Technical Data Transfer Questions

[Wil Klassen]

I was looking to suggest upgrade our current DIT system after on our most recent shoots the transfers have kept us behind on set. After some web searches I wasn't able to find answer to the technical questions I have, so I figured if anyone knew, it would be DIT RedUsers.

Current Setup (in short);
17" 2011 Macbook Pro i7
Sonnet Pro eSATA Expresscard/34
FW800 Red Station
eSATA GRAID
eSATA Gdrive
Shotput Pro



My questions are the following;

- In using the eSATA card, does that provide the maximum speed for Expresscard/34 of 2.5Gb/s rate to each port (i.e. to each drive?) or does the card split the transfer rate if two devices are connected thus leaving me at 1.25Gb/s per connected drive when two are attached?

- With USB 3.0 on the new Macbook Pro's, does each USB 3.0 port have 5Gb/s when multiple drives are connected? or is 5Gb/s split between each port when multiple drives are connected?

- If we kept our current setup and upgraded the Macbook Pro, would I see a noticeable increase if I were to get an eSATA breakout box (VIA thunderbolt or USB 3.0) and just used all eSATA?

- Speaking of breakout boxes, the Belkin Thunderbolt Breakout box (http://www.belkin.com/pressRoom/rele...ck_060512.html). Is my theory sound that all connected devices share that 10Mb/s connection and thus if i used 2 USB 3.0 drives they both would get 5Gb/s each? Or since its only a single device thats connected VIA thunderbolt that it would be like daisy chaining FW800 and the rate would suffer because of multiple reading and writing going on in the same pipe?

- If I were to suggest getting a Thunderbolt RAID, it makes no sense to get platter based drives as they are limited to ~300Mb/s on SATA and since Thunderbolt is 10gb/s a 4 bay RAID would be split to 2.5Gb/s because the drives are all sharing the same 10Gb/s port, correct?

- Price and Availability in mind, if we upgraded our Macbook Pro and bought all USB 3.0 platter drives, would we see a noticeable increase over eSATA with our current solution? Or does the platter drives speed make that upgrade moot?

- With my current setup, is it better to have the Red Station hooked up to one of the eSATA ports and have one of the drives on the FW800?


Thank you thank you thank you to any and all who can give their $.02!

[Brian Merlen]

Given your current system I would use a R6 via thunderbolt (or drobo 5d) and hook up the mag reader through esata... Pretty sure that firewire is what is slowing you down. Yes I believe no matter what port you use the bus speed is split when you use multiple ports on the same bus, but check with Jeff on that to verify, I am not positive. I use esata on my mags all the time to a NAS raid and its not really that bad, even with that gigabit Ethernet bottle neck

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hey Will!

A few suggestions:

Get a Sonnet TB to Expresscard adapter and a second Expresscard to eSata adapter. Run the Redmag reader and drives all off of eSata.

Stop using Shotput Pro. It's been running way slow for me lately and causing errors to boot. Drag and drop, count files and bits, visually verify footage. Should be much faster.

[Wil Klassen]

Thanks for the responses!

Brian, yea I kind of figured that it was all shared but wanted to confirm and whatnot. Good to know though and yes, after a solid 4 years with the eSATA raid it may be time to hit up that R6 RAID.

Satsuki!!! Yea I guess it is time to look at going back to drag, drop, verify and visually verify. Hows things been with you? You guys still shooting out 16mm's in between gigs? I'd love to get down on a round or two of that. I'll grab your number off a callsheet and hit you up this weekend.

Out of curiosity fella's, would this be my "best" option; to do the expresscard esata to one drive, Pegasus R6 Tbolt RAID, and Sonnet Tbolt to expresscard with my RedMag? That way each piece is getting it's own pipe?