Digital Video - December 2007 - (Page 34) BUILD YOUR OWN RAID ation of custom volume sizes and a whole range of other functions. It can manage anything from a DIY kludge like mine to an Apple XServe RAID. >RAID READOUT THE NEXT STAGE The need to create larger and larger RAIDs with additional features led to the next stage of development of SATA RAIDs, and I was right there to modify my original system and to build a new device. Port Multiplication allows up to five SATA drives to be connected to one SATA port. Thus, a four-port SATA card could handle up to 20 drives. Add multiple cards to your computer and you can create even larger RAIDs. Above, layout of my “safe and The underlying technology of most fast” Raid 0+1 setup. Right, port multiplication comes from Silicon my Kona card confirms the Image (www.siliconimage.com). Alex data rates are well within the Chervet of Silicon Image tells me that, in range of HD. fact, a majority of computer board makers utilize the company’s chip as well as drive integrators who utilize controller boards based upon, for our uses, two primary chipsets. The Silicon Image 3726 supports port multiplication. I purchased two port multiplier boards from MacGurus (around $120 each with all new jumper cables) and reconfigured each of my Burly Boxes with Port Multipliers. For controller cards, I utilized a Sonnet E4P, four external portmultiplied eSATA ports in a PowerMac G5. In a MacPro, I used a CalDigit FastA 4E card. I could then move the RAID between two machines. Performance was virtually identical in both machines. Note, however, that with SATA II drives. port multiplication, write rates slowed to 240 MB/s and read rates The physical building of the RAID was a snap. It took longer to to 401 MB/s. It was confirmed to me by benchmarking expert get the enclosure out of the box than to insert the drives, connect Rob-ART Morgan of www.barefeats.com that there is an ever-sothe eSATA cable to enclosure and the card, and begin formatting. slight degradation of performance with port multiplication, but I chose to experiment with RAID 0 as well as RAID 0+1, called certainly nothing that would affect transfer rates materially. “safe and fast” by Silicon Image (emphasis mine). Since this setup only consisted of four drives plus a hot spare, I did not expect the same transfer rates as I would have expected THE LATEST PROJECT with eight drives. Read rate was 134.9 MB/s and write rate 144.4 I was now ready to enter RAID levels beyond RAID 0. Besides, I had MB/s for 1920x1080 8-bit. This is barely enough to sustain 8-bit HD, four port SATA cards with two vacant ports. For $448 I purchased a and it would not handle 10-bit. Silicon Image indicated, though, five-drive enclosure from CoolDrives (www.cooldrives.com), which that its optimal-size RAID of 16 drives would easily sustain 10-bit merely required opening a latch and sliding in the drive. This encloand possibly even 2K files. However, the company recommended to sure is based upon the Silicon Image 4726 chipset, which allows work with RAID 0 for the maximum size and data rate. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and RAID 0+1—all controlled from softI was able to configure the five-drive unit as four drives plus a ware downloaded from the Silicon Image site. hot spare using the Silicon Image software. This took formatted For this RAID, I utilized five Seagate 7200.10 750 GB 34 dv december 2007 www.dv.com http://www.siliconimage.com http://www.barefeats.com http://www.cooldrives.com http://www.dv.com
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