I just finished putting together this box and am watching 4 DNxHD video streams plus 2 title layers in real time. Thanks for the recipe, Doxilia. I feel like I'm driving a Ferrari now.

(See photo attached)

hey, thanx for sharing...
I'm currently looking to purchase a raid 5 solution too: Could you be more precise with regards to the one you built...(HDDs, interface, cost, transfer rates, and the rest...)
Cheers.

I'm also interest in your setup. I'm in the process of researching something like that for my setup too. Will you provide some specifics?

Thanks!

The idea came from Dave (oxilia) in this thread: http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/4/92476/ShowThread.aspx

Specifically, this paragraph:

"With the same Addonics enclosure (it's called the Storage Tower; a versatile and reconfigurable unit. You'd think I work for them but I don't), I'd put 5x300 GB SATA II Barracudas in a Chenbro 5 drive hot-swap unit. This unit holds the drives vertically in a 3 bay space leaving a bay free. It is the only way I know of getting 5 drives in a 3 bay space. The unit also has an integrated backplane so you simply mount the drives in their trays and insert them into the cage. The back of the cage has 2 power connections as well as the 5 SATA ports which you wire to the PM bridge. I plan to install another single hot swap cage in the top bay as a "consoldate" drive for project backup. This drive would be wired independently and directly via eSATA to the controller (port 2). In other words, you'd have the 5 PM RAID array for editing and the single SATA drive, which can be pulled for HD project archive, for consolidatation at the end of the project. You can buy the consolidate HDD of the appropriate size for the project at hand, insert it, consolidate, pull it and shelf it."

 

 

Here's the shopping list:

ADDONICS

1 - ST5X1PM Storage Tower with 1 5x1 Port Multiplier $199.95

1 - ADSA3GPX1-2E PCI-E card, 2 eSATA ports $39.99

2 - AAESATA200C eSATA cable, 200cm  $24.95 ea

1 - AASATAB-e 1 port eSATA ( connects the mobile rack to the backplane so you can use two eSATA cables to go from the Addonics case to the computer)  $6.00

PCMALL

1 - Chenbro 5-in-3 SATA HD Enclosure CAS-CHN-SK335  $285.00

5 - Seagate 300 GB Barracuda 7200.9-16MB SATA NCQ  $112.99 ea

1 - Kingwin Black Alum. Serial ATA Mobile rack $26.99

(I used the Kingwin mobile rack becaue I already have a bunch of SATA drives in Kingwin trays)

Transfer speed... I don't know, but it is pretty fast. Actually I was wondering how to measure it?

Putting it together and setting it up went smoothly... it takes a little common sense to get through the Addonics instructions for the SATA card and drivers, since the documentation, even the readme which should be updated, does not exactly match the filenames and prompts in the setup, etc. You have to muddle your way through that one.

Oh, one more note... It sounds like a small tornado is sitting on the shelf now. Those drives are packed in tight, and it takes a hefty fan (included in the Chenbro unit) to keep them cool. I was wondering if I could find another fan to fit the case which would be quieter. I have to turn it off when I'm not using it.

wow... for under $1300.... that rocks!

Just out of curiosities sake, I wonder how that compares against G-SATA...

How about some HDTach benchmarks? Now if they would just make am eSata Expresscard adapter that supported RAID5, and port multiplying you could have some fast external notebook storage.

Very Cool Rick.

I'm glad you got another step forward into HD-land!

jawpaul:

Now if they would just make am eSata Expresscard adapter that supported RAID5, and port multiplying you could have some fast external notebook storage.

Check Addonics website. They do make an eSATA card for a laptop and you could use that into a box like this with Port Multiplier built in.

Well,

being the author of this RAID approach, perhaps I can shed some light. BTW, Rick, thanks for the credit. I see you finally found the cage. PCMall came through?

As for G-SATA, I'm afraid it doesn't compare. This tower in RAID-0 sustains in the vicinity of 200 MB/s provided you have it interfaced to a controller in a PCI-X 133 slot! We're talking about a 5-way stripe approaching capabilities of sustained uncompressed single stream HD. G-SATA is a very straight forward dual drive stripe (much like you could put inside just about any workstation) with an internal bridge. It is great for single or dual stream playback of DNX or UC SD but not much more than that. The tower is what I would refer to as a "complete Avid HD storage solution" for working with all DNX and uncompressed SD resolutions. Put two of these together and you have a storage system that will work on a Symphony/DS Nitris. I'd venture to say the cost may be 1/2 that of a comparable Avid or Apple solution.

So there you go. Hope I've started a trend!

Cheers, David.

Exactly,

and I think there was someone on the original thread who was going to do exactly that. The question is, how well does a 915 laptop chipset deal with an express card interfaced PCI-E bus. In the end, regardless of arbitration and slower response, an express card PM controller allows two of these towers to be attached to a laptop!

I'd like to hear from the first person to edit uncompressed HD on their laptop.

BTW, Firmtek should also have a card out in a few months made specifically for Intel Powerbooks. It would be interesting to see how well a telbook handles uncompressed HD in, ehhm, FCP...

Probably just fine. The question remaining is: Do you want to litter your Avid media drives with FCP QT files all over the place...?!

Looks like my G5 is acting up beside me, I better feed it a snack.

David.

Did anyone say Fibre Channel and Nitris !?

Naaa... eSATA cables. TWO. $40. UC HD. Done!

I have mine configured RAID 5, getting sequential read speeds of 60 to 90 MB/s using HD Tach.

After more use, in practical terms I have found I can view 3 tracks of unrendered DNxHD video effects in realtime (PIP, superimpose etc).

Almost forgot Rick,

yes you're looking for a Panaflow fan.

David.

rfmeredith:

I have mine configured RAID 5, getting sequential read speeds of 60 to 90 MB/s using HD Tach.

After more use, in practical terms I have found I can view 3 tracks of unrendered DNxHD video effects in realtime (PIP, superimpose etc).

Rick,

I've just benched my array which, right now, I've got plugged in to a PCI/33 slot and am getting 60 from old, completely full, 120 GB PATA drives. You should be benching much higher than that from a PCI-E interface and new SATA II drives. Although my main machine has PCI-X slots (no PCI-E), I'd be surprised that PCI-E performs that badly. Some research into your machine (Dell 670?) may be in order. I'll poke around when I get a chance.

David.

Thanks for the fan tip! Any thoughts on how to increase speed will obviously be appreciated. I don't know if I set it up right but there weren't too many choices. I accepted the defaults for the RAID 5 setup - used 8kb chunk size but recently redid it and changed that to 64kb. With 8kb chunks, I got an average read of 77.7, Burst of 97.1. Changing to 64kb, I get avg speed: 60.3, burst: 137.8.