|
Another
opinion brought to you by the
Bob Zelin U N L E A S H E
D Series.
Storage,
storage, storage...
Avid storage is great.
It plugs in and works. But you
know, the drive manufacturers that Avid buys from all
have wonderful warrantees.
Avid does too, but Avid REALLY wants to
make sure that you have a broken drive before they
replace it. They
REALLY, REALLY want to make sure that you
have a broken drive - even if it takes two days to
verify that its broken. Even if you have to do
destructive tests with StorEx on your drives to make
sure it is REALLY broken. So some folks
started thinking - "maybe I can buy the same drives
that AVID buys myself",
And so began the practice of using third party
storage with Avid systems.
These days, there are countless manufacturers that sell
drive arrays, and many of them are quite good.
The better known brands are StorCase, Medea, HUGE
Systems, and Rorke Data, but the important thing to
remember is that even these companies BUY their actual
disk drives from the few manufacturers that actually
make these drives.
Companies like Seagate, Maxtor, and
Hitachi/IBM.
From the beginning Avid has used Seagate as their
primary vendor, until very recently.
(They also used Micropolis way back in the
stone age of NLE, but Micropolis went out of business).
Seagate is a wonderful company that has an
unconditional 5 year warrantee on their drives.
What does this mean?
This means that even if you think that your
Seagate drive has been cursed by the Voodoo Queen,
Seagate will replace it for 5 years.
They don't ask you what is wrong, they don't ask
you to run any tests, they don't ask you for anything,
other than the serial # on the drive. If its a problem for you, they replace it.
Even if you have no paper work even if you
stole it from your next door neighbor, they will send
you a FREE replacement.
Why bother with 3rd party storage BECAUSE
ITS CHEAPER!
Now, Avid has certainly come down in price to be
more competitive with these other companies, but if you
are looking for bang for your buck, third
party storage is often the way to go.
Plus, some of these alternate companies have
features that are not offered by Avid.
Many Avid users want rack mounted storage, steel
cases, larger capacity than offered by Avid, or true
RAID capability.
And so these alternate companies start to look
very attractive.
I like StorCase drive arrays for many reasons.
Their products are built like a tank, they offer
a true 7 year warrantee on their cases and power
supplies, and have many features that are attractive to
Avid owners.
The StorCase DS570 is a true RAID 5 product
that now offers up to 2 Terabytes of storage in a
rack mount configuration.
It is amazing to see playback of an AVID
Symphony at 1:1 uncompressed while you yank out one of
the drives on the DS570 WHILE THE POWER IS ON!!!!! The
DS570 is a true HOT SWAP drive array you can
plug in drives WHILE THE POWER IS ON, and while the
video is running, and never lose anything.
I LOVE this product.
The only problem is that is operates at
160mb/sec, which makes it too slow for the AVID
Adrenaline, which requires a faster 320mb/sec drive
array. It
works, but you dont get 5 streams of uncompressed
video with it.
Actually, Avid used to offer a product just like
this the AVID MediaRAID 8, which was made by
Infotrend, but for some reason they stopped offering
this product.
The StorCase InfoStation is a true Ultra 320 drive array
with a backplane, just like the AVID MediaDock LVD 320,
but it holds 14 U320 drives (think 14 146 gig drives),
and has looping SCSI connectors on the back to hook up
even more storage.
The drive array is a tank and weighs a ton,
with a huge, heavy-duty power supply.
The individual drive carriers, which are removable,
(but not hot swappable its not a RAID) are
very heavy duty no plastic used here.
This is the ideal solution for an AVID
Adrenaline, where you need a ton of storage, or even an
AVID DS, where the 12 bay Mediadock LVD 320 is just not
enough. Yes,
this is the drive array you want to run Hi Def stuff.
The StorCase DS400 series is the cheapo rack
mounted drive array.
Also, not a true RAID product, its built like
a tank, and is available in multiple configurations,
with removable, or fixed drives.
Single buss, or dual buss.
Ultra 160 or Ultra 320.
It will hold up to 9 drives.
Its incredibly easy to work on in case
something goes wrong, and StorCase encourages you to
open it up to take a look, in case something is wrong.
None of this
if you open it, you void your warrantee
crap. I
sell more of the DS400 series than anything else because
it's CHEAP and it offers great expansion capability.
StorCase also offers all kinds of combinations that are
cheaper a 2 bay rack mount configuration, a 4 bay
rack mount configuration, and REALLY CHEAP individual
boxes, that hold one, two or four drives in it, that are
not rack mounted. All
cheap, all with 7 year warrantees. There are
always new products being developed, and I have just
heard about a REALLY CHEAP SCSI to SATA RAID ARRAY
that StorCase is about to release that will offer
2-3 Terabytes using the new SATA drives.
I havent tried these yet, so I cant swear
that they will perform like an Ultra 320 drive array,
but its very exciting how new, better, cheaper and
faster drive arrays come out all the time.
There has been a lot of buzz lately about a relatively new
company HUGE Systems, which are some guys from
Medea, that understand many users want CHEAP storage.
They certainly make drive arrays that are cheap,
but their RAID products are pseudo RAID 3.
The definition of a RAID 3 or RAID 5 array (or
RAID 50) is that you can operate with a failed drive,
and replace the defective one, without losing any data,
and the drive array will rebuild the information that
has been lost.
The HUGE Systems array will certainly operate
with a failed drive, but when that drive fails, you
cant just pop it out and put in another one.
HUGE wants you to transfer off your media onto
another working drive array, and send them the defective
one, where they will repair it. This is fine,
IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE A TERABYTE OF STORAGE LYING AROUND
YOUR PLACE DOING NOTHING.
I think we will stick to StorCase for now, even
though HUGE does have low prices.
And for those of you asking about FireWire 800 drives
well, just keep your pants on, because as of October
2003, FireWire 800 aint fast enough to do
uncompressed video not even at 8 bit
certainly not for a real project, other than simple
playback of a rendered file.
Sorry you are still stuck in SCSI land,
unless these new SATA Raid arrays actually work. Believe me, I will let you know.
Keep
on ranting - keep'em on their toes !
Bob
Zelin in Orlando
**Any
advice given, and all opinions expressed, are strictly
those of Bob Zelin and do not necessarily represent the
opinions of Virtual Media or any of its employees.
Bob Zelin is an independent consultant, and a well-known
member of the Avid community. He is not an employee of
Virtual Media or any of its subsidiaries.
|
