For PC : internal or external RAID ?

[Stefan Antonescu]

Hi everyone,

I will be getting an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard and build a new workstation and I am looking at my RAID options. I was planning on going with the onboard RAID controller and 4 internal hard drives.

Is this a good option ?

I saw on another thread that Jeff went with a 4 drive internal RAID but added an Areca RAID card too :
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?66814-Sandy-Bridge-E-processors-out-today&p=898661&viewfull=1#post898661

Another option would be an external RAID like the 4 drive G-Tech or Lacie :

http://www.videoguys.com/Item/G-Tech+G-SPEED+eS+4TB+with+Enterprise+Drives/73638313037403.aspx
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10313

Do you need an extra RAID card with these two or can you just use the ESATA on the motherboard to connect the external storage ?

Thanks. :)

[Zack Birlew]

These days, you can't really go wrong. Ideally you would still opt for a nice PCI Express card RAID controller like an Areca card for speed but the best thing you can do overall is not skimp on your drives. Also you can indeed use eSATA with those drives you listed but they're limited to eSATA 3gbps whereas newer solutions use eSATA 6gbps.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I use an Areca card with a ProAvio Editbox and 8 Western Digital Caviar Black drives. Handles RED footage just fine with Adobe Premiere and the Mercury Playback Engine.

[Will Keir]

What Zack said, "don't skimp on your drives." A friend just lost all the data on his cheep drive. I told him to buy a couple G drives at least. His budget didn't allow him to listen, now he's paying for data recovery and hopefully no re-shoots.

For anyone reading, what drives would you recommend to Stefan? G-Drive, Caldigit? Both have worked for me. LaCie, avoid them! Plus their customer service in the last few years has taken a turn for the worst. Guys with bad attitudes... Not allowed here at Red. :)

Anyone using Promise Pegasus thunderbolt storage?

[Yannick Verry]

For the MB, you might have a look at this one too (P9X79 WS). For video work, i think it's probably better than the Rampage in terms oof stability :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131798

There's this Gigabyte too (GA-X79-UD5) , i think i will go this way thanks to the extra SATA6g :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128531

[Bill Sepaniak]

According to an article in the March issue of "Post" magazine, the new "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" was onlined using four tethered G-Speed eS Pro External Raids (containing Hitachi drives) totaling 48TB, with two ATTO cards connected via SAS to the editors' computer. The article goes on to indicate that the raid units were the size of 2 shoe boxes, plug-and-play, and gave the editors the ability to move the storage from one editing facility to another easily. ("Sneaker-Net"). I guess the G-Speeds worked for Kirk Baxter, ACE and Angus Wall, ACE ... I mean the film won an Academy Award for best film editing.


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[Stefan Antonescu]

Has anyone used the onboard RAID controler with success ? If I need a separate controller card, I would prefer going with an external RAID storage.

Any thoughts on the onboard Asus RAID controller ?

[Paul J Steinberg]

I have 4x 1 TB drives on an older P6x Asus motherboard and using the onboard RAID controller. Works A-ok for me for three years now. Never had a problem and plays back 4K in real time...no problemo. I have noticed that the nerds on the Adobe forums that have the highest benchmarks all use a RAID controller card so I may not be getting the BEST performance but it's definitely good enough for the applications I'm working with and 4K footage.

[Stefan Antonescu]

That's good to hear, Paul.

Do you have a RAID 0 with those 4 hard drives ?

[Corey Culp]

These days, you can't really go wrong. Ideally you would still opt for a nice PCI Express card RAID controller like an Areca card for speed but the best thing you can do overall is not skimp on your drives. Also you can indeed use eSATA with those drives you listed but they're limited to eSATA 3gbps whereas newer solutions use eSATA 6gbps.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I use an Areca card with a ProAvio Editbox and 8 Western Digital Caviar Black drives. Handles RED footage just fine with Adobe Premiere and the Mercury Playback Engine.

Just to paint a clearer picture, Zack, which EditBox model are you using? There are so many different flavors, I'm sure others may find it helpful to know exactly what you're using. Thanks!

[Jon Thomasberg]

I have firsthand experience on the Asus MoBo RAID on both the Rampage 4 and P9X79 Deluxe. In short, I don't like it. It works, but if your BIOS is not backed-up and you have certain failed overclocks or BIOS resets it reverts to AHCI mode and you lose your RAID stripe and cannot reconnect the drives without recreating the RAID, and thus losing your data, not to mention there is a little button on the back of the MoBo I/O panel that you can clear CMOS very easily and wipe your BIOS config (read: lose your RAID config) -- huge PITA! I'd suggest a hardware RAID card like ARECA for any RAID, internal or external.

Just my 2c - HTH

[Stefan Antonescu]

I have firsthand experience on the Asus MoBo RAID on both the Rampage 4 and P9X79 Deluxe. In short, I don't like it. It works, but if your BIOS is not backed-up and you have certain failed overclocks or BIOS resets it reverts to AHCI mode and you lose your RAID stripe and cannot reconnect the drives without recreating the RAID, and thus losing your data, not to mention there is a little button on the back of the MoBo I/O panel that you can clear CMOS very easily and wipe your BIOS config (read: lose your RAID config) -- huge PITA! I'd suggest a hardware RAID card like ARECA for any RAID, internal or external.

Just my 2c - HTH

Interesting...

Why would you need a controller card with an external RAID ?
I was under the impression that you could just connect it to the motherboard's eSATA.

I'm thinking of one of those :

1. http://www.videoguys.com/Item/G-Tech+G-SPEED+eS+4TB+with+Enterprise+Drives/73638313037403.aspx
2. http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10313

[Stefan Antonescu]

For the MB, you might have a look at this one too (P9X79 WS). For video work, i think it's probably better than the Rampage in terms oof stability :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131798
Yes, I looking at the P9X79 WS and the Rampage IV Extreme. ;)

[Antoine Baumann]

Stefan, I think it depends on what data throughput (mb/s) you need, security and your budget. Since 2009 I am using motherboad internal raid with 3-4 hdd in raid 0 and play 2k 10 bit dpx forever without any problem. I've build pc with supermicro mb, but also asus and gigabyte (only the best model of the two last brand). The data on these array are always back up in other place, so if the array fails i only loose time, which has not happen till now.

If you need the absolute speed check i/o fusion or fastest ssd in raid 0

my 2 cents

[Paul J Steinberg]

That's good to hear, Paul.

Do you have a RAID 0 with those 4 hard drives ?


Yes, I just use it for temporary media so I just wanted the speed, not the redundancy so it is set up as RAID-0. Playing Red One 4K and now Epic 5K without a problem. I'll be building a new system after NAB and I'll be putting a RAID controller card in it.

To answer your original question, yes you can do it. It will work well but the best way to do it would be to have a dedicated RAID controller card.

[TD Wood]

Hi All,
I'm a newbie here, so exuse my intrusion and my english (not a native speaker). I am also trying to figure out a new PC setup (tired of waiting for Apple, like so many here). I have been reading and searching tons of helpful posts here in reduser and thanks to that I have been able to come up with a setup. I'm on a tight budget and basically want a system that can handle reasonably well Davinci and Premiere (and Red footage). I'm no computer expert but a friend of mine is building it for me (unfortunately, he is a computer tech but not very familiar with post-production/video world).

Right now, I have an external Raid in my setup, but I'm worried it may not handle data (2K dpx or Red footage) sufficiently fast/real time (escpeically in Davinci). So my main issue is whether to go with an internal RAID 0 and buy a G-SPEED eS for backup (and be safe) or to stay with the extrenal RAID. If anyone can help me out with this, I would really appreciate it. This is the external RAID that has been proposed for my setup:

- SAS-to-SATA RAID subsystem, 8-bay desktop/tower user convertible, single controller ASIC400 with 256MB SDRAM, dual SAS host channels (SFF-8088), SATA 3.0G (SATA-II) Redundant PSUs and redundant Fans w/ X 8 CONSTELLATION ES 2TB SATA 3.5IN 7200RPM 6GB/S SATA (total 16 TB)
-LSI PCIe SAS Card

Thank you very much!!!
TD Wood

[TD Wood]

Me again (sorry) :badputer:
I have done some more research and I would like to simplify my previous question:
If I build an intrenal Raid 0 with four 2TB hard drives (using internal RAID card), what maximum Read/write speeds can I expect to achieve (MB/second)?

Thanks again

[L. Langer]

Me again (sorry) :badputer:
I have done some more research and I would like to simplify my previous question:
If I build an intrenal Raid 0 with four 2TB hard drives (using internal RAID card), what maximum Read/write speeds can I expect to achieve (MB/second)?

Thanks again

That's not a question that can be answered with a specific number. The overall performance depends on a lot of different hardware and software variables inside your system, the drive specs, and of course the type of RAID card you get as there are different levels of RAID performance to be had with internal cards since some have onboard CPUs for RAID along with dedicated memory and others are simply storage controllers on a card.

[TD Wood]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for not being too specific. I was actually thinking of an intrenal RAID with this setup:

- ASUS Rampage IV Extreme/BF3 Extended
- Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition 3.3GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 Six-Core Desktop Processor
- G .SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (8 x 4GB)
- EVGA GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 03G-P3-1584-AR Video Card (GPU)
- EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 02G-P3-1568-KR Video Card (GUI)
- Decklink HD Extr. 3D
- 4 x 2TB hard disks (attached to an Areca 1882LP RAID card) in RAID-0
- 1 internal SSD (350 GB) for applications

So, with this configuration, is it possible to calculate roughly what Read/write speeds can be expected? Maybe my question is still hard to answer, so excuse me if this is the case.

Thanks in advance.

[Antoine Baumann]

TD Wood,

2K 10bit dpx need roughly 220MB/s (depending on the exact ratio of the files, like 16/9, 1:1.85,...). Epic's r3d in 5K and at the lowest ratio (3:1) will be roughly the same.
I pretty sure you will have no problem with the internal raid with 4 hdd in raid0 to obtain these speed (may be even in raid5). The G-SPEED eS in raid5 will do it as well. I have no experience with the Areca 1882LP RAID card.
Now the r3d files need also heavy cpu power in order to do the debayer. I have no experience with the Intel Core i7-3960X, but based on what I've seen it should be ok for quarter to half quality debayer in da vinci, which is good enough for nearly everything (for grading I say).
Gpu are good engough for heavy work on da vinci.

my2cents,

[TD Wood]

Hi Antoine,
Thank you! Your post is very helpful.
cheers,
td wood