How about a 500GB Red-Drive Raid-1

[Frederick Giles]

Would it be possible to have a 500GB Red-Drive Raid-1. I have a 500GB 7200rpm in my laptop. Wondering if it has enough sustaining speed to do REDCODE 36 16x9 4K.

[Craig Schober]

i'm sure there's a portion of the outer edge of as 2.5" 7200rpm drive that could sustain necessary speeds but without that raid 0 speed, red will probably only be looking at ssd. rotating hard drives start to lose sustained data rates very quickly once they become even half full. my red drive is a raid 0 and starts to drop frames when i get to 90% full. now just imagine halfing that speed from a raid 0 to raid 1. and add in all the performance variables between different drive manufacturers and you see why red is only looking seriously at ssd for large portable storage solutions in the future.

[Frederick Giles]

I did some research on sustain speed of a 2.5" 7200rpm 500gb drive, 154MB/s that seems plenty even at half speed for Redcode 36 16x9 4k 24fps. ssd is almost 10x the price of a spinning hard drive. I think it could be nice cheap alternative to an SSD.

[Chris Kenny]

i'm sure there's a portion of the outer edge of as 2.5" 7200rpm drive that could sustain necessary speeds but without that raid 0 speed, red will probably only be looking at ssd. rotating hard drives start to lose sustained data rates very quickly once they become even half full. my red drive is a raid 0 and starts to drop frames when i get to 90% full. now just imagine halfing that speed from a raid 0 to raid 1. and add in all the performance variables between different drive manufacturers and you see why red is only looking seriously at ssd for large portable storage solutions in the future.

Honestly, how often do people fill even 320 GB Red Drives up more than 20% before downloading them anyway? We almost never do. If they made a 500 GB mirrored RAID and partitioned it so you could only record onto the first 250 GB, that would be fine.

But IMO, what we really need are just more reasonably priced SSD options. The price on the RED-RAM is a bit nuts given what's happened to SSD prices since it was introduced. Knowing Red, I suspect the new SSD modules will be substantially more aggressively priced.

[Craig Schober]

Honestly, how often do people fill even 320 GB Red Drives up more than 20% before downloading them anyway? We almost never do. If they made a 500 GB mirrored RAID and partitioned it so you could only record onto the first 250 GB, that would be fine.

you're right. most people don't even fill up the red raid now but i do and i don't even do live events shooting which almost always require huge volumes. but my point is what is a portable raid 1 going to get you? the only problems i've ever had with my red raid are problems in the cold, dropped frames from shocks to the camera, dropped frames from filling up and rare recording of corrupted clips. none of these problems would be solved with a raid 1. the only thing raid 1 is going to do for you is create a backup drive in case 1 drive happens to die completely. but it also duplicates all the errors and problems that spinning drives have. and that doesn't even address how you will get the good data off the surviving drive. if you open it up, you void the warranty. does red have to now create a new utility?

i think ssd solve most of these issues. and i agree that the red ram price should be lowered but red is already addressing that with the newly announced ssd modules for epic and scarlet. not sure about their form factor but i believe they will work with existing red ones.

[Frederick Giles]

SSD's are the future for sure, especially once RED starts pushing REDCODE 100 and 200 and then you'll have to use esata or USB 3.0 connections. I'm hoping that RED is considering USB 3 connections in the near future. I think RED could make a RED-Drive 500GB Raid 1 for less than $900, compare that to a $4,500 128GB SSD. Not that I should have doing this at all, but I was happy shooting 100gb per day/camera on my last shoots before I dumped the footage at the end of the day for a Daily.