Sans Digital TowerRAID TR8M

The hatter wrote:
Why not just add another 4 drive enclosure?
Are you using PM enclosures now? your controller will support PM?

Well... I have a 4 bay enclosure and a Sonnet Tempo E4P card with the latest drivers. But, this is enclosure without port multiplier, so all 4 eSATA connections to the Sonnet card are occupied. I could also insert another of my Sonnet tempo card - E2P, but I am going to buy Mac Pro soon and maybe I will need this card inside Mac Pro. +(I know - except of startup drive, there could be 3 drives more, but I know myself how many drives I can use)+

The cases are identical to some of my older SCSI cabinets, so I would expect it to be *as loud* and efficient.

And this is what I am worry about! The loudness. I couldn't find anywhere any information about fan noise.

You wrote about 5-drive enclosure. But there is only one eSATA port. So, it is even worst then with 8-drive enclosure.

I use fast hard drives. I have four WD 640 GB (model AAKS), five WD 750 (also AAKS), several MaxlinePro 500GB (only for backup) and I intend to buy some newest WD 750 (ABYS) or 1TB (FBYS). So, it looks that 4 drives per channel is maximum. As you said - 3 is better.

Why do I think about so big enclosure. Well... here is the situation: +(I was writing similar post at the Final Cut forum but no help)+

I have my own video editing studio where I edit a lot of commercials. Most of my video materials were captured as Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2, but from a few months, when I finally upgraded my FCS to FCS2, I am capturing in Apple Pro Res HQ 10-bit 4:2:2 (but still it is SD).
Still I capture from a analog or digital betacam, but sometimes (and I suppose it will be more often soon) I have some materials in a different kinds of HD: HDV, Apple Pro Res HD or XDCAM HD.
All of above needs a lot of disks space.

Mainly I edit a lot of teleshopping commercials, which I need to re-edit quite often: it is necessary to change the price, change the graphics for some promotions etc. So, I have a really HUGE collection of that material. In fact I don't know exactly how huge... it think it is more than 7 TB. I lost count of capacity after 5 TB 😉

Now I have 4 bays enclosure, where I maid RAID-0 with 2 disks and the other 2 bays are for changing the backup drives. But it is not enough. RAID is too small - I need to juggle with disks too often.
I will buy Mac Pro but it is not the case. The three disks inside (except of startup disk) it is not enough. I will need second computer in my studio to make all of those works. But also I will need big and fast RAID.
Another problem is how to connect the two computers (because I will not sell G5 - still it can do a lot of work) to one big storage and work on the same material?

Sorry, for such a long story, but I think, now it is more clear. (and sorry for my english - if something is not clear)

Thanks for any help in advance.

The hatter wrote:
If you have 8x slot, there should be good bandwidth. The E2P is NOT designed for RAID, it is a 1x card, no?

No, no. The E2P is not so bad. Although it has only 2 eSATA ports, but it also has a port multiplier (up to 10 disks) and supports RAID (I've just read it from the E2P's box). On the card there is a Silicon Image chipset instead of Marvell on the E4P.

The Mac Pro would support multiple controllers, and has support for 6 native SATA ports.

Still there are 2 SATA ports on the mainboard in the current models of Mac Pro?

Thanks A LOT the hatter!
You gave me a lot of information to read, check and consider before I will choose something.
Unfortunately AMUG doesn't have any information about this Sans Digital's enclosure - so it is difficult to compare directly.

Each was attached to the RocketRAID 3522 using a special cable with a mini SAS connector at one end and four eSATA connectors at the other.

This is very interesting. I will read more about it.

And one more question:
do you have any idea (maybe I don't know about something) how to connect 2 computers with 1 big storage area? I mean are there any possibility for simultaneous usage of fast and big RAID by the 2 computers?
But I am not talking about NAS server, because it is too sloooow (even via Gigabit Ethernet). I would like to get about 150MB/s for each computer.

Marek.

Thanks the hatter for such an excellent information!

I will need some time to read all of this, think and consider.

Just to follow up on the E2P (won't let you go away thinking it is a viable alternative, sorry). Yes, you can connect a couple drives, but it maxes out at around 130MB/sec or less.

Good to know. Thanks.

Apple XRAID and Fibre Channel was the ideal method for connecting a couple computers and sharing high speed storage... and still is.

Oh dear! It's fantastic, but... completely out of my financial possibilities! Those solution is good for a big video editing studio not for a small company (there are 2 persons incl. me).
I should talk to my client that I will rise in prices about 2-3 times! 😉
But I am afraid what he can do after that 😟

I guess that there is no other cheaper solution than buying Promise RAID and Xsan, isn't it?