yep, i do need help. yep, i do work in the industry, though not an editor. here's a trailer for the project if youre interested
we just bought a 12 core to offline edit and have an existing 6gb g-raid
What is the G-Raid solution (model number, or better yet, a link) are you using?
just want the best "fast-cheap ratio" card there is out there
It depends on exactly what you're doing.
def not getting into stripe sets
I figured it may be a 2 bay unit, so a stripe set is the only way to get speeds faster than a single disk.
love some card advice, but don't need to open a can of worms. many feature film offline editors out there use fcp and a g-raid setup so i'm confident we can find the correct one
Again, it will depend on the specifics. Even the difference of software or hardware RAID implementations matter.
The MP is capable of 0/1/10 and JBOD via software implementations. Better than nothing, but not as good as hardware (speed and more importantly, features). But as the MP can do this without a RAID card, it's cheaper. Of the levels possible, you'd need to go for 10 (offers both speed and redundancy), which only has 1/2 of the drive's total capacity as usable space (half of it is needed to duplicate the data in order to provide redundancy).
Hardware can get you additional levels, such as 5/6/50/60, speed, and features software RAID implementations cannot do.
I've no idea how much you know about RAID already, so I'd make the recommendation of reading the
RAID Wiki to start with (pay close attention to the
RAID levels, 10 and parity levels in particular <5 & 6>). You may notice that there's something called the "write hole issue" associated with parity based arrays. This is why you need a hardware implementation to perform these properly (they have a hardware solution to the problem; software implementations do not, and are therefore dangerous, so don't fall for cheap products that are software based). There are cheap hardware solutions as well, but they're not fast. If you already know this, you can skip it. But I presume if you did (to the level you need to), you wouldn't be asking.
Past that, you need to think about answers to the following questions:
- How much capacity do you need?
- How much speed?
- How much capacity growth (i.e. figure out how much you consume per year, and figure for 3 years if possible to minimize the hardware costs; that is, get hardware that allows you to just add drives and enclosures to house them when needed)?
- What kind of redundancy are you after (i.e. what RAID level)?
These answers can help us aim you in the right solution, including a card model, disks, and enclosures (even mounts for internal disks as well if needed).
Hardware RAID systems can get expensive (modest
DAS system can run up to $4 - 5k going by solutions I've created in the past), but the lack of time lost and improved speed (allows for more work in a year), means it pays for itself and still increases your annual profit.
Now as to a card brand, I'd recommend Areca or ATTO (can get into the differences later), but they're the 2 best brands out there, and happen to work in Macs (including able to boot once flashed with EFI firmware).
BTW, you still need a proper backup solution, and a decent UPS (ideally, run a battery backup with the card as well).
