Red Drive Casing and Red Ram

[jieves]

Is the Red Drive Casing availible for purchase separate from the drives that are included with it? I tried searching but couldn't find an appropriate answer.

Also, are Red-Ram drives removable? (I'm assuming they are 2.5 inch SSD SATA drives)

[Brook Willard]

To my knowledge, no and no.

[Stuart English]

Correct. RED-DRIVE and RED-RAM are sold as complete units only.

[Brook Willard]

Since somebody is bound to ask and/or try: Is there anything inherent in either unit that would prevent proper functionality if it was opened and the media was swapped/upgraded/replaced? It would obviously void the bejeezus out of any and all warranty or support [hence the enormous risk, people thinking about this...].

[Roger Singh]

I'd be interested in knowing too if we'd be able to upgrade the RedDrive's drives ourselves for when larger drives are released to the market

[jieves]

Just to add to Roger's post, would be good to know if Red Ram is upgradable ourselves with larger SSD's once they become availible.

[Brook Willard]

As predicted.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a bad idea. But whether or not it's possible...

[Roger Singh]

As predicted.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a bad idea. But whether or not it's possible...

I don't think it's a bad idea, anyone that builds their own computers, or even put together their own external drives with cases, shouldn't have a problem replacing the drives on the reddrive/ram.

I'd be be more interested in the module alone, and I can decide at the time of delivery of what drives I want to put in there.

Just looking at it from webpage, it looks like you can just buy the reddrive now, and upgrade it to SSD drives.

That way, I wouldn't have to order another complete module with drives/SSD when i can just upgrade my own.

[jieves]

Is this true then guys? Can you indeed "make your own red ram" by getting a red drive, dismantling it, and sticking own ssd drives in there???

[Häakon]

I don't see swapping out a hard drive is a bad idea, either.

You're already paying a premium for the casing/interface/connectivity (not that it's not worth it). As hard drive capacities increase, it'd be fantastic to be able to beef up the storage space in the component. The whole point of the RED system is modularity anyway, right?

[Greg Voevodsky]

O-Oh... I feel a rebellion starting here. Better call the RED leader.... RED LEADER - TED... or is that Darth TED... :-) (we know what happens in episodes 1-3 so lets hope for open source redemption sooner rather than later. Remeber Episodes 4-6 came first.) :-)

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I think the drives should *not* be bigger.

When I shoot take after take I´m quite aware that I have NO BACKUP.
Untill I copy everything to (preferably 2) drives with a MacBook.

Having 8 hours of unbacked material on a big drive I´m shaking around quite a bit is not good for the nerves.

Jochen (Drive Anxiety victim)

[Bachman]

I think the drives should *not* be bigger.

When I shoot take after take I´m quite aware that I have NO BACKUP.
Untill I copy everything to (preferably 2) drives with a MacBook.

Having 8 hours of unbacked material on a big drive I´m shaking around quite a bit is not good for the nerves.

Jochen (Drive Anxiety victim)

Ive been editing non linear full time for 10 years and only ever had 1 drive expire, and that was 6 years ago. So long as you replace them within 2 years your fine. Have had more problems with tapes than with drives. Only normally have problems when someone deletes files or overwrites them. Damn those pesky students

Hopefully REDs interface between the camera and the drive will be robust, and I cant see why it wouldnt be, and the codec/files wont be easy corrupted. Time will tell.

Im all for using our own drives though... who makes the RED drives anyway? Seagate? And can we pipe to a server while recording????

[Andrew M.]

Here is my experience with using the different drives on live HD video recorders (PVR)
I have PVR 8300HD http://www.scientificatlanta.com/products/consumers/new_explorer8300HD.htm

It records around 2.5MB/sec 1080i on 160GB (big squeeze mpeg2 compression)
It has eSATA external port.
I checked on the forums and most people say that it is OK to connect external 500GB to extend the capacity of the recording from 17 hours to extra 50 hours.
So I connected 500GB that most people were successful with (or so they claimed)

Sure it worked without any problem till I got past 200GB and then it stops recording at the middle of the session 1 out of 5-10 times. Intermittent problem.
Why most people report successful operation then?
Yes, I changed box and drive already.
I know that RED forum is bit more professional that PVR users forum, so I hope that we will figure out upgrade options for the RED DRIVE very fast and report any problems with them even faster.

[Bachman]

Here is my experience with using the different drives on live HD video recorders (PVR)
I have PVR 8300HD http://www.scientificatlanta.com/products/consumers/new_explorer8300HD.htm

It records around 2.5MB/sec 1080i on 160GB (big squeeze mpeg2 compression)
It has eSATA external port.
I checked on the forums and most people say that it is OK to connect external 500GB to extend the capacity of the recording from 17 hours to extra 50 hours.
So I connected 500GB that most people were successful with (or so they claimed)

Sure it worked without any problem till I got past 200GB and then it stops recording at the middle of the session 1 out of 5-10 times. Intermittent problem.
Why most people report successful operation then?
Yes, I changed box and drive already.
I know that RED forum is bit more professional that PVR users forum, so I hope that we will figure out upgrade options for the RED DRIVE very fast and report any problems with them even faster.

Why are you recording to a consumer PVR in the first place? If you have forked out the bucks for this camera you should be using pro recording av grade drives.

[Andrew M.]

It is my home TV installation not work:-)

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I have a small graveyard of dead firewire drives in a corner.
Already spoke here about an epic where I lost a complete day of orchestral recording to a malfunctioning disk.
My experience is they either crap out in the first 2 days or after some years. (except LaCie - they die whenever they want).

Jochen

[Cail Young]

I have a small graveyard of dead firewire drives in a corner.
Already spoke here about an epic where I lost a complete day of orchestral recording to a malfunctioning disk.
My experience is they either crap out in the first 2 days or after some years. (except LaCie - they die whenever they want).

Jochen

Malfunctioning disk or malfunctioning enclosure? There is a vast difference in quality between the "Prolific" chipset enclosures and the "Oxford" chipsets (generally in the brand name units) - I have owned one Prolific-based enclosure that occasionally powers down when other firewire devices are added, amongst tens of others I have heard about dying in the middle of edits. I have never heard of an Oxford-based enclosure dying at a critical time. (I have had issues with Maxtor's sleep mode interacting with a Macbook Pro, but I think that was the power management on the MBP).

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Could we agree that its a bad idea to have anything not backed up sitting on a drive?
Then it doesn´t make sense to have a too big recording media on the camera. It´s debatable, but almost 3 hours of footage is more than I want to risk loosing.

Most likly I´ll do the drive dump at every chance I have. Maybe I *should* go the FC road after all.

Or a RAID level 1 (topic of the other thread) could help. But still, I think a mirrored solution doesnt add much security when most of the mechanical dangers are happening to both drives.

Jochen

[Roger Singh]

Then it doesn´t make sense to have a too big recording media on the camera. It´s debatable, but almost 3 hours of footage is more than I want to risk loosing.



Yes I will agree that too big of a storage will be putting all your eggs in one basket.

But, what I am really getting at, is that If I get a RedDrive now, I upgrade the drives myself. Not to bigger hard drives, but to SSD drives. This way, I'll have created my own RedFlash.

We are all obviously here for the price/performance ratio of the Red One. I will always love film, I will always prefer an optical viewfinder, but Red looks good either way.

Anyhow, we definitely want to save money where we can. Look at the price for the Red Flash.

$4500

includes:

Raid 0 (,1 maybe?) Casing
2x 32gigs SSD (from the looks of it).

The Red Drive is

$900

includes

Raid 0 (,1 maybe?) Casing
2x 160gigs HDD (from the looks of it).


Now, I will feel more comfortable shooting with the SSD drives, but the cost is pretty high.

Sandisk annouced that their 2.5" 32gb SSD will cost $350, and keep lowering, and expected to be about $250 a year from now.

I get the Red Drive $900, I buy two Sandisks 32gb SSDs ($700), and I buy two 2.5" SATA external cases at $40 each ($80).

For $1680 I Now get a RedFlash with two 160gig external hard drives. I can use the newly created external drives and have one sent to the editor at the end of the shoot day. While I back up to the next drive the next day. During that day, I'd get back the first external drive I sent out the day before, and I'll back up to that the next day. And, so on, and so on...

$1680 is almost a 1/3 of the price of just buying the Redflash now, and getting less. It's too big of a difference to swallow the price difference.

[Rocco Schult]

I think the drives should *not* be bigger.

When I shoot take after take I´m quite aware that I have NO BACKUP.
Untill I copy everything to (preferably 2) drives with a MacBook.

Having 8 hours of unbacked material on a big drive I´m shaking around quite a bit is not good for the nerves.

Jochen (Drive Anxiety victim)

Jochen, you are absolutely right, but it might be of interest to echange both internal drives against SSDs once available!


Could we agree that its a bad idea to have anything not backed up sitting on a drive?

YES!


Or a RAID level 1 (topic of the other thread) could help. But still, I think a mirrored solution doesnt add much security when most of the mechanical dangers are happening to both drives.

Even better! Or one more reason to swap the drives against SSDs..

[jieves]

So what do you think guys? Can it be done? Anyone willing to try it on their Red Drive?