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Simply Storage (What are my storage needs)
BASIC STORAGE REQUIREMENTS Storage needs can be as simple as a single Firewire Enclosure to multiple Hardware RAID 5 Controllers with enclosures full of hard drives all RAID-ed together. Whatever your needs may be, we'll help you find the right hardware to fulfill your requirements while ensuring that you have the growth potential needed for future expansion. One thing to consider is the time and expense you dedicated to create the irreplaceable data you now want to store. Most of our customers are storing data of an artistic nature that can never be duplicated if lost. If you have data of any nature that can't be replaced you must maintain a storage routine and workflow that keeps it safe. We at Burly Storage care about your data and will help you find the safest and most economical solution possible. Most of us here have a Graphic Art background and have spent many years learning the ins and outs of data storage. A common saying around our office is "We would rather bleed than lose our data". We'll help you protect yours. For most people the best route for storage is a Desktop Enclosure connected to a Host Card that's installed inside the computer itself. This will give you the fastest and safest data storage available at an affordable cost. For some people a Firewire Enclosure will better suit the needs without requiring the purchase of a host card but providing a little less speed. Whatever your storage needs may be, Burly Storage should have a system for you. Our enclosures are designed to keep your drives healthy with a combination of excellent cooling and a high quality built in power supply. These two items are crucial for the safety of your data. Most Firewire Enclosures on the market have neither and may drastically shorten the life of your hard drives and thusly the security of your data. We at Burly Storage have searched high and low for the best Firewire Enclosures on the market that have appropriate cooling and a built in power supply as well as universal Hot Swappability with our Burly SATA Enclosures. These Firewire Enclosures support Firewire 800, Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 and are the best on the planet! Our Burly SATA Enclosures are the best around anywhere, designed for drive longevity as well as maximum data transfer speeds. We have our own in house lab for product development and testing that ensures that we know our products inside and out. We will not sell an inferior product. Our Techs are but a phone call or an email away and can help with pre-sales and post-sales support. If you choose a native SATA system for maximum speed and security, the first thing you'll need is a Host Card. If you don't know what type of host card will work in your computer please visit our SATA Host Card Guide. It will walk you through the process and keep you from ordering something that you can't use. Once you know what type of card will work in your computer, visit the Mac Hardware and PC Hardware sections in this guide to help you choose what brand or system will best fit your needs. HOST CARD INSTALLATION PROCEDURE When you have the host card in hand, it's just a matter of powering down and opening up your computer, removing the PCI cover from the backplane directly behind the slot that you want to use and aligning the card with the slot. Push the card in firmly until you feel it bottom in the socket. Secure the card with the screw or bracket that you removed to take out the PCI cover. Close up the computer and power it on. It's that simple, should only take you a minute or two. You may have to install drivers or update the Firmware depending on the card and application. Now plug the enclosure data cable(s) into the back of the host card and turn it on. Congratulations, you have just installed a SATA Storage System onto your computer. You will now want to Format and name your new drives. I recommend that you Zero Out all new drives before loading any data on them or building an array. STORAGE SOLUTIONS
RAID LEVELS DEFINED RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a way of storing data on two or more drives in combination for Failure Tolerance, Redundancy and/or Performance gains. By placing data on multiple disks configured as a single volume I/O (input/output) operations can overlap improving performance, or by mirroring multiple disks thus increasing the mean time between failures providing some Failure Tolerance. Important: When using any RAID be it a RAID 1 (Mirrored) or a Hardware based RAID 5 your data is still at risk. There are innumerable ways to lose or corrupt data and hardware failure is only one of them. You MUST have at least one complete backup of your data, preferably two, one being offsite. (Computers get stolen, offices burn, mistakes occur and there's always acts of God to consider) You can replace your computer but you can't replace the photos you've taken over the last 10 years or the HD Video your crew spent the last month editing. KEEP YOUR DATA BACKED UP! This is as important as capturing the data in the first place. Make it a priority. RAIDs are not for everyone, in fact most people should avoid them and stick with a backed-up JBOD system managed by software. In some instances using a RAID actually puts your data more at risk. (Striped RAID arrays lose their data if one member fails. When you combine multiple drives in an array you increase the chance of a single drive failing by the number of drives included, i.e., a four drive RAID 0 array would have four times the chance of a drive failing) Sometimes this can't be helped such as Video Editing where the only way to achieve the needed data throughput speed is striping the disks together to gain their combined speeds and volume. In this case you'll want to have a good Backup Routine in place that backs up to an array of equal size every few hours or so. This way if you fail an array you can keep working by using the backup copy as your main data storage while repairs are made to your first array. This is why we recommend that you have a second backup. You never want to work on your only viable copy, it's like walkng a tightrope without a net.
HOW TO BUILD A RAID These are instructions of how to build a RAID in the simplest of ways. If you're not sure which RAID will best work for you read the section - "RAID Levels Defined". In all cases erase and "Zero Out Data" before you begin. For more in depth information please read the Host Card Manuals below. Mac- Open Disk Utility, Choose a new drive on the list on the left, make sure it's an empty drive. Choose the RAID option at the top of the window. In the first line name your new RAID volume. Second line choose the format you wish to use, most people use the defaulted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Now choose the RAID Type, Mirrored - RAID 1, striped - RAID 0 or Concatenated Disk Set. Drag the drives you want included in this RAID from the list on the left to the large box on the right. When you have all the drives you want included in the large box hit create at the bottom. It will take a minute or so to format the drives into the new RAID Volume. Once it's done that new volume should show up in Disk Utility as well as on the desktop. PC - If you are using the Lycom Host Card refer to that section below before proceeding. To build a RAID in Windows you will have to go to "Disk Management". Go to the Control Panel or the Start Menu, Choose "Administrative Tools/Computer management/Storage/Disk Management". Depending on what Host Card you are using a "Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard" may start. Choose all Disks to Initialize, Choose all Disks to Convert and complete the Wizard. If you have a CalDigit card this is already done for you up to this point. In Disk Management you should now see your new drives in the lower right corner of the window shown as bar graphs. To the left of each bar graph is a square box with the drive numbers listed. At this point you must make sure of which drive you choose since it's possible to damage drives that have data on them. Right click the box to the left of the first of your new drives. Keep in mind that your old drives may be mixed in with the new ones. Choose the "New Volume" option, this should start the "New Volume Wizard". Choose the type of RAID you wish to build, Select Disks and add the number you wish for this volume. Assign a drive letter that will not be duplicated. Make sure it is not a drive letter that may already be assigned to a disk that you have that may not be currently installed such as a Firewire or USB Disk. Choose the File System that you prefer, usually NTFS, leave the allocation size set to "Default" and name the volume in the "Volume Label" bar. Click the "Perform a Quick Format" button and complete the Wizard. You will have to repeat as needed for individual drives or multiple arrays. Once this is done these disks should show up in "My Computer". CalDigit Application - Load the CalDigit Application from the included CD. Make sure you have the enclosure installed and powered up with the data cable plugged in. Open the "S2VR Manager", your drives should show up. (I suggest that you "Zero Out Data" before you begin. If the Disks disappear from the S2VR Manager after Zeroing reboot your computer with the enclosure powered up.) In the S2VR Managers left window hi-light "S2VR (SN#500xxx)" and click on "Configure RAID" at the bottom. Choose the type of RAID you want, Performance - RAID 0; Protected - RAID 1; or JBOD. Lycom Application - When you purchase a Lycom Host Card it comes with a Driver CD that has the drivers required by the OS as well as an application that you will need to have loaded to Initialize the drives. This "SATARaid5" software is on the CD as well as a Java application to load it. On the CD you will find a file called "Raid5 SATAII_4Port". Open this file, double click the Sil3124 icon, then choose which version of Windows you're running. If you don't know you are probably using standard 32 bit Windows. Open the GUI file. Here you will find four files, one PDF that is your Host Card User Guide. Load the other three files. You should now have a "SATARaid5" icon on your desktop. NOTE: IF YOU WISH TO BUILD A SOFTWARE RAID 5 STOP HERE AND SKIP DOWN TO THE LYCOM RAID 5 HEADING BELOW. Open the "SATARaid5" application with your enclosure attached to the host card and powered up. You should see a group of boxes, each a location for a drive on the card. You should see the same number of GRAY boxes as the drives you have attached. From the menu bar at the top choose "RAID Group", then "Create RAID Group". This will allow you to initialize the new drives so that the OS can see them. A Create RAID Group window will appear. Make sure that the Configuration is "Contiguous" and change the Capacity menu bar to "MAX". This will initialize the whole drive. Now highlight a drive in the window at the bottom and hit "Create". Do this for each drive shown in the lower window. Now you should find that each box that was gray is now green. Now please refer to the PC section above to create your RAID 0 or 1. Lycom RAID 5 - Read the Lycom Application above first. Open the SATARaid5 Utility. You should see the new drives you have attached in gray. From the Menu Bar choose "RAID Group" then "Create RAID Group". Type a name for your RAID in "RAID Group Label", set Configuration to "Parity RAID", set Capacity to "MAX". Hi-light the drives you wish to include in this RAID up to 5 Disks with a maximum total capacity of 2 TB and hit the Create button. Now refer to the PC section above. You must continue with the "Initialize Disk Wizard" and the "New Volume Wizard" as shown under PC above but Disk Management will only see the one Volume. 3ware Sidecar Hardware RAID 5 - In 3DM, choose Management/Maintenance. From the available drives list, select the drives you want to include in the unit by marking the checkbox in front of the port number for each one. If you are creating single drive units (single disks or hot spares), you can configure multiple drives at once. Click "Create Unit". In the TYPE field, select the RAID configuration you want. In the NAME box, enter a name for the unit. Make changes to the unit policies, as desired. Click OK. After you create a unit, it must be formatted, partitioned, and mounted by the operating system before it can be used. There are a lot of options available to you when using this hardware, please read the 3DM Sidecar Manual available below. HOST CARD MANUALS
FAILURE TOLERANCE VS REDUNDANCY Sometimes these get mixed up. Failure Tolerance (or fault tolerance) is the ability of an array to be rebuilt after a single component of the array has failed. This is usually accomplished by removing the failed drive and inserting a replacement. At this point the array can begin the rebuild process. This is only available on the parity RAIDs such as RAID 3 and RAID 5 which due to the complexity should not be relied on as your sole storage. You still must have a backup. Redundancy is much safer. It's simply having your data in two or three separate places. Data is stored on multiple hard drives. For most people this is the best way to go, although it also means having to keep them up to date. You should have a solid Backup Routine to make that happen, read below. BACKUP ROUTINES The safest backup system is one that doesn't require any human input to manage. We all forget to do things like backing up our data when we should. Murphy's Law dictates that that's when something will go wrong. One of the best ways to guarantee that your data is safe is to use redundant storage and set up a software based system to keep it backed up and up to date. This way at the specified time your data is automatically copied or synchronized from your main work drive to your backups. You only have to verify that it occurred, most backup software will have some form of notification that tells you that. Your software application should back up your data as often as needed so in the event of a hardware failure you may only lose the data added since the last backup. Most software applications will notify you if a file is unreadable, corrupted, or in some way damaged and couldn't be backed up. The benefit to using software applications to perform your backups rather than mirroring your data is that if you should delete or damage a file you needed, you can recover it from your backup. Were your drives mirrored the file would have been deleted or damaged on both drives. That's why real time copies are not generally a good idea. If you are using your software application to backup to multiple drives, they should be done at different times. Perhaps one every midnight and the other once a week. This way if you find that you have corrupted or deleted a file you needed after the first backup takes place you should still have it on your Archive Volume. On the other hand if you've got 20 workers collectively working on a video editing project you may want that backup to occur every few hours throughout the day since your man hours add up so quickly. One of the best software backup applications we have found for the Mac platform is "Synchronize Pro-X" produced by a company called QDEA. You can download a free trial and if you like it pay for the license. Well worth the money. It can even backup your boot drive with a bootable copy. Another worth trying for Mac users is Chronosync. For PC's there are a number of great applications like Genie Backup Manager, Norton ghost, Retrospect, etc. FIREWIRE VS SATA Firewire these days has given more people grief than just about any other storage format. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, the firewire specifications weren't designed to be used for hard drives. In order for hard drives to be attached to the Firewire bus on your computer the signal has to be converted to the Firewire (or USB) protocol, then converted back at the enclosure end by a Bridge Board. This conversion sometimes causes problems with data transfer and can cause data corruption as well as slow data transfer speeds due to the conversion overhead. Another problem is that the Firewire enclosure industry is so competitive that most manufacturers cut corners to market the least expensive product that they can to gather market share. The age old axiom holds true that you get what you pay for. These enclosures are build with no cooling whatsoever and the small brick power supplies that contribute to early hard drive failures. They keep the heat generated by the hard drive inside the enclosure, basically baking the drive to an early death. There are many uses for a high quality Firewire Hard Drive Enclosure. On-location photography when used with a PowerBook or Laptop for downloading photos from a camera for instance. If you want a means of remote data capture with the ability to swap the drive into your main storage enclosure when you get back to the office check out our Burly Hot Swap Firewire 400/800/USB Single Drive Enclosures. If you're capturing video try the Burly Two Bay Firewire 400/800/USB Enclosure. These units work great since you can remove the drive tray and install it into our fully compatible SATA Hot Swap Enclosures. All Burly Hot Swap Firewire enclosures have a built in power supply, excellent cooling and are available in single, two, four and eight drive models, that may be daisy chained (linked one after another). Our single bay enclosures are also available as a native SATA Enclosure. These SATA enclosures can be direct connected to your PowerBook, MacBook Pro or PC laptop via a PCMCIA or Express34 Host Card. These Cards can mount up to 10 drives using a Port Multiplier Enclosure or up to two drives directly connected. You will achieve speeds unheard of with Firewire enclosures. MOBILE STORAGE Whether you're doing on location video capture or downloading your camera to your mobile computer at a shoot, it's a good idea to create an immediate backup of your work. This requires an external storage solution. There are several options available. You can attach single or multiple hard drives via Firewire or keep it natively SATA for even more speed and simplicity. To use a Firewire Enclosure all you will need is the enclosure with a hard drive installed. Plug it in and go to work. By using a native SATA solution you can count on achieving the fastest possible speeds. You will need a Host Adaptor Card in one of three formats, PCMCIA (Cardbus)for older machines or the Express34 or 54 for newer computers. These adaptor cards slide into a slot on the side of your mobile computer and provide external Port Multiplier capable SATA ports. These ports can be direct connected to a SATA Enclosure or may be used with our Port Multiplier Enclosures to mount up to 10 drives. HOT SWAP VS DIRECT MOUNTED DRIVES Hot Swap is the ability for a drive to be removed or installed while the computer is running. The benefits are many. For instance, you can have as many drive trays filled with drives as you want to be swapped into your enclosure as needed, many more than the enclosure itself holds. You also have the ability to capture images or video at a remote site on one of our Hot Swap Firewire 400/800/USB Enclosures then pull that drive (or drives) out and slip it into your Desktop Enclosure for editing. Another great use of Hot Swap Enclosures is the ability to archive your data off site. The Removable Trays are a fairly safe way to transport your data physically off site. An incredible amount of data can be stored in a very small space such as a safety deposit box or simply in a file cabinet at home. You can use revolving sets of drives for your archiving and offsite backup storage. Economical, fast, safe and convenient. Windows users will need an application to dismount external drives. One of the simplest that I have found is DriveSwap32 available to download for .00 from the Tucows site. This application lets you choose which drive or drives you want to dismount and do so. Very basic but useful to have. Mac users have a built in application called Disk Utility that will do the same thing. The Mac user can also just drag the disk icon from the desktop into the trash to dismount the drive. Note: LCD trays will not work in standard bays. The reverse does work, standard trays work perfectly in LCD bays. So if you have an LCD equipped enclosure you can purchase additional LCD or standard trays. If you have a standard tray equipped enclosure you can only use standard trays. BENEFITS OF PORT MULTIPLICATION Port Multiplication is a technology designed to connect multiple hard drives to a single SATA port on a Port Multiplier capable Host Card. By doing so you can connect up to five drives on each external data cable thus decreasing the number of external connections. The benefit is that you can use a single four port host card that's Port Multiplier capable and mount up to 20 drives. Especially useful for videographers doing HD capture and editing since you can build monster 8 and 10 drive arrays for the throughput speed and volume required for editing and still have the ability to mount an equal size redundant array to keep as a working backup. Another benefit to Port multiplication is that it allows you to use many smaller and less expensive hard drives to make up large capacity storage. Costs per GB go way down compared to the one drive per port method using larger drives. By using Port Multiplication with your mobile computer you can attach large arrays for photo or video capture. With a two port Port Multiplier capable PCMCIA (Cardbus) or Express34 Host Card installed you can mount up to 10 drives for massive mobile storage. While testing performance using identical drives both attached via direct connection and through a Port multiplier we found that the limiting factor with Port Multiplication is the single data cable. The maximum data throughput of a single cable is about 230 MB/s. Today's 7200 RPM drives are capable of about 65 MB/s when empty and begin slowing down as you write to the inner tracks. When using four and five drives on a Port multiplier, initially the speed of the drives are limited by the single cable to a maximum 230 MB/s until the drives start filling up. As the drives fill they drastically slow down because the inner tracks of the drive have a shorter circumference and therefore hold less data per revolution. Using a Port Multiplier you should see steady data transfer speeds of about 225-230 MB/s until the combined drive speeds become slower than this threshold once the drives are about 80% full. Since this is as full as you ever want to fill a drive it makes for a very stable and predictable system. When accessing drives individually you will achieve full drive speeds. If you access multiple drives simultaneously the cables limit still applies. By using two Port Multipliers the speed capabilities double thus allowing for up to 460 MB/s throughout the useful range on the drives. A four port Host Card can mount up to four 4 or 5 bay PM Enclosures or two 8 bay PM Enclosures. If you already own a direct connect enclosure don't fret, all is not lost. We have Port Multiplier Upgrade Kits available on our Accessories page. These kits are easy to install and will convert your four and five bay enclosures to use a single eSATA to eSATA cable. If you have an eight bay, you will need two kits installed with four drives attached to each kit. Your eight bay will then have only two external data cables. You must use a Port Multiplier capable host card such as the Lycom, Sonnet or CalDigit. The industry in general is going away from direct connect for host cards. They are moving toward Port Multiplication as the most common means of connecting large numbers of hard drives to a system. Some manufacturers have dropped their direct connect card lines altogether. For more information on how a Port multiplier works please read our Port Multiplication Guide. PHOTO STORAGE A lot of photographers call us wanting to know about storing their valuable photo libraries on RAIDs. In most cases your data will be much safer stored on individual drives backed up to drives of similar size using a software application to manage the backup. There is usually no reason to put photo storage on a RAID volume since the data is actually put more at risk by doing so. Photo editing usually calls for a fast scratch disk separate from your OS and Application drive and your photo data stored by itself on yet another drive. This will allow for a fast workflow if managed correctly. The photo data throughput doesn't have to be that fast since you import the photo data into an application to do your editing. A RAID for photo storage just isn't that much of a benefit. One very convenient product that we have for photographers is our Hot Swap Firewire 400/800/USB Single Bay Enclosures. They allow you to capture your image data via PowerBook or laptop for on location shooting and then swap that drive directly into your Desktop Hot Swap Storage Enclosure for photo editing on your desktop computer. These Firewire Enclosures are the best on the market with built in power supplies and excellent cooling to keep your drives alive. For an even faster single bay solution we have a Native SATA Enclosure that you can connect to your PowerBook, laptop or MacBook Pro by using either a PCMCIA (Cardbus) or Express34 Host Card. These enclosures connect via an external Sata cable. For the bulk storage of your photo libraries I recommend our SATA Hot Swap Drive Enclosures. Our SATA Hot Swap Storage Enclosures are the best means of storing your image data and are compatible with both Macs and PCs. They all have excellent cooling with large case fans and independent fans on each drive, and an oversized power supply built into the enclosure. For the most expandable storage solutions look into our Port Multiplier Enclosures and Host Cards. They connect up to five drives using only one port on the host card and one external data cable for a total capacity of up to 20 drives per Host Card. One important factor to consider is how to keep your stored images backed up. Checkout the Backup Routines paragraph above. Also worth reading is our Photoshop Acceleration Guide. Another valuable resource for digital photographers is Peter Krogh's "The DAM Book". His book is dedicated to Digital Asset Management, cataloging software, workflow practices, image archiving, filing structures and about any other topic you can come up with concerning digital image storage. He also maintains the DAM Forum that is second to none. NOTE: Drives must never be filled to their capacity. If drives become too full you stand the risk of overwriting the index or causing data corruption. Keep your data volume under 70% of the drive capacity. This is especially important when storing photo data. VIDEO STORAGE The two things you need for video storage are size and speed. Depending on what format you're using maybe a lot of speed. Two items to consider regarding hard drives. Hard drives by design slow down as they fill up due to the shorter circumference of the inner tracks and therefore the less data that can be stored per revolution. The array that worked great when you started your video now drops frames because it has slowed down as it filled up. Secondly, hard drives should never be filled to their capacity. The index stored on the drive may become overwritten or corrupted if the drive becomes too full. Always keep drives under 80% of their capacity. Your storage needs depend on your format, video size, compression, number of streams, workflow etc. To calculate approximate speeds of a striped array you just add the individual speed of it's members. For a standard 7200 RPM SATA drive figure about 65 MB/s. If you stripe (RAID-0) two drives you should get about 130 MB/s, and so on. How Fast? - To write a single stream of the most common current top end 10-bit 1080i uncompressed video you will need around 250 MB/s per stream. Many editing systems have higher requirements, because they need bandwidth to read more than one video stream at the same time for real time effects. For editing we recommend that you use a minimum of 8 hard drives striped (RAID-0) together, preferably 10. When using our Port Multiplier Enclosures with 10 drives you will see the system speed remain the same up to about 80% of the total drive capacity so you no longer have to worry about the drives slowing down or not having enough speed. You should maintain about 450-460 MB/s throughout the useful capacity of the drives, plenty of overhead for even the most demanding of formats. With our Four Port PM Host Cards you can also have a full speed backup of your data online at all times. How Large? - The storage volume needed per hour of footage varies widely with formats. Anywhere from 11 GB per hour of footage to over 1800 GB per hour. You must have room for the original footage as well as edited footage. Check out the table below for storage volume needed vs hours of varying formats. AJA KONA has available a free application that will help you to determine your specific storage needs in regard to speed and volume. By clicking the AJA KONA link the MAC version will be automatically downloaded to your computer. By using this application you can explore the data rates needed for different video formats. One very popular system for video storage with built in Fault Tolerance is the HUGE Systems MediaVault which can be configured in a RAID 3 as well as a RAID 0. One of our customers, Adam Levine, has posted a review with some insights on video performance.
NOTE: The data rates and storage volumes listed in the table above are approximate due to the many variables involved. You can do the math with the help of the AJA Kona Data Rate Calculator above or contact us for personal help PERFORMANCE - DATA THROUGHPUT Rule number one, drives slow down as they fill up. Think of a drive as a record player. The grooves on the outside of the record have a longer circumference and can therefore hold more music than the inner grooves. So for each revolution of a hard drive the outer tracks can write more data than the inner tracks. For this reason empty hard drives are faster than drives that are nearly full since they write to the outer (longer) tracks first. Today's SATA 7200 RPM hard drives are capable of about 65 MB/s when empty. At the drives full capacity the speed is about half what it was when it was empty. This is especially important when considering video storage. If the combined drive speed of a RAID array gets too slow you will begin dropping frames. When streaming or editing video you should always maintain more speed and volume than you need. Another thing to keep in mind, drives last longer if they are left running as opposed to shutting them down every day. This is true as long as the enclosure that they are in has adequate cooling and a high quality power supply that's protected from input voltage fluctuations (By using a quality UPS and/or Surge Protector). The thermal expansion as a drive heats up to operating temperature then cools down is what eventually wears out the drive internals. If a drive can be left spinning it will only consume about 9 watts and will stay at a stable temperature. For recent Macs this is of even more importance. The OS performs drive maintenance at night if the drives are running. If you sleep your drives or shut down your computer at night this important maintenance never occurs. We recommend that you never sleep drives and leave them up all the time. That's why our SATA Enclosures are designed to be operated 24/7.
You can easily increase System Performance by adding RAM to your computer. Burly Storage sells only the best Lifetime Guaranteed RAM for most models of Mac and PC computers. RAM is easily installed in most cases and usually without tools. RAM boosts in system performance will be especially noticed when editing photos or rendering video. HARDWARE RAID - RAID 5 - 6 Hardware RAID is accomplished by using a host controller with an on board CPU to handle the needed RAID calculations freeing up your system CPU. This is very important when using a RAID 5 or RAID 6 array since by it's nature it tends to be a CPU hog. RAID 5&6's share parity information among all drive members. They requires a lot of processor to perform all the calculations needed to maintain the revolving parity. This is best accomplished by using a Hardware based Controller such as the 3ware since all the needed calculations can be performed on the Controller itself leaving the system CPU untaxed. There are not many Hardware solutions for the Mac. One that stands out for the PCI Express equipped Mac (Dual Core, Quad and MacPro) is the 3ware-Sidecar System and the CalDigit HDPro. The Sidecar uses a four bay enclosure attached to the Hardware Controller via a latch-able Multilane cable. This system supports RAID 5 up to 3 TB. When used in a RAID 5 configuration approximately 25% of the usable storage volume is used to maintain the parity data so available volume is reduced. During our in-house testing we achieved an average read of 137 MB/s and an average write of 206 MB/s while operating in a RAID 5 configuration. The HDPro uses 8 drives in a RAID 5 configuration providing Blazing Fast (up to 380 MB/s) performance Another Hardware RAID system that is an excellent choice for video editing is the HUGE Systems MediaVault. The MediaVault uses an Ultra320 SCSI interface and ATA drives to provide a fault protected RAID 3 solution that's fast enough to stream video. Hardware RAIDs are the safest possible means of storing your irreplaceable data but backups are always required. MAC HARDWARE There are several means of adding storage to a Mac Computer depending on which one you have. The G4 and some G5s have a PCI slot (4 RAM slots). Some single and dual processor G5s have a PCI-X slot (8 RAM slots). The Dual Core and PacPro models all have PCIe (PCI Express slots). If you're not sure which you have check out our Host Card Guide first. PCI-X cards are backward compatible with PCI busses but the PCIe bus is not compatible with any other but type. Firewire Enclosures are a great device for on location data retrieval from your digital camera, be it video or photo. Most Macs have at least one Firewire port, either 400 or the faster 800. Firewire hardware can in most cases be chained together allowing several pieces of hardware to be attached to your computer by a single Firewire port. The most important attributes to look for in Firewire Hard Drive Enclosures is a built in power supply and good cooling for the hard drive. These are the two points of failure. Check out our One, Two, Four and Eight Bay Firewire Enclosures available with Hot Swap or Direct Mounted drives. These enclosures all support Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0. We searched months for the best available Firewire Enclosures and here they are. These enclosures all have built in power supplies and the best available cooling. The Hot Swap Trays will interchange with our other enclosures for excellent drive portability. SATA Enclosures are the way to go for Photo Storage, Audio Libraries and any kind of Video Storage. To attach a SATA Enclosure to your Mac you will need a Host Card. Please visit our SATA Host Card Guide if you need help deciding which one will fit inside your computer or which card is best for you. There are two means of connection, direct connect (One data cable for each drive) or via a Port Multiplier that will connect up to 5 drives on each cable. The direct connect method is an older technology and the industry is moving quickly toward Port Multiplication because of it's scale-ability. Never before could you so easily find a system that allows you to grow as needed. You can start off with a single four or five bay PM Enclosure and add another enclosure as your storage needs expand. Some of these Host Cards can mount as many as 20 drives. If you have questions about Port Multiplication please read our Guide to Port Multiplication. If your data is of the up most importance to you consider a Hardware System. These systems have a processor and RAM built right on the Host Card so your computers CPU doesn't get taxed managing your storage. These Controllers offer RAID 5, a system of verifying your data is stored safely by using a rotating parity. This is the safest possible storage. The Hardware RAID 5 systems can be striped together to form a RAID 50 for the speeds needed for video. There are always ways that data can be corrupted including human error, for this reason you must always have at least one backup of your data. RAID 5 is no exception. We also stock Lifetime Guaranteed RAM for most Macs, including the MacPro. We'll even help you find the correct RAM for your computer. Increasing your systems RAM is an easy way to boost system performance especially with photographers and graphic artists. And it's so easy to install, in most cases without tools. We can save you a bundle on MacPro RAM and even give you a better warranty than Apple. Check out our Mac Performance Acceleration Guide. PC HARDWARE PC users can benefit from the storage solutions discussed here as well. Our Burly Firewire Enclosures are USB compatible and offer excellent storage opportunities. They feature a built in power supply and excellent cooling and are available in Hot Swap or Direct Mount configurations. The Hot Swap tray is interchangeable with our other enclosures to make swapping drives around even more convenient. Our SATA Enclosures and Port Multiplier Enclosures offer excellent storage solutions when connected via our CalDigit , Sonnet or Lycom brand Host Cards. These cards are both Port Multiplier capable and will allow you to connect up to 20 drives to your computer. This allows your system the ability to expand with you as your needs grow. The CalDigit card is also available as part of a ready to go Storage Solution that includes the needed Host Card, Enclosure, Cables and Hard Drives. Install the Host Card, slide the drive trays into the enclosure, plug in the data cable and power cable and turn it on. It's that simple. Once you have the Host Card installed you can add additional enclosures for up to 15 TB worth of storage. SATAI VS SATAII There are some common misunderstanding about the differences between SATAI and SATAII. It does not necessarily mean that a SATAII drive will be faster than a SATAI. SATAI and II are the interface specifications and features to which the drives must adhere to. SATAII drives usually have more functions built in so some older computers may not be capable of using these drives. Some newer SATAII drives have a jumper on the back that will allow them to operate on the STATI Spec. To allow them full SATAII usefulness you must remove that jumper. Some hard drive controllers are not compatible of working with the Firmware on these newer drives. Currently SATAII drives perform at about the same I/O speeds as SATAI drives. For a little more information on SATAI and SATAII specs read this short description. SATAI and SATAII drives use the same cables, the original Type-A with the "L" shaped tab inside. There is also some confusion about this. There are two basic types of SATA connectors. The original SATA cables sometimes called Type-A, they have the "L" shaped inner tab and the newer more robust eSATA cables that were improved for external use, these have a flat tab inside the connector (NO "L" Shape). There are also latching cables that will actually grab the inside of the socket and hang on for a little extra security. Generally SATA cables fit snugly enough that this is not needed. Most External ported Host Cards today use eSATA and most internal SATA connections such as hard drives are made with Type-A. Make sure what type cabling you need before you order since the connector types are not interchangeable. There are converter cables available with eSATA on one end and Type-A on the other. NOTE: As always you can contact us here at Burly Storage for expertise in storage hardware. We're always happy to help you find a solution that fits your needs. For answers to your questions please email support@burlystorage.com or call our Tech Line at 1-208-983-9999. WARNING: The information found here may not be fit for human consumption. If you find obvious errors they may be mistakes on my part or figments of your imagination. The technology and products available change quickly enough to cause loose bowels or constipation or both. We at Burly Storage test what we sell so we can bring to you the best available products with a support structure second to none. We stand behind our products and we'll help you when the chips are down. Just remember, no animals were harmed in our testing. Please let us know if this page was of any help. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. |
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