external hard drives, TB
- Thread starter spinner
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For video production there are two key factors with firewire drives: reliability and the speed they spin at.
Basically, you want a brand that spins fast and that is ultra reliable.
I'd be interested to see which brands other people recommend, because a new firewire drive is on my shopping list at the moment. In the past I've always used the Lacie drives... but, with HD and new 3D animation techniques being a big part of my workflow now, I'm looking for something faster.
Basically, you want a brand that spins fast and that is ultra reliable.
I'd be interested to see which brands other people recommend, because a new firewire drive is on my shopping list at the moment. In the past I've always used the Lacie drives... but, with HD and new 3D animation techniques being a big part of my workflow now, I'm looking for something faster.
I have the WD 500GB external, however I opted to use it for archiving only. I still import video to an internal SATA drive and leave there while editing. Once the project is done - I'll move the folder to the external. Can't remember what the SATA drive is (at the moment...)
WD My Book Premium 320GB
I am also in the market for an external HDD, However, I don't have the budget for 1TB. How does the Western Digital My Book Premium Edition 320GB sound? Anybody have it?
But for the question on 1TB, from what I hear and read, I wouldn't buy from anyone but Western Digital.
I am also aware that WD has these "Studio Editions" of all there EHDDs, Might want to look in to that.
-Steve
I am also in the market for an external HDD, However, I don't have the budget for 1TB. How does the Western Digital My Book Premium Edition 320GB sound? Anybody have it?
But for the question on 1TB, from what I hear and read, I wouldn't buy from anyone but Western Digital.
I am also aware that WD has these "Studio Editions" of all there EHDDs, Might want to look in to that.
-Steve
I would suggest that you go for one that uses a RAID solution to get the TB of storage, rather than one with a single drive. As you'll generally get better performance from a RAID array. Also, if you're able to make use of it, eSATA will give you much better performance than firewire.
Of course there are other ways to use RAID that will offer other benefits.. most notably data redundancy.
Here's how it breaks down:
RAID 0: "stripes" the drives. Which means that 2 or more drives will appear as one -- like 2 500G drives appearing on the system as a single 1TB drive.
RAID 1: mirrors your data. This is great because you always have full access to all of your data, even if a disk goes bad, the backup takes over. This requires identical pairs (2 500G drives would show up as a single 500G drive) and the cost is more expensive to get to your target storage size.
RAID 1+0: This setup uses both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations simultaneously. The first half of your drives are striped together, then the second half are striped together and mirror the data of the first half. Example, 4 500G drives are visible to the system as a single 1TB drive, but you have data redundancy.. it would essential set up the 4 drives as 1a, 2a, 1b, 2b the a's are striped together, and the b's are striped together so you end up with 1a+2a, 1b+2b. This configuration would allow for up to half of your drives to go bad before you have data loss, as long as you don't loose the same number drive from both arrays (ie: 1a and 1b.. but 1a and 2b would be ok, as would 1a and 2a)
These are the most commonly used in the non business world. As for me, I'm going for a RAID 5 array...
RAID 5: More or less gives similar protection as RAID 1, or RAID 1+0, but the investment is lower. Technically it's not the same protection as the data isn't mirrored, but rather parity checksum information is generated so the data can be rebuilt. The way this works is the total storage size is equal to (((number of drives) - 1) * size of single drive). So, suppose you were using 3 500G drives, the total storage available would be 1TB. At that size it doesn't offer much cost saving over RAID 1+0, but now imagine you wanted a 2TB array using the same size disks: with RAID 1+0 that would take 8 500G drives, with RAID 5 it would only take 5 500G drives... etc. However, the limitation here is you can only loose one drive, and when one goes down you have to replace it before you can access your data -- it would still be good to replace a failed drive ASAP in a RAID 1+0 array, but it would still work without doing so.
Here's more complete info about RAID (including the other RAID levels I didn't speak about): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
As for the original question --
RPM -- The speed the drive spins. Two most common speeds are 5400 or 7200 revolutions per minute. However there are also 10000 rpm drives. The faster it spins the better, because it will speed up read & write times.
Seek Time -- Also important, though most drives are somewhere between 8 and 13 milliseconds for average seek time. This is the average speed it takes for the drive to locate where on the disk something is stored. The faster this is, the more quickly the drive will respond.
Cache -- Hard disk cache's are an important element of a computer system whose primary aim is to increase overall system performance by saving data in faster banks of RAM. Hard drives have a cache built in to hold data that is being written to or read from the hard disk. The purpose of doing so tries to reduce the number of occasions in which data has to be physically written and read from the hard disk platter. By retaining recent data within the cache performance is increased as this memory is much faster and saves time on repeat recalls. So, you want the largest cache you can get. (typically the largest you can find is 16MB)
Of course there are other ways to use RAID that will offer other benefits.. most notably data redundancy.
Here's how it breaks down:
RAID 0: "stripes" the drives. Which means that 2 or more drives will appear as one -- like 2 500G drives appearing on the system as a single 1TB drive.
RAID 1: mirrors your data. This is great because you always have full access to all of your data, even if a disk goes bad, the backup takes over. This requires identical pairs (2 500G drives would show up as a single 500G drive) and the cost is more expensive to get to your target storage size.
RAID 1+0: This setup uses both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations simultaneously. The first half of your drives are striped together, then the second half are striped together and mirror the data of the first half. Example, 4 500G drives are visible to the system as a single 1TB drive, but you have data redundancy.. it would essential set up the 4 drives as 1a, 2a, 1b, 2b the a's are striped together, and the b's are striped together so you end up with 1a+2a, 1b+2b. This configuration would allow for up to half of your drives to go bad before you have data loss, as long as you don't loose the same number drive from both arrays (ie: 1a and 1b.. but 1a and 2b would be ok, as would 1a and 2a)
These are the most commonly used in the non business world. As for me, I'm going for a RAID 5 array...
RAID 5: More or less gives similar protection as RAID 1, or RAID 1+0, but the investment is lower. Technically it's not the same protection as the data isn't mirrored, but rather parity checksum information is generated so the data can be rebuilt. The way this works is the total storage size is equal to (((number of drives) - 1) * size of single drive). So, suppose you were using 3 500G drives, the total storage available would be 1TB. At that size it doesn't offer much cost saving over RAID 1+0, but now imagine you wanted a 2TB array using the same size disks: with RAID 1+0 that would take 8 500G drives, with RAID 5 it would only take 5 500G drives... etc. However, the limitation here is you can only loose one drive, and when one goes down you have to replace it before you can access your data -- it would still be good to replace a failed drive ASAP in a RAID 1+0 array, but it would still work without doing so.
Here's more complete info about RAID (including the other RAID levels I didn't speak about): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
As for the original question --
Interface(s) -- USB 2.0, ieee 1394a, ieee 1394b, esata... generally the more they have the more it will cost, but not always.spinner said:
RPM -- The speed the drive spins. Two most common speeds are 5400 or 7200 revolutions per minute. However there are also 10000 rpm drives. The faster it spins the better, because it will speed up read & write times.
Seek Time -- Also important, though most drives are somewhere between 8 and 13 milliseconds for average seek time. This is the average speed it takes for the drive to locate where on the disk something is stored. The faster this is, the more quickly the drive will respond.
Cache -- Hard disk cache's are an important element of a computer system whose primary aim is to increase overall system performance by saving data in faster banks of RAM. Hard drives have a cache built in to hold data that is being written to or read from the hard disk. The purpose of doing so tries to reduce the number of occasions in which data has to be physically written and read from the hard disk platter. By retaining recent data within the cache performance is increased as this memory is much faster and saves time on repeat recalls. So, you want the largest cache you can get. (typically the largest you can find is 16MB)
The majority of manufacturers make quality drives these days.. some have better warranties than others, though that really doesn't matter in the event the drive fails you'd still loose data anyway.
The important things to look for are:
Drive speed: 7200rpm or faster, with the smallest average seek times you can find.
Cache: the larger the better
Interface: for internal drives there are basically three, IDE (or more specifically EIDE), SATA (I or II, type II is faster), and SCSI. These days your best bet is a Serial ATA... These also apply to external drives, though in a different way; there you're more concerned with how you will connect it to your computer, of which there are primarily 4 types: USB, Firewire, eSATA, or ethernet.
Many external enclosures offer multiple connection interfaces. USB really doesn't cut if for video work. Firewire is good, but can lead to problems for capturing if you only have a single firewire controller. Again, much like what I said with the internal drives, eSATA is your best bet -- IF you can use it.
SATA (Serial ATA) comes in two flavors, type I, and type II... type I can achieve transfer rates up to 1.5Gbps, while type II is twice that. Of course with the capability of handling that much bandwidth, the limitation becomes how fast the drive can read/write data rather than how fast that data can be transferred along the bus.
Technically speaking, a RAID array is the best solution for video editing, but for most cases it's overkill (unless you're working with full HD video and the like). A firewire drive should offer all the bandwidth you'll need for most video editing, and SATA is even better.
Personally I'm not a fan of Lacie for a couple of reasons; some of their enclosures aren't that great (I have one that likes to overheat) and generally there are cheaper solutions available. Aside from that, they've been around for several years, and do seem to have a decent reputation in the video realm. Also, for what it's worth, Lacie is not the make of the drive itself, they make the controller and the enclosure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it actually was a western digital drive in the case.
The important things to look for are:
Drive speed: 7200rpm or faster, with the smallest average seek times you can find.
Cache: the larger the better
Interface: for internal drives there are basically three, IDE (or more specifically EIDE), SATA (I or II, type II is faster), and SCSI. These days your best bet is a Serial ATA... These also apply to external drives, though in a different way; there you're more concerned with how you will connect it to your computer, of which there are primarily 4 types: USB, Firewire, eSATA, or ethernet.
Many external enclosures offer multiple connection interfaces. USB really doesn't cut if for video work. Firewire is good, but can lead to problems for capturing if you only have a single firewire controller. Again, much like what I said with the internal drives, eSATA is your best bet -- IF you can use it.
SATA (Serial ATA) comes in two flavors, type I, and type II... type I can achieve transfer rates up to 1.5Gbps, while type II is twice that. Of course with the capability of handling that much bandwidth, the limitation becomes how fast the drive can read/write data rather than how fast that data can be transferred along the bus.
Technically speaking, a RAID array is the best solution for video editing, but for most cases it's overkill (unless you're working with full HD video and the like). A firewire drive should offer all the bandwidth you'll need for most video editing, and SATA is even better.
Personally I'm not a fan of Lacie for a couple of reasons; some of their enclosures aren't that great (I have one that likes to overheat) and generally there are cheaper solutions available. Aside from that, they've been around for several years, and do seem to have a decent reputation in the video realm. Also, for what it's worth, Lacie is not the make of the drive itself, they make the controller and the enclosure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it actually was a western digital drive in the case.
1TB drives will be old shortly. Seagate just announced their 1.5TB drive. 
I had horrible luck with Ultra enclosures (DIY external hard drive kit). One only lasted a week before the interface fried. Avoid those like the plague. So far, Buffalo is working well. I just use USB 2.0 for external backup, but I use an internal RAID for working drives.
I had horrible luck with Ultra enclosures (DIY external hard drive kit). One only lasted a week before the interface fried. Avoid those like the plague. So far, Buffalo is working well. I just use USB 2.0 for external backup, but I use an internal RAID for working drives.
Somehow Lacie has sort of gotten the same kind of reputation as Apple I think, in that there are some people who believe that brand is the only option for video work..
I love RAID, but would be really paranoid with it. RAID 0 has a much higher failure rate than single drives. I used to be responsible for managing and maintaining racks with over 20TB of storage per rack. Most of the failures we had were due to a drive going bad in the RAID array.
To alleviate this, we always had backups of all the data done on a weekly basis so we wouldn't lose as much when they inevitably failed. For RAID 0, your initial investment will be higher due to the need for a backup solution than if you had simply purchased 2 identical drives and done a RAID 1 for the redundancy. I never re-use tapes either, that way if everything fails catastrophically, I can still reimport the footage and start from scratch on a project.
To alleviate this, we always had backups of all the data done on a weekly basis so we wouldn't lose as much when they inevitably failed. For RAID 0, your initial investment will be higher due to the need for a backup solution than if you had simply purchased 2 identical drives and done a RAID 1 for the redundancy. I never re-use tapes either, that way if everything fails catastrophically, I can still reimport the footage and start from scratch on a project.
That's why you run RAID 0+1 or RAID 5. You have redundancy. With advanced fault tolerance including parity striping, if one drive in the array fails you can yank that drive and hot plug a replacement. It will automatically rebuild. Zero downtime.
Yes, but for 0+1 or 5, you're talking about even more investment (and if you're going to invest for those solutions, you'll want to consider a hardware RAID solution rather than software)... I think that's counter to the purpose for spinner's application here. She is more of a non-technical user (although learning tons quickly as she's forced to), so higher end solutions are not that effective for her.
OSX has built in RAID 0 and RAID 1 in software directly within the "Disk Utility" application. Hardware RAID systems are much more reliable. Both R0 and R1 will require an investment in 2 drives for the software solution... except that she wants 1Tb of storage, so the R0 would require less cash investment for 2x500Gb drives whereas the R1 would require her to buy 2x1Tb drives. Moving to R0+1 or R5 would require either a software purchase or a hardware solution (I'd recommend hardware if you're going to go that route anyway as software solutions are less reliable and reliability is the point of the investment in these technologies).
It's great info for others reading though if they're looking to go into it deeper.
OSX has built in RAID 0 and RAID 1 in software directly within the "Disk Utility" application. Hardware RAID systems are much more reliable. Both R0 and R1 will require an investment in 2 drives for the software solution... except that she wants 1Tb of storage, so the R0 would require less cash investment for 2x500Gb drives whereas the R1 would require her to buy 2x1Tb drives. Moving to R0+1 or R5 would require either a software purchase or a hardware solution (I'd recommend hardware if you're going to go that route anyway as software solutions are less reliable and reliability is the point of the investment in these technologies).
It's great info for others reading though if they're looking to go into it deeper.
You do not ever want to run RAID 0 for video editing, IMO. That doubles your chance of data loss from drive failure. I'd use 0+1 if I need the extra performance, but with 7200 and 10K RPM with large cache, most home users are fine. I run RAID 0 on my game machine because I don't care if it crashes, but my video system is RAID 1 and will soon be hardware RAID with an external array.
Yes, it's a big investment, but what's your time worth? Can you afford to lose the project you spent weeks working on for a paying client?
Software RAID 5 is worthless in my experience. The write speed is horrible.
And she won't be a non-technical user for long if she keeps hanging around, asking technical questions. I live tech.
Yes, it's a big investment, but what's your time worth? Can you afford to lose the project you spent weeks working on for a paying client?
Software RAID 5 is worthless in my experience. The write speed is horrible.
And she won't be a non-technical user for long if she keeps hanging around, asking technical questions. I live tech.
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I think it depends on the set up... if you're using a dedicated machine to handle it, running something like linux or bsd, with a decent (not overkill) processor, you can achieve read/write speeds comparable to hardware solutions, but that would only be useful to someone who has the extra computer hardware lying around.
I've got my eye on something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816119007v
I'd like to set up a RAID5 array with something like 2-3TB of storage, but I'm still seeking out the best case, etc..
Yes, it's a big investment, but what's your time worth? Can you afford to lose the project you spent weeks working on for a paying client?
Software RAID 5 is worthless in my experience. The write speed is horrible.
And she won't be a non-technical user for long if she keeps hanging around, asking technical questions. I live tech.
...oh, to be a techie...(sigh)...
Well, one of the things about business that I remember is that you need to know your clients. I and some people who are also in the area working with the same people I am, we know our base and what they can afford. I know what I would like to be paid, I know what I am technically supposed to be paid, but I think that it would help to have good work out there so that my potential clients will see the value of what I am offering, at the price I am asking. I make a very good argument to my 'potentials' for my prices and I think the see they difference in what they will be getting.
It is difficult to not see the money coming in as I would like, but I know that if no one knows you have a better 'mousetrap', how can they buy it? So right now, I am making a name for myself, it didn't hurt to win that best documentary thing, and I am getting some inquiries.
As for big investments: I am still paying off the 'big investments' of my camera and computer. Another big investment will have to wait, I just don't have the funds and there is nothing I can do about that right now. (shrug)
....uh, eventually...the prices will be going up, just not right now....I'm not crazy you know!
-- spinner
EDIT:
...by the way, I ended up getting Western Digital My Studio 1TB from Overstock.com. It is supposed to be specifically for if you are a gamer or if you do video editing.
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The one time I tried it on anything other than a HW solution was with a Via Southbridge that had it built-in. It was just an experiment. Ran 3x120GB drives in RAID 5. Tried to install the OS, and the write speed was averaging about 5MB/sec. I ditched that effort immediately and haven't tried it since. That could very well have been a Via specific anomaly. R0+1 and/or 10K RPM is just not yet cost effective. So far, with everything I've done with video editing, 7200 RPM and RAID 1 is working just fine. When I bump to HD, that may be the time to upgrade the drives and go to an external array.
I am still getting up to speed on the Linux stuff. I have tons of theory but not enough practice. Besides, I don't have room under the desk for a third system. I'm running both through a digital 2 station KVM. One is dual-boot for Vista and XP. I do have a third system collecting dust that would make a perfect Linux server, and I have access to all of the software (RHEL5, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), so it's just a matter of time before I expand the home LAN into a closet for a dedicated server.
Alright, we're way off topic now, so I'll stop the techie babble.
Spinner, yes, I know what you mean. I'm tapped out for large purchases at the moment, too. But that's okay. I have plenty of reading material, writing projects and camera/production equipment to keep my busy for quite awhile now. I am not anywhere near the point where I can make money. I figure one more year of study, practice, and networking with other local filmmakers will get me there.