Urgent: Advice needed for buying my first RAID

Question

Hi,
I am looking to place an order today as I have a pile of editing to get through - so I would love to hear your recommendations!
First of all I am a networking and RAID newbie so don't go all acronym and geek-speek-tastic on me or I won't have a clue what you are talking about. Seriously I don't know my NAS from my elbow!
My requirements are:
1. Suitable for working with HDV
2. 2TB of storage
3. Must work with PowerMac G5 2GHz Dual (later model)
4. Must support RAID 5
5. RAID must be controlled by hardware (on RAID box or via PCIe card)
The following have been suggested - has anyone used them?:
Opt1: http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/desktop/t4_cr.html
(Would probably need to put an eSATA card in my Mac but RAID control is on the box.
Only goes to 80MB/sec - is this good enough for working with ProRes 422? I am looking to convert my HDV to ProRes 422 before output to mpeg2 as I believe this can give better results.)
Opt2: http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-SPEED-eS.cfm
(Would need to put a RAID controller in my Mac so not so good for connecting to other Macs.)
But I found this and was wondering if it was also suitable (as its cheaper!):
Opt3: http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=28&PHPSESSID=091b7808cfa54754 383932fc512ea056
(Would connect by 1Gb/sec ethernet to my Mac. RAID controller on the box. Someone said stay away from ethernet but I don't understand why?).
Any advice gratefully received. I need to make a decision real quick!
Keep it mellow, B.

Answer 1

It appears that you need to step back and rethink your business. Heck, we don’t even know that you have a business. What you’re up to might just be personal editing. So I apologize if what I’m about to say overestimates you or underestimates you.
FORMAT
You say, “suitable for working with HDV”, but you don’t say whether you MUST work with HDV. As others in this thread have pointed out, HDV is a “poor man’s Hi-Def”. It compresses images so diabolically in Long GOP that image quality suffers, and, as Shane points out, “the long GOP format is very complex and takes a LOT of time to do things.”
The other extreme is recording and editing in 1080i/p at 4K. Very few people in this world demand extreme quality. So, the best format overall is DVCPro HD. Today, DVCPro HD cameras cost only about a third more than the next nearest HDV. What’s more important, to me, is that DVCPro allows you to move away from having to use tape at all. It’s the year 2008 (almost). Tape is over. If it’s too late to sell your camera and switch, then so be it.
STORAGE
You say, “2TB of storage”. For HD work, that’s a bare minimum. My recommendation is to get a 4-tray or 5-tray box with room to grow, even though the extra trays will remain empty your first 6-12 months.
Buy an empty enclosure that you can populate with your own drives. That way, you can use 1TB bare drives. (Don’t buy anything smaller.) You can put together a stack of 5 1TB drives in an eSATA RAID box for less than $2,000.
RAID
You say, “PowerMac G5 2GHz Dual...via PCIe card”. You mean PCIx card. PCIe is for Intel Macs.
You write, “I want RAID (esp. RAID 5... If a drive fails I want to simply be able to swap a new drive in, restore, and be under way again.” But several of your comments indicate that you really don’t need in-line failsafe. For that reason, let me recommend mirroring or something even simpler: a backup drive.
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) treats each drive in your stack as a separate volume. So, what you see on your desktop is Drive_01, Drive_02. If you subtract the cost for the RAID controller (in the box or in your PCI slot), you can afford to buy TWO plain JBOD boxes, and maintain one as redundant. That satisfies your, “If a drive fails I want to simply be able to swap a new drive in, restore, and be under way again.” In fact, you can skip the “restore” part.
Ken Summerall wrote: “If you are shooting HDV then you have the tapes, those are your backups. If a drive goes down you recapture.”
You responded, “that is not the same as having redundancy of data - and simply being able to swap in a new drive and do a restore.”
You make it sound as though you expect this to happen once a week. It won’t. Backup is good enough. That kind of “time saved” once every year or two isn’t worth it.
SATA vs. FIREWIRE
Again, it’s the year 2008 (almost). Why would you want FireWire? Apple is being so stubborn, pretending that eSATA does not exist, because it has so much invested in its FW technology. But even Apple will be forced to come around in its next models.
While we’re talking about it, the claimed 80MB/sec for the Enhance T4 CR probably refers to the FireWire and USB interfaces, not to the SATA.
ENCLOSURE SHARING
You write, “I also wanted to use the same RAID box with a Macbook Pro. So how would two Macs share the same RAID box?
What kind of sharing do you mean? If you mean that you and your partner can access the same video simultaneously in adjoining rooms, then you need FibreChannel. But, as Shane points out, “...a Fibrechannel setup, then an XServe Server...is NOT cheap.”
As Ken writes, “You can get a eSata card for your G5 and an ExpressCard for your MBP and share the box. With this you could get a Kona or Blackmagic card and capture your footage as DVCProHD and also have a way to monitor your HDV footage.”
Amen.
VENDORS
G-SPEED is reliable, with good support. Caldigit has a platinum reputation. Of course, there are MaxxDigital, Sonnet and Dulce Systems.
Enhance is the new kid on the block, and they are significantly less expensive with, in my experience so far, excellent build quality and quick (human) response. They manufacture in Taiwan, but they’re headquartered in -- and ship out of -- Lower California. So they don’t talk to you in Taiwanese as the cheap enclosure sites do.
So there.
Message was edited by: Al Hatch