Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

art_director · Aug 31, 2006, 05:15 PM

I'm a freelance art director in need of additional storage. Presently I'm using a Dual G5 2.5 in my office and a MBP 1.25 when traveling or working onsite. My primary machine, the G5 tower, has two internal drives – one 200GB and one 400GB. My OS and applications reside on the smaller of the two while my files are on the larger drive.

I back up projects that are modified as I work. That way if I lose what's on my machine I don't lose too much time which translate into not losing too much money. For backups I have a 500GB G-Tech RAID drive and a 700GB G-Tech RAID drive. Both are solid solutions but filling quickly. It's coomon for me to add 10–50GB of data in a given month. Many clients come back and ask for revisions or duplicate files long after (as in years) after a job is complete. IOW, I can't throw anything away.

Based on my needs I've been thinking a RAID setup would be wise for my work on a daily basis. I would then back up that data weekly and store it offsite to protect against the unforseen. For example, if my house were to burn down I'd lose all my data and a hefty chunk of cash in the process.

I've been perusing the forums and have found many threads discussing this subject but none that hit my particular situation on the head. Can anyone lend some advice / suggestions? I've seen Oreo's informative and understandable explanations that seem to carry experience, expertise and wisdom.

Thanks to one and all.

Tuoder · Aug 31, 2006, 06:38 PM

An external RAID solution may be the way to to go. RAID 5 or 0+1 are both fast, reliable ways to store data.

art_director · Aug 31, 2006, 06:39 PM

Thx for the reply, Tuoder. Do you have experience with any of the RAID solutions on the market? Have a suggestion?

mduell · 07:57 PM

You're at 1.2TB growing 0.35TB/year. What's your tolerance for clutter compared to your willingness to spend money?

Low clutter, high price:
2-4 port SATA/eSATA card for your G5: $50-100
WiebeTech RT5: $1700 (5 drive capacity)
Seagate 750GB SATA 3Gb/s drives: $400/ea

So 3TB with RAID5 for $3800 or 2.25TB(RAID5)/1.5TB(RAID1+0) for $3400. That's 5, 3, and 1 years, respectively, of growth at your present rate (assuming you do something else with the G.Tech drives). Very robust solution with hardware RAID.
Should you have a sudden increase in storage needs, it expands up to 12TB for $3700 per 3TB.

High clutter, low price:
4 port SATA/eSATA card for your G5: $100
Good eSATA enclosure: $30/ea
Seagate 750GB SATA drives: $400/ea

2.25TB on RAID5 or 1.5TB on RAID1+0 for $1820. Somewhat less robust since you're going to be doing software RAID in OSX.

As far as RAID5 vs RAID1+0, go with 5 if you can deal with the performance (~50MBps), otherwise take the capacity penalty and go with 1+0.

art_director · Aug 31, 2006, 07:59 PM

Thx for the post, mduell,

Why do you like WiebeTech? I have no experience with them, that's why I ask.

I came across these: miniG External SATA 4-drive solution They look pretty sweet.

At the end of the day I need reliability. I don't want to break the bank but, if need be, I'll pay top dollar. Again, this is my business and losing data will cost more than the most expensive solution I've found thus far.

Thx again.

Should I be considering the Apple solution? Pros / cons to the route?

Tuoder · Sep 1, 2006, 03:50 AM

Originally Posted by art_director

Thx for the reply, Tuoder. Do you have experience with any of the RAID solutions on the market? Have a suggestion?

Most recently, I used a PCI RAID card (ATA-133). I was playing around with it in RAID 0. After I got the stripe size right, it was wicked fast. I had 4 7200-RPM drives. It was fun, though there is much faster and more capatious stuff out there today. I eventually switched over to RAID 0+1.

Anywho, RAID 0+1 is fun because it is a good mixture between speed and reliability. It requires 4 HDDs. Data is broken into stripes. In this way, data can be read from two (or more) drives simultaneously, thereby (almost) doubling the actual throughput from the drives (if you are using two drives). The problem with only using striping (RAID 0) is that it actually makes your data storage less reliable, because if either drive dies, you lose everything, as the remaining drive will only have half of your data. This is where mirroring (RAID 1) comes in. With mirroring, two (or more) drives write the exact same thing at the same time. If either drive dies, you still have all of your data. The other thing is, if you use mirroring, and you are using two 100GB drives, you get only 100GB of storage out of them, beacuse one is just a carbon copy of the other. With RAID 0+1, you use four drives. Two are striped together, then they are both mirrored. In this way, data integrity and retrieval speed is greatly improved. In a 4 drive RAID 0+1 array, if you had 4 100GB disks, you would have 200GB of space running at almost twice the speed of a single drive. If any single hard drive failed, no data would be lost. Everything could be rebuilt onto a new drive.

RAID 5 works differently. Without going into too much detail (as I am tired and irritated that my MB still hasn't shipped, and it is one day past the already delayed ship date) it allows you to use odd numbers of drives efficiently. The minimum number of drives is 3. Up to (and including) one third of the HDDs in such an array can fail with no data loss. it is also a reasonable compromise between speed and reliability. 3 drives would double the speed and capacity of one. One of the disadvantages of this setup is that it would not be done in software. OSX can do RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 with no extra hardware (besides the HDDs).

Anyway, this is by no means a completely comprehensive guide to RAID, but I am tired, so good night.

kamina · Sep 1, 2006, 03:57 AM

Originally Posted by art_director

Thx for the post, mduell,

Why do you like WiebeTech? I have no experience with them, that's why I ask.

I came across these: miniG External SATA 4-drive solution They look pretty sweet.

At the end of the day I need reliability. I don't want to break the bank but, if need be, I'll pay top dollar. Again, this is my business and losing data will cost more than the most expensive solution I've found thus far.

Thx again.

Should I be considering the Apple solution? Pros / cons to the route?

I've heard good things about the Buffalo Terastation, but don't have any personal experiences about it. I do think it currently maxxes out at 2TB though.

edit:

Buffalo Technology- Storage

Actually that would be 1.5TB as you will want to use RAID 5 on the box.

chatam · Sep 1, 2006, 04:47 AM

Just my experience: I'm the owner of a Wiebetech RT5 firewire 800 & 400 case running 5 250 GB HD's set up as Raid 5, for a total of about 750 formatted GB. A good compromise of security and storage space, running 7/24/365 since september of 2005 flawlessly.

I would buy a second one if needed with no esitation.

OreoCookie · Sep 1, 2006, 05:29 AM

I would also second the suggestion to get e Wiebetech RT5 tower and configure it as a RAID5. It will be a lot faster than Buffalo's TeraStation (in a review I've read, ), even when you use FireWire 400 only. Furthermore, you have a phletora of interfaces, the fastest being eSATA, so pop in a SATA card in your G5 with eSATA (external SATA) connectors and it'll be at least as fast as an internal harddrive.

I would definitely recommend a solution that includes a hardware RAID. Only then you can swap the RAID between different machines (e. g. you can unmount the Wiebetech drives like any other external hd and then connect it to your other machine).

Perhaps it might be helpful to sift through some old threads on that topic.

If you want explanations on RAID1 and RAID5, just follow the links. To make things short, a RAID 0+1 cuts your capacity in half, works only with an even number of drives and you can be sure to survive only one drive failure. With a RAID5, the total capacity is reduced by one of the drives. So with 5 drives which are combined into a RAID5, you have a volume with the total capacity of 4 drives. With relatively cheap 300 GB drives, you would have an effective capacity of 1.2 TB, with larger, but more expensive drives, you may get up to 3 TB (4x750 GB).

mduell · Sep 1, 2006, 06:02 AM

Originally Posted by art_director

Thx for the post, mduell,

Why do you like WiebeTech? I have no experience with them, that's why I ask.

I came across these: miniG External SATA 4-drive solution They look pretty sweet.

At the end of the day I need reliability. I don't want to break the bank but, if need be, I'll pay top dollar. Again, this is my business and losing data will cost more than the most expensive solution I've found thus far.

Thx again.

Should I be considering the Apple solution? Pros / cons to the route?

The miniG would be a good replacement for the 4 external drive route (paying about a $280 premium), but it's not on the level of the RT5. The miniG is really just 4 enclosures and circuit boards inside one big box, so you have to make 4 connections back to your main machine. The RT5 does (more reliable) hardware RAID, as well as offering you the other connection options.

art_director · Sep 1, 2006, 08:28 AM

Thx to all for taking time to post.

Based on what I'm reading / researching the WiebeTech RT5 sounds like my best bet. And, to Oreo's point, RAID 5 is the way to go.

Can anyone suggest a good SATA card to bring it all together? Also, any thoughts on this drive: ST3750640A

OreoCookie · Sep 1, 2006, 09:23 AM

The prices for 750 GB hds have gone down

The drive should fit, the RT5 uses PATA drives (according to their documentation).

chatam · Sep 1, 2006, 09:56 AM

RT5 uses PATA drives only and, being firewire, no other addition is required.

Wiebetech SATA version of the RT5, named SilverSata V, requires a matching PCI-X or PCI-e card, depending on the computer being used.

Consider that if future expansions are envisaged a 10 discs version of the RT5 is available, at the expenses of footprint obviously.

OreoCookie · Sep 1, 2006, 10:27 AM

Well, the 10-disc version (RT5x2) is just two RT5s bolted together.
Their SilverSATA series does not support hardware RAID and thus does not have the same feature set. (This also means you cannot unplug the RAID on your G5 and plug it into your ProBook without destroying the RAID in the process.) So it's not really a SATA version of the RT5.

They have SCSI hardware RAID which uses low-cost SATA drives called ProSATA SS8, but the `empty' case costs $1000 more than an empty RT5 and doesn't offer FireWire and USB ports (which is to be expected for this piece of hardware).

chatam · Sep 2, 2006, 11:57 AM

Right enough, the Silver SATA would not address the security scope not being set as Raid 5 inside the box.

The RT5 should do.

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 07:37 AM

Has anyone tried out the G5 Jive from Sonnet?

Sonnet | G5 Jive-Internal Drive Mounting System for Power Mac G5

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2006, 08:32 AM

Well, that's just one way to cram three more drives into a G5. Which means you can create a RAID5 of four drives for instance (the second hd which fits into the G5's case and the three in the harddrive bracket). You won't have a hardware RAID and you can share these drives only via a network which is slower. It also provides less storage. On the other hand, that solution is cheaper. However, you still need to add the costs of either a hardware RAID controller (for instance this one, 270 Euros) or RAID5 software (which I seem to remember exists for OS X). Cheap RAID5 hardware tends to be slow, so beware.

Since it's for a professional environment, I would favor a hardware RAID solution.

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 09:41 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Well, that's just one way to cram three more drives into a G5. Which means you can create a RAID5 of four drives for instance (the second hd which fits into the G5's case and the three in the harddrive bracket). You won't have a hardware RAID and you can share these drives only via a network which is slower. It also provides less storage. On the other hand, that solution is cheaper. However, you still need to add the costs of either a hardware RAID controller (for instance this one, 270 Euros) or RAID5 software (which I seem to remember exists for OS X). Cheap RAID5 hardware tends to be slow, so beware.

Since it's for a professional environment, I would favor a hardware RAID solution.

According to the specs it can only be configured as RAID 0 or RAID 1.

Short term I'm thinking this might be a good solution. Long term I'll be getting an external setup a' la the WiebeTech RT5 you suggested earlier.

BTW, I spoke with a rep @ WiebeTech last week;. Given my needs, he was pusing me toward the SilverSATA they offer.

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2006, 10:19 AM

The harddrives in the bracket can be configured as a RAID5, but you need a hardware RAID controller. For RAID levels 0 and 1, you can use OS X' software RAID.

However, keep in mind that a RAID1 will cut you capacity in half and you need to have an even number of drives. RAID0 is not advisable, unless you have frequent backups or don't care so much about the data (if one drive fails, all of your data is lost). So four 500 GB drives would give you 1 TB of storage.

If you decide to go for a SilverSATA-based solution, just keep in mind that you need to you need to get a proper hardware RAID card. Also, you cannot take the SilverSATA V (with 5 drives) as their proprietary SATA adapter does not support RAID5. So I think the only viable option here is the 4-bay model with a proper hardware RAID SATA card.

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 10:23 AM

Why is RAID 0 unadvisable? Is it wonky?

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2006, 11:29 AM

No, RAID0 is not really a RAID since there is no Redundancy. Your data is striped across several disks, so the maximum read/write rate increases strongly with the number of drives.

However, if one drive fails, all your data is lost. Just take a look at the link, it's easy to understand: files will in general be spread over several disks (hence the increase in linear read and write speed). But if a fourth of your data is missing, the file is irrecoverably lost.

While RAID0s do have applications (wikipedia uses them extensively afaik), they all share that the data on that RAID0 volume is either not important or available someplace else (e. g. backups or in case of wikipedia, a master database). Also, the probability of failure increases with the number of drives.

Since you mentioned that you want to store data over several years, I don't think a RAID0 would be a very wise decision. It offers 0 protection, but increases the risk of failure instead.

A RAID1 (see above) mirrors all data, so in a RAID10, you would mirror each drive and them combine them to a RAID0. In this configuration, one drive may fail. In a RAID5, you are protected against one drive failure, but you have a higher usable storage capacity.

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 12:40 PM

Oreo:

Thank you so,ooo,ooo,ooo much for taking the time out to help a RAID noob like myself. I cannot express how much I appreciate your words of wisdom.

Now you have me thinking the WiebeTech RT5 may indeed be the best solution for my particular needs.

What to do...what to do...

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2006, 01:17 PM

You're welcome

I cannot help you making the final decision. But eventually, IMHO you won't get around getting some sort of hardware RAID5.

The only other hint I can give you is to consider the capacity you need. At 25 GB/month, you need 300 GB of storage per year (although I think you should be a tad more conservative doing estimates). Add your existing file to this amount and then it'll be pretty clear what storage solution you need

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 05:29 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

You're welcome

I cannot help you making the final decision. But eventually, IMHO you won't get around getting some sort of hardware RAID5.

The only other hint I can give you is to consider the capacity you need. At 25 GB/month, you need 300 GB of storage per year (although I think you should be a tad more conservative doing estimates). Add your existing file to this amount and then it'll be pretty clear what storage solution you need

I take in a lot of photography and do large design file. My hard drive usage over the past five years has come in at 20GB – 30GB / month. I wish I weren't eating it up so quickly but that's the business I run. I need to have the stuff ready at a moment's notice so hard drive storage is preferrable to disc.

External firewire drives have worked nicely up to this point. However, I've had two go bad on me since February, 2001. In both instances it was a costly experience, much more expensive than what we're talking about doing with the RT5.

I have another question...

I have a B&W G3 tower that I'm not using. Can I configure that to be a RAID 5? Would you do it?

Thanks again.

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2006, 06:03 PM

Yes, you can.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First of all, you would need to buy a RAID controller and a drive bracket (the BW G3 can AFAIK just offer space for three drives). Money-wise, this solution would be just as expensive, although it will be much slower (the processor is probably not even the bottleneck, BW G3s only have 100 MBit ethernet which translates to roughly 11-12 MB/s, about a third of a firewire disk; even if you put in a fast Gigabit Ethernet card and make sure that all of your networking equipment supports Gigabit ethernet as well, the cpu is pretty slow which translates to poor performance) than putting the same drives in your G5.

So overall, I don't think it's worth it. It won't be much cheaper and offer few benefits.

Personally, I would think the RT5 looks like a very solid solution for you. You can even plug it into your PowerBook and transfer data directly onto your RAID (via FireWire or an optional SATA card). I haven't heard of any complaints in these forums …�

art_director · Sep 5, 2006, 06:20 PM

That doesn't sound like the way to go.

I'm a little unclear about drive compatability. Would this drive work in the RT5?

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB Serial ATA(SATA) 7200RPM Hard Drive at ZipZoomFly

mduell · Sep 5, 2006, 08:20 PM

No, the RT5 needs IDE (parallel ATA) drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM at Newegg.com

art_director · Sep 6, 2006, 03:01 PM

Oreo:

Thx for all your help, advice and expertise. In the end I ordered the RT5 with one of their SATA / eSATA cards. Got the drives from Zip Zoom Fly and the RT5 from The Nerds. Saved a chunk of change.

Will post back for the benefit of others considering such a purchase in the future.

OreoCookie · 03:27 PM

That would be great … obviously I don't have first-hand experience with RT5s, so it's great if somebody does and shares it with others on this board

art_director · Sep 6, 2006, 04:11 PM

Expect a detailed report.

Also, a little further up this thread, chatam mentioned he / she owns one. Maybe we can get two different perspectives down here.

OreoCookie · Sep 6, 2006, 04:40 PM

I hope so …

Do you have a shipdate yet?

art_director · Sep 6, 2006, 05:07 PM

Everything should ship today. I went with the slow boat so I'm guessing everything will arrive next week sometime. Apparently the initial setup is time consuming so I mau not be able to get to it until the weekend.

Anything in particular you'd like to know?

Tuoder · Sep 6, 2006, 08:09 PM

I am willing to bet that a throughput test would be requested.

art_director · Sep 6, 2006, 09:14 PM

Originally Posted by Tuoder

I am willing to bet that a throughput test would be requested.

Compulsory, isn't it?

OreoCookie · Sep 7, 2006, 02:32 AM

Hmmm, how about this:
(1) Ease of use during setup and afterwards.
(2) Basic speed tests (when connected via SATA, FireWire and USB).
(3) Noise levels.

Tuoder · Sep 7, 2006, 04:13 AM

Originally Posted by art_director

Compulsory, isn't it?

I guess so. I was thinking to myself "where will the bottleneck be?". I am betting on the firewire interface.

OreoCookie · Sep 7, 2006, 05:02 AM

Well, it also has a SATA interface …

(Since one is more than enough to saturate a firewire interface, customers would be majorly disappointed if it didn't

)

chatam · Sep 9, 2006, 10:40 AM

It is not clear to me what solution was the final choice for Tuoder, whether the RT5, which is firewire 800 or 400 or USB 2 only, or the Silver Sata, requiring a Sata card.

Unfortunately, I have not the opportunity to try my box with the different connections available, and the same is presently hooked via Firewire 800 to a G4 Quicksilver 2001 upgraded with a Gigadesigns dual 7447A 1,6 Ghz CPU.

Configuration was quite simple and well explained in the owner's manual: I set the unit as Raid 5, using for of the five internal Ata 250 GB hard disks resulting in a total of about 850 GB of available space after formatting. The fifth disk works as a spare, replacing on the fly a possible failure of any of the remaing four disks.

I have tested the throughput using Drive Genius and the performance was as follows:

sustained read from 18,2 to 30,5 MBps
sustained write 9,5/17,2
random read 16,5/32,5
random write 3/17,5

- the lower figures are referred to 32 k chunks, the higher ones to 18 MB chunks.
- the stripe size is set to 64 Kb, thus favoring reading speed over writing

Trus the above gives an idea.

OreoCookie · 11:30 AM

Well the current RT5 also has an eSATA port, although I'm not sure whether this is true for older revisions as well.

So yours only has a USB and FireWire ports?

awcopus · Sep 9, 2006, 01:55 PM

The PROSATA tower from Weibetech is extremely compelling. I'm looking for a new storage solution and like what I'm seeing here. Have been using a hot-swappable SATA-based JBOD configuration for a while and think this would be a great upgrade.

mduell · Sep 9, 2006, 02:26 PM

chatam, that sustained read speed seems really bad. I have 2 year old single drives that can out-do that.

OreoCookie · Sep 9, 2006, 02:41 PM

Originally Posted by awcopus

The PROSATA tower from Weibetech is extremely compelling. I'm looking for a new storage solution and like what I'm seeing here. Have been using a hot-swappable SATA-based JBOD configuration for a while and think this would be a great upgrade.

I haven't heard of hot-swappable JBODs … how does that work? (I know that the hardware might be hot-swappable, but that destroys the JBOD volume.)

awcopus · Sep 9, 2006, 09:41 PM

JBOD volume? JBOD = Just a Bunch of Drives. No RAID config. Nothing to disturb.

The hot-swappability simply means that I can take one sled containing a hard drive out of its bay in the enclosure (mine is from MacGurus) and insert another sled/hard drive with different project files on it in and it will mount. Easy cheesy, I'm up and running on a different project.

Using a Sonnet 4+4 SATA card, this setup works smoothly. But I want the RAID in addition to this so that when I'm working on a long-form documentary project I have the peace of mind that comes with RAID 5.

chatam · Sep 10, 2006, 03:31 AM

OreoCookie: I bought my RT5 in November 2005 and the Sata port was not present at the time

mduell: sustained read speed is in fact not outstanding, and I get better performances on firewire 800 external boxes myself, but consider that the big plus in Raid 5 settings is security rather than speed, and unless you are in video editing 30 MBps is more than enough. The comparatively slow FSB of the computer and the fact that the firewire 800 ports were added trough a Pci card may have an inpact, too.

art_director · Sep 10, 2006, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by chatam

mduell: sustained read speed is in fact not outstanding, and I get better performances on firewire 800 external boxes myself, but consider that the big plus in Raid 5 settings is security rather than speed, and unless you are in video editing 30 MBps is more than enough.

When you work on super short timelines and with very large files, nothing is fast enough.

art_director · Sep 14, 2006, 04:09 PM

The RT5 is up and running. Installing the hard drives was a snap. From start to finish it took 20 minutes to unpack the five drives, install them in the trays, install the SATA card in my G5 and configure the RAID 5 setup. From there it took just over 12 hours for the RAID to go through it's own configuration.

I'll be doing some testing in the coming days and will post what the results are.

scullyb9 · Sep 17, 2006, 04:23 PM

Hi, Oreo,

I've been looking over the forum today, trying to decide on a storage solution for myself. I read a lot of your posts on RAID and I'm curious -- do you think that the extra storage provided by going with RAID 5 is worth the slower write rate caused by parity? For the purposes of speed and reliability, would it be better for me (as a video editor for a movie company) to go for RAID 0+1?

Also, you keep referring to hardware RAID as opposed to software RAID. Is the hardware RAID something that would come with the external disk or do I have to purchase that as well?

Thank you!

OreoCookie · Sep 17, 2006, 04:51 PM

Unless you are editing multiple hd video streams, a RAID5 will suffice (even a single modern harddrive is fine).

As far as reliability is concerned, both solutions allow one harddrive to fail while guaranteeing data coherence. A hardware RAID is (roughly) either a pci(e) card or a controller in an external case which creates and manages the RAID for the user. This way, software failures cannot destroy the RAID and you have less compatibility problems (in the windows world). In this case, you can even transparently connect the external RAID to several computers and all they see is an external harddrive.

scullyb9 · Sep 17, 2006, 08:02 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Unless you are editing multiple hd video streams, a RAID5 will suffice (even a single modern harddrive is fine).

As far as reliability is concerned, both solutions allow one harddrive to fail while guaranteeing data coherence. A hardware RAID is (roughly) either a pci(e) card or a controller in an external case which creates and manages the RAID for the user. This way, software failures cannot destroy the RAID and you have less compatibility problems (in the windows world). In this case, you can even transparently connect the external RAID to several computers and all they see is an external harddrive.

Thank you for the quick reply!!

I will be editing a movie using DVCAM footage (downconverted from HD), but when I make my final tape, I will be bringing in HD clips to replace the DVCAM. Overall, I'll probably bring in about 2.5 hrs of HD footage. Not sure if that makes a difference in your advice.

According to what I've read here, it sounds like the RT5 is a good drive. I've been looking at the LaCie Biggest S2S with PCI-X Card 1.25TB. What do you think of that drive? Basically, I wanted to have a drive that had a minimum of 1TB of storage total. Knowing what I know now from your posts though, with RAID 1+0, the La Cie would only be a .75TB drive, right?