ok folks. Anyone out there actually using it? I'm about to setup a new array, and reading around it seems its going to suck for writing. And for smaller files. How small no one seems to say. Will 70mb raw files be considered small? (I do lots of timelapse). In fact most of my video files are in the hundreds of megabytes range rather than gigabytes. I have 4 drives going into the array. to raid 5 or 3?
Works beautifully for any video files. When they say it is not got for short files they are talking kilobytes like for datebases, and not talking sequential video files. I am not using it any more since they now have super speed M.2 SSD's but I have an Areca controller with seven SATA III SSD's in RAID 3 that writes directly from Premiere Pro at over 2000 MB/second and reads much faster
It's all about sustained data transfer rate when it comes to your storage media.
You want to take a look at the bandwidth requirements of the video files that you need to be able to play. Then, you need storage that exceed those bandwidth requirements.
If your storage is too slow, you'll be able to store your files on it; however, you will not be able to play them without lag.
Since you are doing time lapse (which means you are dealing with several still images the need to play one after the other), you want drives that can access files very quickly. If going with standard drives, you would want 10,000RPM or 7,200RPM insetead of 5,400RPM or 4,800RPM. That, or go with SSD drives.
If RAID3 is getting you the bandwitdh you need, then yes. If it's overkill (or not enough), then no.
Like Bill, I use a RAID3 array on an Areca card. I use 6 Sandisk 1TB SSDs at the moment and get around 2000 write and 2700 read speed using Crystal disk.
I went with this as I had the RAID card anyway, and 2 of the 1TBs, so it made economic sense to go with this rather than a 2TB M2 SSD. I get the speed and plenty of storage.
I believe Harm Millaard used to say that RAID 3 arrays were quicker to re-build than RAID 5, but with SSDs, this is less of an issue.
When I replaced my camera with a new 4K model recently, I was glad of the speed!
OK thanks folks I'll give it a whirl. Currently copying my array to one of the disks, then I'll build it with the remaining 3 and expand it once I've copied everything back.
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Currently copying my array to one of the disks, then I'll build it with the remaining 3 and expand it once I've copied everything back.
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