Sure, I expounded upon the great abilities of the G-RAID. And sure, my producer has two and they are working gangbusters. But The more I read, the more I think that an external SATA would be a very intelligent way to go. The 135MB data stream is tough to overlook. The G-RAID FW800 interface has a transfer rate of about 85MB per second. And while I hear that that is “good enough” for DVCPROHD…I would really like to have the 135 MBps, for obvious reasons.

But I already bought one G-Raid, but I am not too disappointed with that purchase. I need a fast FW800 portable drive for a number of reasons. Sure, for the project I am gearing up for, my producer can just send me his G-Raids with the information on it and I transfer the footage, but since I will have an assistant editor, why not let him have the drive on location and have him do all the transfers and reconnecting and project organization. Then I can transfer the footage to my SATA Raid when I receive it. And it would be nice to have. If I want to stick with a SATA RAID, I can always spend the $550 (G-SATA drive, SATA controller card with two ports at B&H Photo) and get one. Or I can just go the Firmtek route. They both are good solutions.

I mainly want to get across that a SATA Raid would be a better choice for HD work. The G-RAIDS are “good enough,” but for the same price, or just slightly more, you get over double the transfer speed. This means that you might be able handle other forms of HD as well, up to 4:2:2 compression.

UPDATE ON KONA 2 SYSTEM:
Not here yet. The Apple rep e-mailed me today and said that the last person he loaned it to returned it damaged. Ouch. Kind of makes it tough to entrust it to us, doesn’t it?