on PowerMac. Any ideas??

It seems as though the problems are multiplying. Other programs are acting funny now - I had to force quit iTunes yesterday and then the Finder froze. Keyboard response was nil, so I couldn't Force quit the Finder, so I had to resort to more drastic measures. It took two reboots to get things running again. I'm going to review some other threads to see if there are any clues there, then probably wipe the hard drive and do a clean install if nothing else seems to address the issue.

Using the SATA internal connection for an external SATA RAID drive

DP2G G5
THis RAID case:
http://wiebetech.com/products/rt5.php
has an SATA interface on it. Can I snake the internal cable outside somehow & plug it into this case? I can't spare a PCI slot for an SATA card. If not I'll just use the FW800, but it'd be cool to have SATA speeds.
DP2G G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

THis RAID case:
http://wiebetech.com/products/rt5.php
has an SATA interface on it. Can I snake the
internal cable outside somehow & plug it into this
case? I can't spare a PCI slot for an SATA card.
If
not I'll just use the FW800, but it'd be cool to
have
SATA speeds.
DP2G G5
Mac OS X (10.4.5)
Why would you want to spend $1700 on a SATA enclosure
and then be "cheap" on the SATA host adapter to run
it? This expensive 5 bay uses FW800 or SATA. Why not
use FW800 if you don't have a SATA host adapter.
I'm not trying to be cheap here. As I said, I have no PCI slots available. I use Pro Tools HD3 & all my slots are full. I will use FW800 if needed, but speed of SATA would be great.
WiebeTech has a $59 SATA card with one port or
FirmTek has a two port for $99 or a 4 port for
$139.95. Get a external SATA host adapter with direct
connect capability for this enclosure. Or if that is
too much get a 5 bay Fusion 500P for $500 and a
separate card. If you have a new PowerMac G5 made
after Oct 2005 then no PCI slots are available and
you will need the Sonnet PCIe Tempo E4P:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/article
s/sonnet/e4p/
Have fun!
DP2G G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

External sata RAID

I have a external sata housing that has removable drive trays is is possible to have two drives setup in a raid and eject them as normal and when I mount them again they will mount as a raid again.

It's hard to anwser without knowing exactaly what you've got but:
The device housing would have to have a controller of some sort (either software or hardware) to manage the raid.
(What's telling the drives they're working together and how).
The 2 drives can either be mirrored or striped together to make 1 big disk.
The controller would present the disk space to the OS and that's what would be getting "ejected" from the desktop.

K7N2 Delta SATA Raid Performance

I just installed this motherboard and was wondering what kind of performance improvement I might see using sata converters on my almost new WD 80 GB ATA 100 HDDs? Taking advantage on board of the serial ata raid controler. The converters are only $20 and 2 new sata HDDs would be $260. Also if I use the Serial ata for my HDD wich IDE plug do I use for my optical drives? Any Help would be apperciated.

what they say as regards a single drive is true,but you would still see the benefits of running in raid and they are quite high,im still using my highpoint controlller on my wd drives,but i would not go back to single drives from raid 0 now ,it just makes the pc more snappy,some of the adaptors like the abit ones have got a bad reputation though,seems they are prone to falling out
as i recall on a clean install my c in sandra was benching around 54000

Very slow external sata HD (lion)

Hi everybody!
It has been a while I am using a Netstor external HD (NR710C) 4x2TB WD Caviar black, RAID 10 (4TB total space, 2.71 Available, MacOS Extended Journaled).
It is conntected with the MacPro (MacPro 4,1 - early 2009) via a Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P pci card (drivers updated)
The OS installed is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50d) on a OCZ SSD 250GB
What happen is that randomly the access to the external RAID HD is very slow and while finder try to open subfolder the entire system freeze for a minute or so. Soemtimes the opened folders looks empty and I have to wait a minute or so to see the content.
When I used Snow Leopard (installed on a 1TB HD) the access was always fluid and fast.
What I've done to try to solve this issue is:
Unchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible) in the Energy Saver panel.
Changed slot of the PCI card
Changed sata plug and cable
Performed all the check disk possible
It happens as well that the copy/move of big folder (up to 800GB) is not always as fas as it should be.
Also, working with Lightroom (cache is on the SSD hd) is really frustrating due the slow access to all the files.
I was used to work directly on the external sata HD but now seems like if I have to move everything back on an internal HD.
Is there any other check I can perform to address this issue?
So many thanks.
Luca

The case has an eSata port and cable.
I've run a speed test (Xbench) on a 2TB internal drive and the external RAID.
Here is the result. It seems the speed is good.. is it correct?
System Info
Xbench Version
1.3
System Version
10.7.3 (11D50d)
Physical RAM
16384 MB
Model
MacPro4,1
Drive Type
WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Disk Test
98.66
Sequential
175.94
Uncached Write
212.82
130.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
181.19
102.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
123.16
36.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
227.40
114.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
68.55
Uncached Write
21.96
2.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
441.42
141.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
155.38
1.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
242.86
45.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
System Info
Xbench Version
1.3
System Version
10.7.3 (11D50d)
Physical RAM
16384 MB
Model
MacPro4,1
Drive Type
Netstor H/W RAID10
Disk Test
97.50
Sequential
150.65
Uncached Write
182.92
112.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
144.62
81.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
104.63
30.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
216.80
108.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
72.07
Uncached Write
22.29
2.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
205.88
65.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
360.62
2.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
332.37
61.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Questions about streaming disk, firewire and SATA raids.

I have two internal drives, one for applications/system and one for audio, which had been suitable up until recently. I recently added Ivory, and some addons to the BFD drums. The BFD Deluxe has significantlly more velocity layers, and is placing a strain on computer and drives.
I moved the BFD drum data onto an external firewire 800 (because of data size) The BFD drums seem to be having a hard time keeping up, (it glitches and stutters).
I have 3 gig of ram, so I guess I'll add more ram. But I'm unsure about SATA raids. Is it better to add an external firewire RAID?... Mac Guru, has some reasonably priced kits. Has anyone had experience with them?
There is a 3 drive bay which you can put inside your G5, but I have concerns it will draw too much power and generate too much heat.
Lastly, if I buy a 4 bay external raid, can i create a 3 drive raid, and keep 1 one drive as a seperate drive (do I have to stripe all drives in one enclosure, or can they be seperate?
Any insights would be helpful.. thanx

depending on whether you use eSATA or FW, you have differnet options as to how you mount the drives as volume(s) to your computer. FW pretty much limits you to a single logical volume, although it could be RAID-0 or in some rare instances, RAID-5 with certain enclosures.
eSATA, again, depending on the specific enclosure, can mount all the drives as a single volume, but you may have the option to mount multiple logical volumes... like the 1 RAID-0 and 1 independent volume like you mentioned.
earlier tonight i recommended this drive to someone else for a laptop application...
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10724
for a desktop application, you would probably go with their 3.5" solutions since buss power is not important to you.
this might not be accurate, but this is my understanding of highest read/write performance to lowest in terms of general specs (certain products may have advantages / dissadvantages depending on the implementation) all RAID-0 volumes are assumed to be 2 drive RAID, although it is technically possible to do more with certain hardware.
1) RAID-0 eSATA
2) RAID-0 FW
3) RAID-5 eSATA
4) single eSATA
5) single FW
6) RAID-0 USB2
7) RAID-5 FW
8) single USB2
9) RAID-5 USB2
RAID-5 is a real wild card here because a 3 drive image is really not the intended configuration for RAID-5... more drives is preferred before you start reaching theoretical efficiency and the actual XOR engine or lack of one can drastically affect your performance levels.

Help: External SATA with ZFS raidz2 extremely slow, freezes system

Hello,
I need some help with the following configuration:
Dell 850 with Intel D940 (3.2 ghz dual core), 1 gig RAM, 2 80 gig SATA drives
Norco DS-1220 external SATA enclosure
(http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=12&modelno=ds1220)
Sil3124 4-port SATA card
(http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=8&modelno=norco-4618)
8 seagate 7200.10 500 gb sata2 drives
I'm using Solaris 10 x86 u3. It sees the sata card at c3 and the 8 disks as:
/dev/rdsk/c3t2d0p0 /dev/rdsk/c3t545d0p0 /dev/rdsk/c3t608d0p0
/dev/rdsk/c3t3d0p0 /dev/rdsk/c3t576d0p0 /dev/rdsk/c3t609d0p0
/dev/rdsk/c3t544d0p0 /dev/rdsk/c3t577d0p0
I created a raidz2 pool with all 8 drives. It appeared to work OK:
# zpool status array0
pool: array0
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
array0 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t2d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t3d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t544d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t545d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t576d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t577d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t608d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c3t609d0p0 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
As a quick and dirty test, I did:
time cp -d -r /usr /export/array0/
The /usr partition is about 2.7 gb. So far, after about 2 hours, 680 mb have been copied.
Looking at iostat, I see the following:
# iostat -x -C
extended device statistics
device r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv svc_t %w %b
c0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
c3 0.5 11.7 23.4 108.3 2.0 0.4 203.6 0 44
sd1 0.1 1.2 3.4 13.6 0.2 0.1 180.3 1 6
sd2 0.1 1.4 3.0 13.6 0.2 0.1 194.4 2 7
sd3 0.1 1.3 3.3 13.6 0.3 0.1 242.3 4 7
sd4 0.1 1.5 2.8 13.4 0.3 0.1 266.9 3 9
sd5 0.1 1.4 2.5 13.5 0.2 0.0 187.1 1 3
sd6 0.1 1.6 2.6 13.3 0.4 0.1 300.7 3 10
sd7 0.1 1.6 3.0 13.7 0.2 0.0 99.5 0 0
sd8 0.1 1.6 2.8 13.5 0.2 0.0 152.7 1 1
cmdk0 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.4 0 0
cmdk1 12.6 1.4 74.6 16.1 0.1 0.0 5.8 0 2
nfs1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
When I run it with updates, I see a lot of screens like this:
extended device statistics
device r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv svc_t %w %b
c0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
c3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0 100
sd1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0 100
sd4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
cmdk0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
cmdk1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
nfs1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
The drive with 100 moves between sd1 to sd6 (i think sd7 and sd8 too, but not positive). Sometimes both %w and %b report 100. Also, occasionally, two drives will both report 100. These stay at 100 for 30 seconds or longer, followed by a flurry of data, and then another drive reports 100.
Here's another example:
extended device statistics
device r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv svc_t %w %b
c0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
c3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 0.0 0 200
sd1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0 100
sd2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0 100
sd4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
sd8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
cmdk0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
cmdk1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
nfs1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0
Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this? Or if this is a known SATA problem? Or a known problem with the Sil3214 cards or the Sil port multipliers?
Thanks,
Greg

I was told the port multiplier code in the Solaris and OpenSolaris systems is not production ready. It is a known bug and is being worked on, but no ETA. I was given the impression that it was a low priority issue.
After struggling with this for several days I had to give up using Solaris for this project and had to migrate to Linux. In my case, I had to use CentOS or Red Hat ES due to binary drivers from Silicon Image as the open source Sil3124 drivers in Linux also had problems with port multipliers (slightly different symptoms than Solaris). Even with the binary drivers from the vendor, I am still seeing port multipliers drop all 5 drives at seemingly random times.
Moral of the story: Don't use port multipliers in production environments or anywhere that you value your data. At least, not the Silicon Image 3726 port multipliers. They'll just give you more headaches than they are worth.
Had I the chance to do it over, I would not have purchased the NorcoTek (Norco) DS-1220 enclosure; I would have done something with SCSI or with direct channels to all drives and no port multipliers. One day they'll probably be OK.
I had wanted to use raidz2 for my array. When I switched to Linux I used raid6 (double parity, similar to raidz2), but with the port multipliers dropping 5 drives at a time, I had to reconfigure to raid 1+0. Nice performance, but I'm really annoyed at the loss of capacity. My 5 tb array is now 3 tb.

No longer can write to my external SATA drive...

I was editing in FCP Studio 2 on a my MacPro 2x2.8 Quad Core, running MacOS 10.5.2, connected to a Highpoint X4 SATA drive, via the Highpoint RocketRaid 2314MS card. At some point the MAC detected a problem with the drive, and apparently it has changed the drive to read only. My timeline plays OK, but a lot of clips are marked as off-line, although I re-rendered them and they play. I ran the internet verification check from Highpoint, and it said the drive was normal. MAC disk utility will not let me change permissions on the external SATA. What should I do? Edit deadline approaching...there goes the weekend.

Well, the tech-support guy at Highpoint was going to e-mail me some steps, after he talked with someone about some MAC procedures. He thought that I would have to insert some code. There are three UNIX files on the drive that are trying to"fetch" something. Since my permissions have changed, I can't delete them. The e-mail from tech support never arrived last night. I'm in tthe CST zone, so it's still about two hours until Highpoint opens their doors. The RAID warning lights gave never changed from green to red. No beeps or chirps either. The on-line drive verification that took 3 hours, said the drive status was Normal.
Paul

3rd Party SATA raid cards for internal drives?

All --
Apart from the discussion as to if RAID actually benefits a home desktop system, I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
My Mac Pro is still slated to be built at Apple and for now I have the minimum memory and HD spec being requested at Apple, with the plan to upgrade the memory and drives from OWC or another vendor.
I've toyed with the idea of utilizing Disk Utility's software RAID features (e.g. RAID 0 for scratch disks, RAID 1 for boot, RAID 0+1 for all else.) I've also toyed with the notion of searching for a hardware raid solution which would allow me to transfer the internal SATA cable runs from the motherboard to a host adapter card for an internal multi-channel experience (with options to create and break mirrors to external devices for backup purposes.)
So....
Has anyone experience or utilized 3rd party hardware raid controllers which can connect to the internal HD bays? Are there limitations to this (ie, does the boot drive HAVE to reside off the internal motherboard controllers, or can an internal hardware controller successfully boot the system) of which ought be noted?
Finally, in the event that a host adapter card cannot drive the interna bays, can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
Thanks for your time,
Ian Poulin
Richmond, Va

I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
There are many 3rd party controllers that support the internal HDs if an internal iPass connector is used. The problem is that some are bootable but most are not.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 are bootable. However, the system cannot be installed via the Apple DVD. Instead the user needs to clone a boot drive with the proper drivers to the boot volume on the controller and then boot from the 3rd party controller.
The other issue I found is that these controllers do not support Boot Camp. If Boot Camp is desired, my recommendation would be to leave the internal HDs on the Mac Pro internal bus intact and use the 3rd party controller for external storage. This method provides four internal bays that are bootable, support Boot Camp and can be used for system backups. I use the 3rd party controller for external storage for large RAID sets and hot swapping hard disks.
With the internal bays intact and external hot swap RAID storage available the user can support Boot Camp, multiple system volumes and large external RAID sets. From my experience using a 3rd party controller with the internal HD bays always has some limitations. The user usually does not realize it unit later when Boot Camp does not work or the computer fails on a system upgrade or the controller does not work at all with a new version of Mac OS X.
Staying with the standard internal Mac Pro bay configuration will be the best configuration to avoid compatibility issues with future versions of Mac OS X. It is rumored that the new Snow Leopard may require 64-bit drivers. If that is the case, I would expect most if not all existing 3rd party controller drivers to fail. Some drivers will be upgraded after a few months while others may not. Having the internal Mac Pro SATA controller intact should at least allow the Mac Pro to boot if my guess about compatibility issues is correct.
can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
There are a large number of external controllers that work with Disk Utility. Here are some of my favorites.
1. FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E and the SeriTek/5PM
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm2se2.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
2. Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
3. DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/pcie8/
Have fun!

External SATA recommendations

All,
Can anyone recommend an external SATA solution for my Powermac G5? I have a card with external ports, but I need advice on the following:
1. Decent enclosure that will allow spindown of disks
2. Cables
3. Disks
The other option would be for a NAS solution, but I don't believe that would be suitable for photography or video editing, but I guess it would be ok for archival storage ?
I'm preferably looking for gear available in the UK and known to work with the G5... Ever since finding out that a WD400GB disk was going to cost me an additional SATA controller, I've been a lot more cautious about this kind of thing

Wayne,
Your shopping in the same area i have been exploring recently. I'm looking for much more storage, possible with RAID AND backup options. I use Aperture extensively - as extensively as the hopeless and unapgradeable 6600 nVida video card allows. I also have a large itunes collection and do video creation on FC. I need more spindles!
I've settled on the Sonnet E4p PCIe card for my quad offering 4 external SATA ports, and it also support Port Multiplication (PM). PM is a means of clustering bunches of drives physically and connect them to one eSATA port. This particular card £200, supports up to x5 SATA drives per port, thus 20 external drives. However PM is slightly slower than direct connect to each drive. My view is that PM, possibly with RAID within it will be fast enough AND give me a backup option.
After the I/O card there is the choice of enclosure. I have done a lot of reading on what is out there and again i'm falling back to one of two Sonnet products, the 400A and 500P. The former offers x4 SATA drives and supports direct connect to each drive which would make a screaming I/O sub-system. However i also want lots of on-line data capability so speed is not the only priority. This moves me to the 500P enclosure, a x5 SATA PM-only setup. It allows sleep, drive temp monitoring and S.M.A.R.T. What i like about this is i can run a 2-3 drives of 4-500GB SATAII in a fast RAID leaving 3-2 drives for rolling (daily) and (weekly) backup processes as well as one left for x. All within one enclosure. And i still have three eSATA ports to expand on !
AMUG has some good detailed reviews of this and similar equipment:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/home_frame.html
I've not settled on software to run my backups yet, but the above represents my theoritical approach for on-line storage expansion of my Quad. What i am hesitant about is whether i will stick with my mac setup. No matter how much screaming about the lack of video upgrades from Apple, i've been totally hacked-off at the attitude of Apple towards me and others on this Aperture-critical issue. Its a long and very sad story that Apple should be ashamed of. Its 2 days short of 1 year since Apple launched the G5 quad and still they have done NOTHING grrrrrr...
PS One other useful benefit you get from the seperate SATA controller is you can choose and gain from SATA II drives. I'm looking at the WD RE2 drives, 400 or 500GB.
PPS I've been 'stalking' macheaven in the UK, they had the 500P on a ~12% discount, but missed it. Scan seems to have the best prices on drives.
Hope this helps, and appreciate the thoughts of actual eSATA users.

MAC PRO KONA 3 External SATA dropped frames

Recently our company upgraded to KONA3 card with the new MAC PRO. We were not aware our External SATA drives would not be 100% compaditable with the MAC PRO. The drives do mount and seem to work fine in Standard Def and compressed HD, but start to drop frames when dealing with Uncompress capturing. Spoke with AJA and was referred to use Fibre or SCSI based on the LH FAQ portion of their site.
We've installed a temp Fibre Channel Drives and set the card on port 4, with the KONA3 card on Port 3. Do note the drives are RAID 0.
Still having dropped frames when capturing Uncompress HD to the drives.
My questions are:
1) Why does the MAC PRO not support External SATA?
2) Any ideas to contribute to my Fibre issues?
3) What type of other storage solution has been proven to work?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank You All For Your Professional Experience
Marcus
MAC PRO 2.66 Dual Core Intel
2GB of RAM
3.2 TB of EXTERNAL SATA (from Promax)
500GB FIBRE CHANNLE
OS 10.4.8
KONA 3 Drivers vs3.3
FCP 5.1.2
MAC PRO Mac OS X (10.4.8) KONA3; External SATA

My questions are:
1) Why does the MAC PRO not support External SATA?
The only Mac Pro compatible External SATA drive is from CalDigit. This has been proved by people in Barefeats and Creativecow. More and more people are using CalDigit S2VR HD and their FASTA-4e card to do the editing.
3) What type of other storage solution has been proven to work?
S2VR HD has been provedn to work and work very well with great price. Many people are raving about CalDigit's products and its support.
http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/newreadpost.cgi?forumid=98&postid=862284
http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/newreadpost.cgi?forumid=98&postid=862289
http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/newreadpost.cgi?forumid=98&postid=862301
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Power G5 Quad and Intel Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.3)

SATA RAIDS

Hey all,
I'm working on my home system, trying to decide what the "RAID for me" is. I'm considering going the internal route, with wiebetech's G5Jam+ and the 8-port SATA card (4 internal, 4 external), using either 400GB Seagate drives or 500GB Hitachis (ideally, the Hitachis). I'd start with 2 drives (limited budge), but it'd be nice to have room to grow, hence the G5jam+.
Option B I guess would be the Burly 4 drive RAID enclosure over at macgurus, and a similar interface card. This is an external RAID, each drivebay has a separate eSATA port, so it can be setup as JBOD, or as a huge RAID-0. I would also start with just 2 drives on this one, and build over time.
I've considered getting a G-RAID SATA, 1 TB for like $1200 - a good deal for sure, and a spifferoo enclosure. My concern here is that I'll be needing to edit 1080P HD uncompressed 10-bit at some point, and I'll need the bandwidth to do so. (I'm planning a super16mm shoot, telecine to 23.98 1080P D5, capture to 10-bit uncompressed, do all my FX, editing, preliminary CC, and then final CC at another facility with a real monitor... finally for output to D5 again, for uprez to 2k, and print to 35mm. Ambitious, I know, but production value and realism in this project are going to have to be absolutely stellar, despite having to do things on a smaller budget.)
The TRT of this project is going to be no more than 22 minutes all told, so I won't need to capture more than 2 hrs. of HD at a time. At this point I'm leaning towards the Burly external RAID, so that I'll have portability, in case I have to capture and export at a different facility without dragging my computer over there. Then again, I could always rent a D5 deck.
...thoughts?
thanks in advance to any advice.
-Kristoffer

I'd like to know more about SATA Raids as well. Been researching them, but haven't gotten very far. Bare Feats.com has some info there and I believe you need 225 MB/s sustained.
I posted this in an earlier thread. Hope it helps somewhat:
I've read a lot about eSATA or SATA II raids. Much cheaper (than fiberchannel), but the claimed speeds vary so much for what seems to be the same basic product. For example, this product seems to claim up to 150 MB/s per drive:
http://www.kanotechnologies.com/products/XPD-4XKTSI.cfm
And this product claims up to 300 MB/s and Uncompressed HD editing:
http://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdfdatasheets/fusiondatasheet.pdf
But I've read in other places and been told that SATA drives realistically run closer to 56 MB/s and eSATA drives only 3-20 MB/s faster.
Sure would be nice to have a cheaper alternative, but sorting through all this and trying to figure out which eSATA card will fit your G5 w/o taking up extra slots or running too slow b/c it's on the same bus as another card, etc etc, is imho a total mess.

Suggestions for: external SATA array with a PCIe SATA card??

Seems like this would be a good idea but have no idea what hardware to be considering.
external SATA array with a PCIe SATA card
Thanks
John

Seems like this would be a good idea but have no idea
what hardware to be considering.
external SATA array with a PCIe SATA card
Thanks
John
I purchased and internal raid kit, Rocket Raid 2320 card and Maxupgrades kit. This guy will help you get your equipment running with over the phone with personal customer service. He has external configs also.
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category _id=313&CFID=3649947&CFTOKEN=58951206
Good Luck
Z1&V1user

Buy Mac Instead of SATA RAID

is anyone just buying extra mac pros or g5s Instead of buying 5-16 bay SATA RAID (like caldigit HDOne External Hard Drive Array, sonnet Fusion D800RAID etc)
if you are how do you hook multiple computers together to get a fast raid??
Message was edited by: Jon Fame

is anyone just buying extra mac pros or g5s Instead of buying 5-16 bay SATA RAID (like caldigit HDOne External Hard Drive Array, sonnet Fusion D800RAID etc)
No. G5's hold 2 drives, MacPros hold 4...one the system drive. So spending $3000 for a 3 drive Raid 0 is rather...not smart.
Look at MaxxDigital...
Shane

External SATA raid performance

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