SCSI Drives

[Piper4873]

OK, I am just about to admit that SATA will not work acceptably on VT4.6. I am considering junking my SATA array and going to SCSI. Now, the question remains, so that I don't make another bone head play....... what is the best brand of SCSI drive and drive controller to buy? I bought WD raptor SATAs and could have probably bought SCSI for about the same price, but anyhow, that is then, this is now.............. or is VT5 going to cure my problems.

Thanks for the help.....
Mike

[Piper4873]

My MB is set up with a SATA controller onboard, so I assume I can just disable it and add a SCSI controller in the on of the PCIx slots. I truly do not want to have to toally rebuild this machine.

[kleima]

For SCSI buy ONLY Seagate.
Get an Adaptec SCSI controller card.

[PIZAZZ]

SATA drives in the correct configuration will work just fine for VT. We use 2 SATA drives as storage for our VJLive design with no problems in many many systems. We also have systems with 6-8 SATA drives running 24/7 in broadcast situations. These are not even the faster Raptor drives that you are using. I would suspect you have something weird going on with your system other than the SATA drives themselves. It could be the design of the motherboard's builtin controller. I would suggest a dedicated SATA drive controller like the 3Ware or Highpoint type. That would be much cheaper to try out than totally replacing your storage with SCSI. If you want to go SCSI no matter what then by all means go ahead and do it. It is just money in the end.

[Piper4873]

Jef, a couple of questions if I may.... I have been checking with supermicro (my board) and highpoint and both of them are really surprised that I am using windows striped drives. They both say that I should be using hardware striped drives. How do you do it in your machines? I am looking at the 2310 rocketraid card which is a 4 channel. Your thoughts please.

thanks
Mike

[tlively]

Jef, a couple of questions if I may.... I have been checking with supermicro (my board) and highpoint and both of them are really surprised that I am using windows striped drives. They both say that I should be using hardware striped drives. How do you do it in your machines? I am looking at the 2310 rocketraid card which is a 4 channel. Your thoughts please.

thanks
Mike
Mike, I'm going to give you what is basically an old answer to an old question. Newer imore specific info may be available.

First. VT-5 is supposed to use a different buffering system that should work better with SATA than VT-4 uses. I don't have VT-5 so I obviously can't confirm this.

Second. Workstation/ Server MBs and RAID cards are not really designed for video production they are designed as file servers for multiple users. As such they handle multiple data requests and bursts of data very well. They do this with a combination of buffers (both real and virtual), task switching and pipe switching. What they are not specifically designed for is large amounts of uninteruptable streaming data. When you talk to representatives of these products they will tell you about average data rates and burst speeds. They will normally not have data on sustainable data rates in a multitasking multithreaded demand environment because they don't design their products for this purpose. In a VT environment you want to avoid buffering your data on to a RAID cards data buffer because doing so will result in bursts of data instead of a steady stream.

What this all means, and I am extrapolating heavily from what I learned years ago in the fight between SCSI vs IDE, Is you do not want to use hardware RAID, If you buy a RAID card you should use the regular drivers not the raid drivers put as many drives on your RAID 0 Striped set as you can (usually 4). You should have another drive outside of your stripped set and your system drive that can support at least one stream of video. If you are having problems try putting your "content" ie. effects on this drive.

Tom

[Piper4873]

Thanks Tom,, I have a couple of questions though. What are you using the additional drive capable of running a video stream for? I am interested in just how you have your system set up. As a follow up on my problem, I discovered a drive with some bad sectors and the drivers on my SiI on-board controller were 3 years old... should have checked that on set up... At the present, my SATA's are performing flawlessly. I ran Bob's multicam on 3 streams of video and 1 audio stream the other night with no problems. I presently have my content and effects on the C: drive, but I do have an available 70 gb drive that is only being used for storage.

[tlively]

Thanks Tom,, I have a couple of questions though. What are you using the additional drive capable of running a video stream for? I am interested in just how you have your system set up. .
I would move your content to your spare 70 GB drive. The problem with having your content on C: is that is where windows places it's pagefile, drivers and other temporary files. My only caution is this drive should be able to support reasonable speed. Newtek's "Diskspeed.exe" should be able to give you a clue as to how this spare disk performs.
I regret to admit at the momment I don't have a system set up. With luck I might have time to put a VT system together after the first of the year. I spent today at the ASIS Security expo. Security and surveilance video. A whole different world.

Tom

[Piper4873]

I have heard a lot about diskspeed.exe from Newtek but cannot for the life of me find the program. I have looked from one end to the other of the VT4 files. Could you please tell me where it is?

Thanks

[PSegarra]

3ware controller card work fine writes at 189 and reads at 239. The card is 64bit but it's also 32 bit if you don't have a 64 bit slot.

[Sledgehammer]

I have put SATA on a couple of systems, going with RAID 0 or 5 off of an intel mobo.

Really frickin fast. Find it hard to believe it isn't fast enough to edit on.

Are you using your system as an editor, or doing live switching? Both?


I think your main problem is that the content and effects are on your C: drive. I believe SOMEWHERE in the specs it specifies a separate video array.

I also noted that stated you have an older drive. Do all of your drives match, model and size-wise? If not, that would be a huge problem.

Get a fast IDE drive for you system, and use the SATA array for content only!


Kim Henderson
T.S. Computers