What's up with the Caldigit HD One tower?

I consult for CalDigit, and use their products, so let me take a crack at this. I will be getting the HDOne very soon myself.

Differences:

Controller cache: The HDPro comes with 256MB of controller cache...upgradable to 2GB. The HDOne is 256MB only...not upgradable. What that means is that with more memory in the controller cache, the seek times remain high even when the unit starts to fill up with data. Typically the fuller the drives, the slower the read/write. Having controller cache eases the burden by keeping information about what is stored on the drive in RAM...thus making seek times faster. VERY good when dealing with 2K footage and your drives are full. Keeps the speeds fast.

HDPro has a Cache Battery Backup...so if you lose power to the unit, the cache retains the data for a period of time..meaning it doesn't need to rebuild that information. The HDOne lacks this.

HDPro has options for TWO power control units...load sharing, meaning each takes on half the power load. And if one fails, then the other can take the full brunt. This ships as an option on the HDPRO. The HD One ships with one power control unit only.

The HD Pro was designed for the HIGH END guys working with 4:4:4 HD and 2K. So that the speeds you get with the unit empty are the same you get with the unit full, and built in redundancy across the board. The HDOne is pared down for the guys like me who work with compressed HD like DVCPRO HD, and don't need the huge read write speeds to remain so high.

Shane




HD Pro is hot swappable, meaning you can unmount the drives, and with the unit powered up, remove the drives without an issue. With the HD One, you should first power down the unit, then remove the drives.

OOp....I was wrong on one point (looking this up on their web page and comparing).

The HDOne still features hot swap drives. If a fan fails, you will have to power the unit down before trading it out. Basically the HDOne is all cool swap, save for the drives, the HDPro is all hot swap....meaning that if a power unit fails, or a fan fails, you can keep it powered on and working while you replace the parts. ZERO down time.

Do you happen to know what drives they use?

Hitachi if I recall correctly. I remember they were all Seagate, but then had issues with some, and switched to Hitachi.

I want to try and save what money I can by buying the 2TB model and upgrading the drives myself.

Bad idea. The firmware on the drives is set to match that of the unit, to give you optimal drive performance. Can you replace the drives yourself? Yes. Will it void the warranty...OH YES. Will it work as well...nope. WHen testing the S2VR Duo, I tried this little trick myself, and it didn't work out too well. Performance was half what it should be.

I know...I am cost conscious too. That's why I tried that stunt.

Shane

I have been going through the same questions since seeing a new hdone in NAB.
One big difference that Caldigit explained to me the other day, their hdpro user can upgrade the CPU (faster performance?), and also hdpro is SAN ready. This makes investment worthwhile since you could do the SAN in the future. hdpro is more expensive than hdone but you get more room to grow - the SAN and upgradable of components are superb.

p.s. caldigit demo HDPro's SAN feature during NAB, I was very impressed.

The price difference is because they add the tray sleds, update the firmware, verify they are in good working order. If drive fails under warranty, then you get a replacement for free.

If you don't like RAIDs with drives included, there are plenty of other options for you. www.macgurus.com www.firmtech.com www.weibetech.com www.sonnettech.com. But the truth of the matter is that most companies that offer hardware raid solutions offer FULL solutions. And if something doesn't work, you have one company to call...not the drive company then the hardware unit company, and have each pointing fingers at the other one.

If you find it expensive, look at the other solutions Not everyone can afford those drives. I couldn't for the longest time, and so I had my own homemade solutions. I know where you are coming from.

Shane

Problem with your solution...if you buy the 2TB model, it comes FULLY POPULATED with 250GB hard drives. The 4TB is populated with 500GB hard drives. SO it isn't that you have two 1TB drives in two bays, and the others are empty (like the XSERVE RAID), but always fully populated. This is the same way with ALL of the other guys.

Want to save money? Get a low cost RAID 0, then some cheap FW drives to back the footage up onto. A sort of manual RAID 1.

Shane

For those that wanted to know when, the HDOne is shipping now.

I won't be long winded on this & I'm not here to spam.

More info here:

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/228/373

And I have one in my second edit bay, so if you have any questions....

Shane