RED CF station - first feedback!

[Pasha Patriki]

I received my RED CF station a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday finally had the courage to take it through some field testing.

Here is what I use for Data Management:
- 15.4" Macbook Pro with OSX 10.5.8
- 2.4Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB RAM
- R3D Data Manager 6.1
- Expresscard slot, 1x FW800 and 2x USB
- Expresscard to 2x ESata Adapter (have 3 different kinds, Iomega, Lacie and $150 Sonnet)

Here is what I found in regards to using RED CF Station:

1. Esata transfer speed to local drive on laptop is about 80 MB/sec. Not bad.

2. HOWEVER transfer to an external USB drive is unusually slow, around 10MB/sec. RED TEAM, any insight into this? Tried connecting Red Station via, Esata (expresscard adapter) or via FW800 - same result! For the sake of comparison I kept the same Hard Drive configuration and replaced the Red Station with the old Lexar CF reader - transfer speed went up to 20-30MB/sec!

3. Even though REd says that Red Station uses the same CF reader as the one in the REd ONE, I found the "feel" on how the card inserts completely different. Some cards needed more than "usual" effort in order to be inserted, as if things aren't quite perfectly aligned inside the reader. In fact, one of my Red CF cards does not go in the Red Station AT ALL!!! Checked the pins inside - all appear fine. Same card inserts effortlessly into the Red ONE body.

4. Occasional copy errors with R3D Data Manager always existed on my system. I could never explain them - tried switching readers, cables, you name it. A simple re-transfer normally fixed the problem. I was hoping that with RED CD Station this problem would go away. Well, no it didn't... Same thing as with the Lexar reader, except the transfer speed is slower. :)

Anyone has any further insight into this, or any more feedback - appreciated!!!

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Seems like an issue with your system.

The only eSATA card you should bother with is the Sonnet. The Iomega and Lacie cards are junk and don't always play nice on OSX. Why the ExpressCard to FW800/USB adapter? You're just asking for trouble there if you're using both interfaces on that card for a round-trip offload. You're sacrificing bandwidth and placing your data integrity at the mercy of a single device interface.

You should be connecting the CF reader, Lexar or RED via the FW800 port on your system. Forget USB, it's a waste of time.

Offload to an eSATA HDD. You have a dual-port card, you can mirror your copy to two drives for redundancy.

If you're still having speed issues and copy errors, then there's definitely a system issue. I would boot from a fresh install or diagnostics tools disk and run a barrage of tests on the CPU, RAM, peripheral interfaces and see if you can find any issues. If everything passes, then do a fresh OS install -- repartition and format, preferably 1-pass zero out - your hard drive before the new install. OSX 10.6 is the way to go.

Also test all your cables.

One of your CF cards does not go into the RED Station? Hmmm... that just sounds totally, uh, weird. That card definitely warrants a closer look.

FW800 read speeds from the Lexar and RED readers should be about the same. You're going to be limited by the speeds of the CF card, not by the interface. If you connect via eSATA, you'll get a bit of a boost due to the lower latency, but it should be negligible and if it's 5MB/s or more, you have something interfering with your FW800 port.

If you rebuild your system, I recommend not installing any drivers for any ExpressCard other than the Sonnet card. The FW800 + USB card should not need you to install any drivers. If it does, then it's using some crappy substandard chipset or intermediate interface not directly supported by OSX -- throw it away.

If I had to guess at what's really going on, you have a driver conflict on the system that could be interfering with proper port operation.

[Olivier Madar]

4. Occasional copy errors with R3D Data Manager always existed on my system. I could never explain them - tried switching readers, cables, you name it. A simple re-transfer normally fixed the problem. I was hoping that with RED CD Station this problem would go away. Well, no it didn't... Same thing as with the Lexar reader, except the transfer speed is slower. :)

Anyone has any further insight into this, or any more feedback - appreciated!!!

I had some nightmare like this one sometime ago with my mbp17 and hard drives. Not especially with r3d files but with very big file :

For example : during a backup, sometime all was fine and sometimes the mac froze and need a hard reboot.

I change the cables, the drives, the esata card : sometime i could work a long day,,and sometime my mbp crashed during transfer file.

I found a firmware update efi 1.6 (or 9), and as could not do it i sent the mbp to apple sav. They changed the motherboard, and my mbp works perfectly since. The motherboard of the i7 was probably a little bit damaged by the high temperature of this proc (if you play starcraft, you reache 80 degres very easily) so you have to consider your motherboard too for your tests.


Best regards

Olivier

[Steve Freebairn]

Are you using R3DDM 6.1? If so, that is part of your problem for non-matching checksums. 5.4 is the most recent stable release of the program. I've had big problems with 6.1.

[Dave Weber]

Are you using R3DDM 6.1? If so, that is part of your problem for non-matching checksums. 5.4 is the most recent stable release of the program. I've had big problems with 6.1.

That's strange. I've been on 6.1 since may/june and it's been rock solid. Granted I'm sure you go through tons more footage than I but I haven't had 1 issue (knocking wood right now)

[Pasha Patriki]

Seems like an issue with your system.

The only eSATA card you should bother with is the Sonnet. The Iomega and Lacie cards are junk and don't always play nice on OSX. Why the ExpressCard to FW800/USB adapter? You're just asking for trouble there if you're using both interfaces on that card for a round-trip offload. You're sacrificing bandwidth and placing your data integrity at the mercy of a single device interface.

You should be connecting the CF reader, Lexar or RED via the FW800 port on your system. Forget USB, it's a waste of time.

Offload to an eSATA HDD. You have a dual-port card, you can mirror your copy to two drives for redundancy.

Sorry I realize my list was confusing. I don't have a FW800/USB expresscard adapter. What I meant is I have/use the FW800 port and the 2x USB port on the MBP.

Regarding Sonnet vs. Lacie vs. Iomega - honestly I sometimes cry that I spent $150 on the Sonnet card, because I don't see any difference. It crashes R3D Data Manager and MBP just as often as the other cards, and in fact I found the Iomega card to be the most stable of the bunch.

BUT... This is besides my original point. Which is... my RED Station is slower than Lexar, provided that all the rest of the configuration is the same in both scenarios. We can go on about the fact that there could be driver conflicts in the MBP etc, but that would equally affect Lexar AND Red Station. Right now Red Station offloads like a turtle through FW800 port on MBP, and when I connect it through Esata Expresscard adapter - it's just as slow, adding also occasional system and/or R3d Data Manager freeze.

I have experienced driver conflicts before, and in 1 year that I had my MBP I did complete re-install twice already. However this time I am not rushing to format the system drive because the Lexar reader is working fine. so I am questioning whether this is really the MBP's problem.


To be honest, I've had it with MACS. Always liked PC better. Got this MBP strictly for data management about a year ago.... And I still like PC better.

Anyone has any success stories on great PC Data Management systems?

Now that REd CF Station has Esata, I am eager to see how well it would work with a Esata-equipped PC laptop.

[Carsten Fenstermacher]

Don't use r3d datamanager 6.1. It's evil!
Our DIT had lots of corruptions on our last job even after replacing mac, reader, cables, memory. Finally switched back to 5.4 after talking to another DIT and all was good.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't use R3DDM at all. But good to know there's a potential issue. One more thing to look out for if I'm working with other DIT's on a shoot or whatnot.

Sorry for the issues with Macs, Pasha. That's just weird. I run several Macs myself because they're consistently very solid and dependable systems. It does seem that your Macbook Pro has an issue. The Sonnet eSATA card is solid. The instabilities and lock-ups seem to be coming back to a problem system again. I use both CalDigit and Sonnet eSATA cards and have never had any issues, never a lock-up or anything with them.

I would connect that RED CF reader to another system and test. It should not be performing that slow.

As for PC's... They work just fine for data management and if that's what you're more comfortable with, then do what works for you. My HP 8470W laptop has built-in eSATA and it works great. Love the DreamColor screen too, but it lacks the overall build quality of the unibody MBP's. The HP is nice, but it's such a bulky, chunky and flimsy thing. To each their own I guess... I'm mostly platform agnostic here -- I don't see how anyone in this industry can solidify themselves on one platform and be effective or competitive.

The biggest advantage to the Mac for RED workflow is industry preference and the developer affinity to the platform. Most new R3D tools from RED and others tend to hit the Mac first.

[Gunleik Groven]

Are you using R3DDM 6.1? If so, that is part of your problem for non-matching checksums. 5.4 is the most recent stable release of the program. I've had big problems with 6.1.

I have had issues with R3DDM 6.1 and CF cards, too. But I haven't been able to pin it solely to the r3dDM.

To me it seems like the 16GB cards are more scetchy in the copy process generally. I have yet to see an issue which is not copy related, though I have been told several times that others have had non-copy related issues and I see no reasonnot to believe that.

It was interesting to read the response from the Pirates guy that they had used 4000 cards without issues. I would have loved to know theur exact workflow on this.

Actually the only CF reader I have had consistent good, but slow results with, is a freeish usb reader, which doesn't sync well with REDs recomendations...

I haven't tried the RED station, though, but have thought that all issues would go away with that.

[Deanan]

To me it seems like the 16GB cards are more scetchy in the copy process generally. I have yet to see an issue which is not copy related, though I have been told several times that others have had non-copy related issues and I see no reasonnot to believe that.

The 16GB cards are not sketchy, they're fast.
They're way faster than what most of the card readers
test/qualify their readers for (which is sometimes
as low as 15MB/s). So when the card starts pushing
more data through at faster rates (and power
as a function of transfer rates), the readers
start showing problems. Bad, poor or improperly
shielded cables can also cause problems.

4000 cards going through REDstation on pirates4
without problems is a good real world data point.