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Another Newbie Question - External Drive

So we just bought a Catalyst v4 and I am looking for an all around smart external drive solution. I want to be able to back up content as well as store custom content (keeping only standard HES content permanently on the server itself).
On the surface it seems some kind of RAID would be smart (1 or 5 perhaps).
In the same breath however I wonder if it is smarter to get an external SCSI that would allow more simultaneous playback options (is this a correct assumption?) as well as serving as a backup. But then do I need yet another drive to backup the custom content....?!?!? Oh, and I don't want to spend over $2000. Preferably much less....
Any advice from the pro's out there would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Again. Mark :)
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  • What you assumed is correct, the FAST option is a SCSI card.
    We own 3 Catalyst systems, and we are using a much cheapper option, we have 2 External LaCie D2 Big Disks (500 Gb each), we found that disk is a RAID 0 internally, and we get something arround 70 Mb/s of transfer using FIREWIRE 800, we set those 2 Disks as a RAID 0, using the MAC SoftRaid option, on the Disk Utility.We are getting 90 Mb/s of transfer rate over the FIREWIRE 800. You can choose to configure your system as a RAID 0 instead, and you will have only 70 Mb/s, but with a Backup, I use RAID 0, and at the moment the Backup is only the Internal Library on the Catalyst.
    No Backup for Custom content, but that is a choice.
    SCSI can get you like arround 160Mb/s (I did not tested that option) on a RAID 0 4 Disks config. So almost 2 times faster than I got.
    I can say with the Firewire drives, I can run without any dropframes or speed changes, running at 30f/s (29.97) depending of the Video Compression, like 4 to 5 Videos simultaniosly. Over than that you can note the frame rate slows down. For us is a limitation what we can live fine with it and the whole system 2 laCie External drives costed me like 1000,00. La Cie has also a RackMount KIT, for 2 Disks, is perfect.
    I am a user, I shure some HES personel can explain better options and what HES point as better Cat sys option. The above solution suits fine for US pondering COST and Performance.
    Hope that helps
    Gian
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  • What you assumed is correct, the FAST option is a SCSI card.
    We own 3 Catalyst systems, and we are using a much cheapper option, we have 2 External LaCie D2 Big Disks (500 Gb each), we found that disk is a RAID 0 internally, and we get something arround 70 Mb/s of transfer using FIREWIRE 800, we set those 2 Disks as a RAID 0, using the MAC SoftRaid option, on the Disk Utility.We are getting 90 Mb/s of transfer rate over the FIREWIRE 800. You can choose to configure your system as a RAID 0 instead, and you will have only 70 Mb/s, but with a Backup, I use RAID 0, and at the moment the Backup is only the Internal Library on the Catalyst.
    No Backup for Custom content, but that is a choice.
    SCSI can get you like arround 160Mb/s (I did not tested that option) on a RAID 0 4 Disks config. So almost 2 times faster than I got.
    I can say with the Firewire drives, I can run without any dropframes or speed changes, running at 30f/s (29.97) depending of the Video Compression, like 4 to 5 Videos simultaniosly. Over than that you can note the frame rate slows down. For us is a limitation what we can live fine with it and the whole system 2 laCie External drives costed me like 1000,00. La Cie has also a RackMount KIT, for 2 Disks, is perfect.
    I am a user, I shure some HES personel can explain better options and what HES point as better Cat sys option. The above solution suits fine for US pondering COST and Performance.
    Hope that helps
    Gian
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