Little Frog in High Def

Hey Shane, had another Quiet Tower question. I’m looking to put the finishing touches on the tower, but am interested in adding port multiplication to it. I’ve got the Tempo SATA E2P card Mac side, which will give me my 10 drives with 2 wires, but was not sure of a good port multiplication solution tower side. Have you looked into this at all? Thanks a ton!

Well, these won’t go into the unit, but they are cheap:

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat05pm.asp

I haven’t found anything internally that will make the ports into a port multiplication connector. That is the drawback to this unit…What you get for going cheap.

Hey Shane.

I’ve been looking into getting my first RAID storage for my Mac Pro.

Would you recommend the CalDigit over that new Infrant ReadyNAS?

And, just found your blog, great site!

Never heard of ReadyNas. Just googled that item and found what you are talking about. Yes, I would ABSOLUTELY recommend the CalDigit units over ReadyNAS for editing. The ReadyNAS is not designed for video work, but rather for server administration. Two USB connections…Not recommended for video. And FAR slower than eSATA or direct SATA connections. Nope, it isn’t designed with video in mind…server storage only.

CalDigit units are solid and reliable. Blazing fast.

Interesing. Thanks for the advice.

So on the CalDigit…

My biggest concern is redundancy, my second is expandability. I do some editing, but mostly a lot of FX work. So I’m looking for a solution that can grow with my needs as well as give me peace of mind when it comes to the inevitable drive failure.

I assume I’m looking for a mirrored setup (RAID-5?) so that if one drive failed, I could just replace the drive and I wouldn’t lose my data. (I’m going to use this array as storage space for my completed shots as well.)

I was considering 2 or 4 TB for now…

But looking to the future, when I need more space, how do you go about adding capacity on the CalDigit? Is it just as simple as buying two additional drives and slapping them in?

Hey, thanks again for your advice on this Shane.

if you have a mac pro or pci e mac go look at the 3ware sidecar set up , it is cheaper and runs RAID 5 hardware not software up to 3 tb of storage drives not included though
its a kit and card comes with it .

j

CalDigit drives do not do Raid 5. Raid 0, 1 and JBOD only. If you want RAID 5, these are not the drives for you. J has pointed out a good alternative for you….the Sidecar units. I did see them at MacWorld and they do claim Raid 5. How reliable they are…can’t attest. I do know someone who is testing them but he hasn’t gotten results yet. But they look like a good option for RAID 5.

What I do, of course, is RAID 0…for performance. I use the CalDigit drive to edit with, and the Dark Tower as a backup unit…sort of a manual RAID 1. But this isn’t the cheapest option, of course. I understand the need for RAID 5. Not sure if the Sonnet Fusion 500P does Raid 5…the product page doesn’t say.

The CalDigit units ship fully stocked with drives and include a card. If you need to expand, then you order another unit, or order larger capacity drives.

Note…Sidecar is PCIe only…not PCI-X. I wonder if this means it only works with their controller card? Where the Caldigit units use a controller card that is the standard port-multiplier technology…and can control any device that is port-multiplication compliant…or even just simple eSATA.

Also note…$1300 for the unit WITHOUT DRIVES. The Fusion 500P is $495 without drives, and handles 5 drives. The CalDigit units start at $549, and come stocked with drives. So, while this might support Raid 5, it isn’t an inexpensive solution.