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PerfectlyNormalBeast · May 24, 2005, 10:57 PM

My wife is constantly filming as part of her research for her PhD. We have about 50 hours of miniDV footage and we're tired of it living on tapes and firewire drives. Few things are in more than one place (not backed up) and we never know where anything is.

We want to digitize all of this footage to one big drive. Here is the list of what we need:

1 to 1.5 terabytes of storage
redundancy (raid 1,10,5 etc)
ability to connect it to a powerbook in a manner that is fast enough to edit video

Right now we're thinking about buying a linux box with 6 250gb drives and running software raid 5, samba and gigabit ethernet. This will run about 1100. Are there any cheaper, simpler or faster solutions that don't cost much more?

On a side note, it's really annoying that my powerbook's GigE doesn't support jumbo frames. It limits the speed to about 20mb/s. This is still fast enough for our purposes, but it's annoying that apple cripples these cards.

Thinine · May 24, 2005, 11:00 PM

Are you sure it doesn't support jumbo frames? I see this as a specific option when you manually setup your ethernet connection. And nonjumbo frames shouldn't limit you to 20MB/s, as I've seen much higher rates than that. It's likely your PowerBook merely can't handle the higher bandwidth.

Kristoff · May 24, 2005, 11:13 PM

what switch do you have that supports jumbo frames?

PerfectlyNormalBeast · May 24, 2005, 11:16 PM

There is an option to enable jumbo frames that is grayed out. I've done some research into this issue and I've heard similar things from many people. My powerbook is a 1.5 G4 with 1GB of ram though I suspect I'm disk limited rather than CPU limited, small frames do use more CPU than I would like when I'm trying to edit.

Still... this is besides the point. 20mb/s will be enough. I'm just worried I'm going to spend a lot of money, then realize there was a better way.

PerfectlyNormalBeast · May 24, 2005, 11:18 PM

I have one of the newer netgear switches. Transfers between my two pcs are quite fast (50mb/s).

Millennium · May 25, 2005, 07:05 AM

If we're not sure about jumbo frames, then you might want to check out this bad boy: a 5-drive FireWire800 enclosure. Although FW800 isn't as fast as Gigabit Ethernet, it may work better for you if you don't have jumbo frame support. Furthermore, it appears to do RAID-5 in hardware and claims to be host-OS independent, so you may be able to get by without a separate Linux box.

Expensive? You bet. However, you already said you were willing to spend a lot of money, so it may work for you.

PerfectlyNormalBeast · May 25, 2005, 09:58 AM

I had looked at turnkey solutions like the firewire "bad boy." They are really tempting. What gets me is:
1) Cost is several hundred more
2) Capacity is limited to 1 tb as disks > 250 get more expensive per gig. Solutions with more than 5 bays cost even more.
3) It can only be attached to one computer (though it could be networked from this computer)
4) If it breaks, you probably can't get at the data without getting another one. I'd really only want to do this if I bought from a company I've dealt with.

The huge pro is that it's probably much easier to deal with, but I don't think that cancels out everything else. This is really the kind of thing I'd like to do if I had corporate money behind me, rather than grad student money.

The other idea's I had:
1) Wait for Sun Solaris ZFS and give that a shot. Though this means I would wait till the fall.
2) replace my normal windows desktop with a PCI-X capaple board and buy the new high-point raid 5 card. This would mean I wouldn't have to have another machine running all the time, but it would be very expensive. PCI-X boards are expensive and they often use expensive processors.

One of the main things that I'm trying to keep in mind is the killowatt hours this thing will use. I figure it'll cost $15 a month just to keep a linux box with 6 drives running idly. I've debated using larger drives, or notebook processors, but the cost just goes through the roof. I've been really tempted to look at an old gigabit g4 tower, just because those can sleep when not in use. Still, then I can't fit 6 drives and old G4s with fast chips cost too much still.

Kristoff · May 25, 2005, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by PerfectlyNormalBeast

I have one of the newer netgear switches. Transfers between my two pcs are quite fast (50mb/s).

What's the model number? I'm curious, and looking for recommendations.

chabig · May 25, 2005, 11:36 AM

Consider Apple's xServe RAID. You might find one on eBay.

Chris

CatOne · May 25, 2005, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by chabig

Consider Apple's xServe RAID. You might find one on eBay.

Chris

I'd recommend it as well. Only issue is, you can't connect it to a laptop, as it requires a fibre channel connection. Absolutely the fastest and most reliable storage in the mid-low price point, though.

PerfectlyNormalBeast · May 25, 2005, 05:08 PM

You guys don't seem to get my "mid-low" price point. I'm well aware that the xServe RAID is awesome. But it's way out of my budget. I need something for < $1500.

chabig · May 25, 2005, 05:14 PM

Originally Posted by PerfectlyNormalBeast

You guys don't seem to get my "mid-low" price point. I'm well aware that the xServe RAID is awesome. But it's way out of my budget. I need something for < $1500.

I understood. But when I linked to that eBay auction the high bid was below $1500. Anyway, I'd watch eBay. You might get lucky.

Chris

Cadaver · May 25, 2005, 08:25 PM

Two 1TB LaCie Bigger Disk Extremes would get you at least mirrored 1TB of storage for under $2000 ($979 each). 1.6TB drives are $1699 each, and 2.0TB are $2299 each. Two of these drives can be easily set as a mirrored set via OS X's software RAID 1. And it'll run via FireWire 400 or 800.