Is a generic drive enclosure for RED inevitable? [Archive]

I Bloom

05-02-2007, 09:39 PM

Forgive my use of nursery rhyme names but I'm just trying for some clarity. Consider this workflow:

1. Buy a new 320GB RAID0 hard drive pair call him Jack. Pay market price for Jack. Fill Jack with footage.
2. Transfer Jack to another drive Jill, do it directly as REDCODE RAW or through REDCine. Jill is the drive you will edit from. (Jill could also be a larger file server.)
3. Store Jack in a safe place. Only access Jack if you need to conform footage. Otherwise Jack is archival camera negative.

Compare this to another workflow:

1. Buy a REDdrive Bob. Pay about 3 times market value for Bob in terms of storage capacity. Fill Bob with Footage.
2. Buy a new 320GB hard drive call him Jack. Fill Jack with the contents of Bob.
3. Transfer Bob to another drive Jill. Jill is the Drive you will edit from.
4. Store Jack in a safe place. Only access Jack if you need to conform footage. Otherwise Jack is archival camera negative.
5. Put Bob back on the camera and format him.

It seems like a lot more steps to me. Plus don't forget that while Bob is being dumped, he needs a buddy Fred to go work on the camera. Not to mention Bob and Fred are getting knocked around and pretty beat up over the years, they are bound to fail. Jack however only works for about 10 hours his entire life. Jack can sit around for weeks before he needs to be dumped to Jill he doesn't neccesarily need to be dumped during the production.

Don't take my tone as flip. I'll be buying two Red drives I'm sure. It just seems smarter to buy fresh drives the way we buy rawstock. If they're isn't some super special technology in the RED Drive then it doesn't make sense for it to be a drive and not an enclosure. It seems to be adding labor, less reliable, and more expensive.

Whenever I'm shooting on P2 cards the production buys a new drive.*If RED brought down the price of the RED drive to near market value they might possibly make up the loss by volume. We'd buy between one and ten for every production.

If I'm right about this it seems inevitable that we will seek an alternative to the RED drive, either from RED or from an enterprising 3rd party. Maybe I'm wrong, tell me what I'm missing?

IB

Jeff Kilgroe

05-02-2007, 11:10 PM

If I'm right about this it seems inevitable that we will seek an alternative to the RED drive, either from RED or from an enterprising 3rd party. Maybe I'm wrong, tell me what I'm missing?

You're not really missing anything, except what you're buying isn't just two commodity hard drives. It's a rugged, compact enclosure with its own integrated, high performance RAID controller. FW800 and USB2 interfaces along with eSATA+power. Ability to take power from the USB2 or FW800 port too. It's hard to say what this amounts to in real-world $$$. But I seriously doubt that third party equivalents are going to be any cheaper. I suppose RED could provide the RED DRIVE as a unit with user-changeable drives, but then they're opening themselves up to potential backlash from unnecessary tech support and compatibility issues as well as general user stupidity.

The best we can hope for the RED DRIVE is that demand will be high enough to bring production up and prices down. making a third-party cable or adapter to connect alternative SATA devices is possible but it would take the faster, larger 3.5" drives to provide the necessary performance of of the RED DRIVE. Unless you had a unit with dual 2.5" drives in it with their own onboard RAID controller. Such units do exist and you know what... Most are more expensive than the RED DRIVE. Some exist with 3.5" drives inside and are cheaper due to production volumes / demand. But they're definitely not small, nor intended to be portable or used in the conditions of a RED DRIVE.

The RED DRIVE just is what it is and I think concentrating on lower cost alternatives is a bit futile. They're already dirt cheap compared to just about any other recording media out there except DV tape. If you're coming from a film, HDCAM or DVCPRO workflow, the RED DRIVE is peanuts. Conventional 3.5" hard drives can still be used for backup and deliverables. Think of a $900 RED DRIVE as a 320GB record media for the camera capable of over 3 hours of 24p 4K REDCODE RAW vs. $900 for a 16GB P2 card that holds ~17.5 minutes of 720p60 DVCPROHD. I'll have 2 to 4 RED DRIVEs on hand at any given time. All transfers off of drives will go to conventional drives and other backup solutions.

Greg Voevodsky

05-02-2007, 11:44 PM

Looking over my budget, I was considering a lot of RED drives, and treat them as cassettes for my 20 day long shoot and 14hrs of footage in the middle of no where.

However, after doing my homework, I'm not going to buy 6-9 RED drives, rather the minimum 3 (1 back up) and then dump everything at night to either a double backup (the cost of RED drive) or a single back up if my budget and stomach can accept the risk. AT $750 a terabyte now, I'm hoping RED will update its drives to 500 gigs with a RAM LOOP FUNCTION...

Bottom line, its better to wait, buy the minimum drives you need, put the extra money into back ups if you can afford to and wait for more price breaks.

I was gonna go 64 gig ram till I saw the $10,000 price tag, and Reds, 2 ,32 gig drives looked more affordable. Now, I'm stuck to HD until RAM drops.

J. Bernard Vallon

05-03-2007, 06:04 AM

I'll probably buy a few of these, for backing up in the field.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL2K/

Graeme Nattress

05-03-2007, 07:01 AM

PaulClements

05-03-2007, 07:09 AM

I'll probably buy a few of these, for backing up in the field.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL2K/

Hehe, they look pretty cute, as if your Mac's just had a baby.

I Bloom

05-03-2007, 09:39 AM

Um, RED Drives are market value for a ruggedized field hard drive with special ruggedized connectors. You can't just use FW in the field to connect your drive to a camera - it would break the first time out.

I think if the only issue is ruggedness than the right choice is to invest in the solid state media. If we are shooting on hard drives we are taking a risk to save money and gain more upfront capacity.

I've never lost any data in the field on a P2 card. I have lost data from a failed transfer from the card to another drive including the P2 Store. The data was actually lost, when I formatted the P2 card not knowing that it hadn't been properly copied and some of the files were corrupt. There in lies the rub, by adding a step we are increasing the risk to footage.

I think the RED drive is market value as in comparison to solutions like the P2 Store or the Firestore. I'm not suggesting that RED change the price, I think they should sell it for whatever its worth to them.

However after that ruggedized connector is another connector to a standard laptop hard drive bought from a much larger manufacturer. If I can carefully disconnect that drive and carefully connect a new drive, place it in a housing and connect it to the camera then why would I waste time and money and take a risk transfering from a drive in the field. Besides on a lot of enclosures the drive simply slides in and connects at the back. Thats more mechanically rugged than any cable.

Panasonic doesn't manufacture the FS100. I wouldn't reccommend using one on an important project until you've spent enough time with it to know all its bugs. But once you have you can get a lot done with that device that you can't get done with anything Panasonic sells.

So if I'm looking at a drive like this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2268595&CatId=139
And wondering is there a way to make two of these things work for me then you can dismiss me all you'd like.

IB

Andrew M.

05-03-2007, 12:21 PM

How many times you can carefully disconnect something from something in the field:-)
I guess you never did pull the external disk out of the table when taking laptop to another place.

Pat Cooksey

05-03-2007, 01:13 PM

Damien Molineaux

05-03-2007, 01:18 PM

Hehe, they look pretty cute, as if your Mac's just had a baby.

This is the one you want :
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESATATBEK/
You can connect it with an Expresscard to a MacBook Pro and dump your footage to two drives in parrallel (RAID 1), or you can use it as a RAID 0, with the risk implied but having faster access.

Cheers,
Damien

PS It's also much cheaper, and avoids daisy chaining hard drives as the most practical conection for Red Drives will be Firewire.

Häakon

05-03-2007, 02:09 PM

So if I'm looking at a drive like this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2268595&CatId=139
And wondering is there a way to make two of these things work for me then you can dismiss me all you'd like.
The drives in the RED-DRIVE setup are the smaller form-factor 2.5" laptop drives, not full-size desktop ones. That's why they're maxed out at 160GB each (320 in the RAID pair), and a bit more costly. They also hold up to shock and vibration better than their larger counterparts and are built for mobile (laptop) situations.

david farland

05-03-2007, 04:29 PM

Okay $1000 is good for what it does, however $500 is better!

If I can buy the same 2.5" drives with the same MTBF rates as the originals RED-Drives, format them and put them in the case (easily) I can buy quite a few more!

Now if you tell me what added value Red provides, besides idiot proofing my red-drive storage solution then fine, but so far I haven't heard it.

Surely I can't be more complicated than replacing the drive in my laptop.

Dave,

I Bloom

05-03-2007, 06:09 PM

The laptop 160GB drives are more expensive and may be unnecessary for this application, I chose the larger drives because I think they are better i terms of capacity verus cost. Maybe the laptop drives are actually a better solution. In a situation where weight and size are a huge issue it seems like the solid state cards are the way to go anyway.

How many times you can carefully disconnect something from something in the field:-)
I guess you never did pull the external disk out of the table when taking laptop to another place.

I'm not sure what you mean. But Yes it seems feasable to connect a normal SATA port to a hard drive in the field. Most drive enclosures allow you to simply slide the drive in so maybe the word 'careful' is too much.

Okay $1000 is good for what it does, however $500 is better!

If I can buy the same 2.5" drives with the same MTBF rates as the originals RED-Drives, format them and put them in the case (easily) I can buy quite a few more!

Now if you tell me what added value Red provides, besides idiot proofing my red-drive storage solution then fine, but so far I haven't heard it.

Surely I can't be more complicated than replacing the drive in my laptop.

I couldn't agree more and I wonder how large the market would be for a not so idiot proof solution. I guess my strong feeling is that people aren't looking at the Red Drive as a long term storage solution. Its a temporary holding place for footage during production. P2 Cards are for example very expensive considering their capacity, but two P2 cards are all an owner operator might need. The RED Drive is much cheaper in comparison. We might buy four but we will still be transfering footage off the drive in the field before before formatting and reusing it.

The risk of loosing footage is the risk of wasting large amounts of money spent on production. In a lot of cases this could mean loosing your job. At the same time productions that are accustomed to shooting HD are not going to want to buy Red drives as long term storage, just as they don't want to buy P2 cards, Firestores, or P2 Stores as long term storage. Thus my belief is that in most cases the Red drive will be adding risk, not taking it away. P2 cards suffer from the same problem.

It seems possible that a hack solution is not just a cheap way out of paying for Red branded equiptment, it could be a smarter faster way to work. It will allow us to start looking at hard drives the same way that we look at tapes.

Right, so here's a nifty diagram I whipped up (note that when I say high risk, I mean high stakes. It's likely that transfering to the Red drive is not risky):
http://ianbloom.com/RedStorageWorkflowsWeb.jpg
Cheers,

IB

istvanttt

05-04-2007, 10:50 AM

Craig Schober

05-04-2007, 11:10 AM

Can somebody explain me why so many people want to have huge drives during shooting? I don't think that I want to keep more then 20-30 minutes of footage on a drive, being it SSD or HHD, without makeing a backup (actually 2 back-ups) on field? My idea was to back-up after 1-2 set-ups, maximum before changing the camera side and al the lights.

In the old days of cumputer uses (long time before the internet came up) there was a saying: there exist 2 types of computer users:
1) those who alreeady lost once all their data
2) those who still will lose once all their data.
Technology became better, but still losing ALL the data is the same pain in the a... like it was 20 years ago.

some people will need a lot of storage for nature and event videography. i know i will use my red for corporate events that last up to 8 hours with no time to dump footage. now i could swap red drives but why buy more than one red drive if there is a solution allowing a full day's capture. that being said, 4k is not necessary at all for my purposes but it will be nice.

on the other hand, i'm also using my red for narrative work and 2-3 hours of 4k footage is overkill.

Jaime Vallés

05-04-2007, 11:26 AM

Panasonic has incorporated a feature called, "hosting" in it's P2 Cameras allowing the camera to act as a computer host so that you can connect a firewire drive or USB drive directly to the camera and transfer your P2 footage straight to any firewire or USB drive.

Does RED have this capability or must you use a laptop or other computer to connect to the firewire or USB Port?

I would like to know the answer to this as well. I'd love to be able to just plug in an external drive to the camera and transfer footage from the Flash card to the drive, without needing a computer. Saves on wear-and-tear of putting the flash in and out of the camera, and since there's no computer involved, that's one less piece of expensive equipment to keep track of.

Also, If the "hosting mode" is possible with RED ONE, will it have a "verify" feature to make sure that the transfered footage was cloned successfully? In my ideal scenario, the workflow would be this:

1) Shoot footage onto Expresscard/34 or CompactFlash card.

2) Plug in mobile USB2 Hard Drive to the camera.

3) Transfer footage directly from flash media to external Hard Drive.

4) Verify that the transfer was successful and that there was no data corruption.

5) Plug in a second mobile USB2 Hard Drive for archival copy, and repeat steps 3 & 4.

6) Format flash card and repeat steps 1-6.

Would this procedure work with a RED ONE?

I agree with istvanttt about not wanting a lot of footage in the recording medium. 10 to 20 minutes is perfect between offloads. Of course, some applications require long record times, but I'll be using this exclusively for narrative feature work, so I'd rather dump footage frequently.

Ken Willinger

05-04-2007, 12:56 PM

My understanding is that RED will not act as a host for downloading direct to a drive...it's got to go through a computer. My hope is that since all things are subject to change...this may be one of those things.

Jeff Kilgroe

05-04-2007, 01:30 PM

Just speaking from experience with my HVX.... Host mode is a complete waste of time. You have to change camera modes and effectively take the camera out of service while data is transferred.

OK, perhaps that was a bit harsh saying it's a complete waste of time. I have used it once, when I didn't want to go on a long hike and take a computer with me. Just took 6 P2 cards and an external hard drive to dump to once the P2 cards were full. But it wasn't an elegant solution and looking back on it, I should've just thrown the 15" MBP in the bag instead the external hard drive.

TimothyD

05-04-2007, 02:20 PM

The one thing that I would ask, no, BEG for, is that the enclosure is user servicable. Meaning, when, and I do mean when a drive fails I can replace it myself with an off-the-shelf drive.

More importantly, as drive prices drop, I'd love to be able to upgrade the drives to 500 gig or terabyte drives in a couple of years when they are affordable (and exist:)

It seems to me though, that Red has nothing to lose by selling a cable that can provide power and SATA to external drives, for that matter, make a version with a RAID controller built into the cable or a box so we could plug two 3.5" drives right into the cable and then shoot/copy/archive.

I shoot plenty of tripod mounted stuff that I would be more than happy to be tethered for. I think this would be a cheap and flexible solution, therefore keeping with Red's mantra.

Also, is is possible that a 2.5 SATA drive could handle 2k Redcode without the need for RAID? If so, then that would rock to have a little drive cage that you pop a drive into and then copy/archive when done shooting.

I know we all seem like we are looking a gift horse in the mouth here, and compared to how the competition would treat us, WE ARE! Having said that, I just think that flexibility is what Red is all about, and so I hope to see a little bit of room given here. And before anyone says anything, of course we wouldn't expect Red to cover lost footage from a drive they didn't make.

P.S. does anyone know what the warranty period on the Red Drive will be? I'm hoping 5 years, that would pretty much cover its useful life span. (It will be obsolete in terms of storage size in 2-3 I'm guessing)

Häakon

05-04-2007, 02:22 PM

In a situation where weight and size are a huge issue it seems like the solid state cards are the way to go anyway.
Well sure, but the Red drive is only $900 whereas the Red RAM is almost $5,000 (and only has 1/5th the capacity!).

TimothyD

05-04-2007, 02:22 PM

istvanttt

05-04-2007, 05:56 PM

some people will need a lot of storage for nature and event videography. i know i will use my red for corporate events that last up to 8 hours with no time to dump footage.

OK, I can see this, I wasn't thinking in that direction. Thanks fro reminding mme.

istvanttt

05-04-2007, 06:04 PM

Also, I hope no one is fooling themselves into believing that laptop hard drives are indestructible. I've had four go bad in my iBook's. Maybe that is because Apple does a crap job in setting a proper temperature for the fans to come on in their laptops? Or maybe it is just because hard drives are fragile. (I never dropped the laptops in case anyone wonders)

Tim

Infact this is why I will back-up not only to the laptop but also to at least one additional Firewire HD, one of those smaller ones which take the power from the Firewire cable directly. When you assemble them yourself you can get HDs with 7200 as speed. (In Frey's you can get the cabinet and the drive itself separatly.)

Jeff Kilgroe

05-04-2007, 08:08 PM

While there may not be time to dump footage on a lot of shoots, you can always swap drives. 3 RED DRIVES will give you roughly 9.5 hours of 4K. That's insane... Shoot in 2K and I bet that you get about double or better.

I also have a hunch that if you absolutely can't chance missing a shot, you should be able to keep rolling to onboard FLASH media while the drive is out of commission for all of 12 seconds. But let's be real, most people are swapping tape every 40 to 60 minutes in their current workflows. Many large events will be shot with more than one camera anyway, just be sure to stagger drive swaps so there's only one swap taking place at a time and everyone swaps at least 5 to 10 minutes apart.

For most workflows, I would think 3 RED Drives would be ideal... One, plus a second to swap to and then a spare. That will get you through most any days of shooting, possibly more if you're doing narrative work and will be continuously changing sets, angles etc.. I'll be buying 3 RED Drives, maybe even a couple more. As soon as 64GB or larger FLASH media comes available and affordable, I'll just go that route and forget the hard drive thing.

I think the idea of having a drive system that can record all day long is alright, but we have to be realistic there too... You will either have to be tethered for power or will be swapping batteries anyway. May as well swap the drive whenever you swap the battery.

I Bloom

05-05-2007, 01:47 AM

I guess that the point that the red Drive isn't addressing, is that its not a long term storage solution, but it seems like it could be, if the technology was stripped down and made more modular. I'm not argueing that $900 isn't cheap for the capacity. That's great. What I am saying is that in most cases I want the media that I write on from camera to be the media that the footage stays on for the lifetime of post production and beyond. The on set transfer workflow established by the P2 card is not a model for RED and should be avoided at all costs.

Productions will treat the RED drive as temporary as long as the cost is significantly higher than other long term storage options. (It looks to be between 4 and 9 times higher.) Producers will continue to choose to transfer the media to cheaper drives. I want to avoid that second transfer. which is equal to risk, labor and hassle.

IB

istvanttt

05-05-2007, 04:30 AM

While there may not be time to dump footage on a lot of shoots, you can always swap drives. .
......
I think the idea of having a drive system that can record all day long is alright, ......

Jeff, I think you told me that the RED DRIVE is in a RAID0 configuration and as far as I do remember from a RAID0, in case of a HD failure you cannot recover the data. In opposite from a single HD system very often you can recover a lot al the data after a HD failure.

I remember in filmschool they used to say: the cheapest part of filming is the film-stock. Concerning digital filming I think the cheapest part is the PA who makes the back-ups on set.

I'm sorry if I come back so often on the data-security, but in my first live I run for more then 20 years a software company and we had so many dramatique events of customers who lost all their data; and they used their computers (remember RED-ONE is concerning the data a computer) not in such difficult envirements like a movie set.

Jeff Kilgroe

05-05-2007, 09:46 AM

RAID-0 or striped data sets can be difficult to recover data from if one of the drives fail. More so than from a single drive. Even single drives can be difficult or even impossible to recover, depending on the type of failure.

Ideal productions will have someone making backups of RED DRIVEs on set. But this may not always be practical or affordable, depending on the production.

You're right about drive failures and what you saw with your experiences at that software company. You can probably assume that at least half of those drive failures were user error. But I've managed a large data center and have been in IT consulting for years. I also ran a computer shop for a while and built custom workstation and gaming systems. I've seen my share of component failures and hard drives were one of the most common components to fail, even when treated properly. That said, I will never trust a hard drive as a form of long-term backup. I will probably use hard drives as a form of backup on occasion, but it will be a temporary solution and I will never have just one drive with the only copy of any data. ...That is something that should never be done, no matter what form of media we're talking about.

You're RED #1161, so you'll be getting yours about the same time I get mine. That is later this year by current estimates... A lot can change over the next 6 months and there are several upcoming solid state options that should be available by year's end. I think this is a great discussion to have now and continue with until these cameras arrive, but opinions are going to change and options are going to change by a great deal over the next year or so.

The reason why storage and backup debates go on and on is because there is no truly great answer or solution to fit all needs. There is no definitive technology that is that much better or reliable than another. For now, the best plan is to quickly make multiple copies of your data and care for them as best as you can. Plan to re-visit, consolidate and condense these backups every couple years on to newer, and hopefully more reliable, media.

As for what ibloom and others have said about being able to shoot directly to a lower-cost storage system that can be used immediately as backup or long-term storage. I guess that could be desirable in a lot of situations. This could be a wide-open market for an enterprising third-party... But I think a lot of these concerns will be set aside over the next several months to a year or so as larger and cheaper solid-state options hit the market.

istvanttt

05-05-2007, 04:04 PM

Jeff, I think we have a similar sensibility what data-security belongs and yes, you are right, lets wait and see what kind of surprises the HW industry will bring us in the next 6 months.:)
Have a nice weekend
Istvan

david farland

05-05-2007, 06:00 PM

Couple of things guys,

What everybody is acutely aware of is cost vs convenience.

The bigger issue here is not just leaving data on enclosed reddrive units, it's data overall!

Forgetting tape for now, the bigger issue is how you want to handle different types of media:

1. freshly recorded data files.
2. large project data files.
3. long term data files.

Do you want to handle it on 'bare' disk drives (where you can hold the shiny aluminium case) or on 'housed' drives (multiple reddrive units, complete raid array enclosures, disk caddys etc.

That's the real issue!

Complete Reddrives vs replacing Reddrive internal disks is just a cousin of this greater issue!

The future or cost won't greatly change this.

Sure when cheap enclosed redundant arrays come down to the price point that high definition digitial cinema considers storage as cost irrevelant, then okay!
Sure large productions may already be there, but most of us on this forum could see a value in replacing raw storage media without full enclosures.
Similiar to tapes or rolls of film...without the whole read/write/enclosure subsystem.

Cheers,

Gavin Greenwalt

05-05-2007, 09:16 PM

It would be cool if the REDDrive could be broken up into a dock and data module system.

Two hard drives in a lightweight housing that are removeable as a unit. If even half of thecost goes into a mobile raid controller etc... the raw drives could be popped out like a giant P2 card. And mounted into an equivalent receiver laptop side. Combined it would cost more up front but you can add storage for significantly less. No?

Jarred Land

05-05-2007, 10:14 PM

Combined it would cost more up front but you can add storage for significantly less. No?

theoretically yes.. but in there are alot of factors that come into play, including bandwidth,reliability etc.

Having an open system where you can goto frys and drop in blank refurbusihed harddrives seems like a great idea, but offering it puts everyone including yourselves at liability.

Im confident Red will provide upgraded drive capacity in the future as it comes available, and right now the RED DRIVE pretty much offers the best bang for the buck when you compare it to any professional recording medium out there...

david farland

05-05-2007, 11:18 PM

I understand Red may be trying to protect its patrons (& reputation) against people buying poor quality media.

hopefully operators may only need 2 RedDrive most of the time if they’re continually backing up to a 3rd party solution, where most of the redundancy should be.

However I’m sure there will be a few people who want lots of camera recording media and preferably at cheaper rates.
I’d expect these camera operators will give hard drive media similar respect they showed when choosing tape media.

I don’t know the recording/data errors that may appear, why they appeared , or the error handling processes/logs Red employs when recording information to media,
however I’d expect these exist within a complete quality regime of viewing dailies, backing up etc.

I hope Red will continue to focus on innovation/adding value in all components they market and let others fight for the scraps!

Cheers,

I Bloom

05-06-2007, 06:47 PM

Having an open system where you can goto frys and drop in blank refurbusihed harddrives seems like a great idea, but offering it puts everyone including yourselves at liability.

I wouldn't consider using a refurbished hard drive. The raw drives we are considering should be brand new.

I've had my eyes open for some hard data on this subject. I read a pretty interesting paper published by google on hard disk failure. http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf. I found a few key points in the paper that I thought were interesting. One thing was that drive reliablility seems to be more closely related to make, model and vintage of the drive than most other factors. They also made an observation that their might be a sort of infant mortality trend in drives, where drives that last a certain amount of time are likely to die off early or live very long time. It also mentioned that most drive manufacturers warn about vibration affecting performance and reliability, but the google study couldn't measure the actual effects of vibration because there was not way to record it.

I know a few editors who had problems with drives that they took back and fourth from work and I had always assumed it was because the drives got knocked around in the course of their travels. But I can't call this by any means a scientific fact.

It seems intuitive that a drive that spends its life on the back of a camera will be exposed to a lot of vibration. It seems possible that the longer it is worked, the more likely a failure becomes. Any drive might become a liability. Thats a strong case for wanting to use a new drive every time.

On the other hand a new drive is an unknown quantity and might fail early. But it seems likely that every drive undergoes a certain amount of testing at the factory, and we can expect most drives to be at their prime right when we pull them out of the styrofoam.

Im confident Red will provide upgraded drive capacity in the future as it comes available, and right now the RED DRIVE pretty much offers the best bang for the buck when you compare it to any professional recording medium out there...

I think there is no doubt about that.

But when I say that the raw solution is "inevitable". I mean that because there will always be several incentives to using a non-reusable medium over a reusable one. I hung out around the Panasonic booth at Cinegear and heard what Dp's had to say about P2. They don't want their crews dealing with transfering data, they want to deal with shooting. And not every shoot is going to have a dedicated post guy whom can take a hand off of footage and give back fresh media.

I don't see dissecting RED-drives and inserting new raw drives as a viable alternative. But I do see a problem and a need for a solution. I don't think there is a reservation holder who will not buy at least two RED drives. But if someone is going to tackle this issue head on I hope its going to be RED.

IB

istvanttt

05-07-2007, 09:31 AM

.....
I've had my eyes open for some hard data on this subject. I read a pretty interesting paper published by google on hard disk failure. http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf. I found a few key points in the paper that I thought were interesting. One thing was that drive reliablility seems to be more closely related to make, model and vintage of the drive than most other factors. They also made an observation that their might be a sort of infant mortality trend in drives, where drives that last a certain amount of time are likely to die off early or live very long time. It also mentioned that most drive manufacturers warn about vibration affecting performance and reliability, but the google study couldn't measure the actual effects of vibration because there was not way to record it.
.....

IB

Thank you iblooom for finding this excellent research. I read it carefully and I would like to add two thoughts:

-this report is very interesting because it was done over a period of 9 months on more the 100.000 HDs inside Google
- And/but it was done in "..professionally managed datacenter facilities..", which means no external temperature-changes, not moving the HDs around and not getting them hit by an angry actor:), (OK, this never happened to me)

Never the less this ideal conditions, still around 2%-3% of the HDs in the first years had a failure. Important to note: the definition of failure in this research is "...if it was replaced...". So a failure is not just a read-write error, but the need for a replacement of the dirve.

Transported to the 1500 RED cameras in order would mean that statistically 30 - 45 of us will have to replace the RED-DRIVE in the first year even if we would use the drive in the very best and savest condition.

At the end of the research the authors refer also to other researches where the replacement statistics arrive till 6%. (90 RED-Drive users?)

One good point I learned is that the avg. temperature is not anymore so critical like it used to be. In the past temperatures over 30°C where considered to avoid, this research does now gives a freedom till 45°C. But don't use the drive under 15°C. because it doubles the risk of failure.

I don't want to be missunderstood, I believe in digital, I'm going to order for more then 50.000.-US$ equipment from RED, but I believe also that it is not REDs responsability to give us data-security which would go further then the industry standard. Its us who have to learn to back-up the data to be really save.

I Bloom

05-07-2007, 12:30 PM

Unfortunately what we really lack is vibration data. I imagine this is much more an issue with laptops than with servers. So the key might be in laptop repair statistics. But as of yet I haven't found it. Most of this information is heavily gaurded, even google won't tell you which drives perform the best.

IB

TimothyD

05-07-2007, 12:35 PM

I can say this, I had two toshiba, one hitachi and one IBM fail in my iBooks. I am EXTREMELY careful with my laptops. They never have been dropped. Having said that, I have to suspect heat problems due to the fans in iBooks not coming on soon enough.

Nevertheless, I don't trust hard drives much. And most of my failures have been with laptop drives.

I Bloom

05-07-2007, 12:46 PM

Panasonic sells their "toughbook" laptops which are designed for people who take them into the field. They say hard drives are the second most likely to fail after the LCD display. That's why their drives are shock mounted. http://www.toughbook.eu/media/Toughbook_service_brochure_engl.pdf But I found no comparison in terms of failure rates.

IB

Gavin Greenwalt

05-08-2007, 09:45 AM

theoretically yes.. but in there are alot of factors that come into play, including bandwidth,reliability etc.

Having an open system where you can goto frys and drop in blank refurbusihed harddrives seems like a great idea, but offering it puts everyone including yourselves at liability.

Im confident Red will provide upgraded drive capacity in the future as it comes available, and right now the RED DRIVE pretty much offers the best bang for the buck when you compare it to any professional recording medium out there...

Actually I was implying RED produces the cartridges.

RED sells the RAID interface. And then sells the two-HDD cartridges at a steep discount.

So this way if you have 5 cameras you buy 6 RED Raid interfaces (5 for the cameras and one for the laptop, each has a RAID controller, necessary hardware goodness to ensure disk reliability). Then you could theoretically buy 10 cartridges. This way the whole RAID controller etc doesn't have to go into all 10 memory banks. As memory prices drop you could just add new higher capacity HDD Cartridges.

Michael Hastings

05-08-2007, 11:03 AM

I have several of the Ikegami Editcams which have used 2.5 laptop hard drives for 8 or 9 years. The case is very simple, just a plastic case with 4 rubber shockmounts and a connector board which takes the drive connector and turns it into another connector which is a little tougher and allows it to be placed either way in the drive slot. Electronically and mechanically it is simpler and uses less expensive materials than the 2.5" USB cases I buy at CompUSA for $39 ($19 when they are on sale).

These are roughly current prices for the fieldpak2 Harddrives.

80 GB FieldPak2, $595.
100 GB FieldPak2, $800;
120 GB FieldPak2, $1000.

They use a single IBM/Hitachi Travelstar laptop drive or Fujitsu laptop drives. I have a number of the original 4GB fieldpak2s (4gigs were $1000 each in 99 when they came out) that I purchased government surplus and it is very easy to take apart and replace the drives with current ones.

These prices may have come down in the last year but are probably still between $400 and $800.

As you can see the REDDRIVES are a comparative bargain - they use 2 160gb drives and have a built in hardware raid circuit board.

I imagine in the future you would be able to pop it open and easily replace the 2 160s with 320s, 500s or whatever comes out next, but at that point you assume all of the liability just as I do when I rework the Fieldpak drives.

The key to the REDDRIVE situation is to get however many REDDRIVEs you need to cover the amount of shooting you need to do before you will be able to transfer it to cheaper generic harddrives for workflow and archive.

I figure I will start with two, and since I have two other locals that are getting REDs (and shoot more than I do) we can loan or rent each other additional drives as needed. Since the REDDRIVEs record two to three hours of REDCode RAW I can't imagine too many scenarios that wouldn't be covered by two REDDRIVEs and a laptop with Firmtek or other raids for offloading.

Standard manufacturing markup (as explained to me many years ago by a government SBA/SCORE person as well as some entrepreneuring books) needs to be 3 to 4 times the direct cost (i.e. parts and labor) to cover all of the costs of doing business: Research, Development, MFG Overhead, sales and marketing overhead, Management Overhead, Customer Service, Warranties, etc.

By any normal business measure RED is actually cutting it fairly close on the price of the REDDRIVEs.

theoretically yes.. but in there are alot of factors that come into play, including bandwidth,reliability etc.

Having an open system where you can goto frys and drop in blank refurbusihed harddrives seems like a great idea, but offering it puts everyone including yourselves at liability.

Im confident Red will provide upgraded drive capacity in the future as it comes available, and right now the RED DRIVE pretty much offers the best bang for the buck when you compare it to any professional recording medium out there...

Actually I was implying RED produces the cartridges.

RED sells the RAID interface. And then sells the two-HDD cartridges at a steep discount.

So this way if you have 5 cameras you buy 6 RED Raid interfaces (5 for the cameras and one for the laptop, each has a RAID controller, necessary hardware goodness to ensure disk reliability). Then you could theoretically buy 10 cartridges. This way the whole RAID controller etc doesn't have to go into all 10 memory banks. As memory prices drop you could just add new higher capacity HDD Cartridges.

The RAID board probably isn't very expensive - $25-$75 or so would be my guess. The case isn't much more expensive than the "cartridge" case that you describe would be. This is an okay idea except it doesn't really work as a business model for the basic multiplier reasons I described above.