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Thread: What is the point of SCSI in a Mac Pro

  1. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by RedLightning View Post
    Interesting...I didn't notice that as a requirement...

    Hardware RAID cards are available from other vendors, I was a little more curious as to whether it would improve speed.

    -s
    at the bottom of this obscure article

    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231

    Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?

    Answer: Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.
    other drives might work. apple uses the word 'support'...


    This one is likely to work much better - as it has a lot of RAM for buffering - i havent seen another raid card which does this- the others dont bother.
    without this buffering the other raid cards are pointless - RAID is not faster than a single disc for catalyst.
    And the performance of single SATA discs is not good enough.
    Unless you are doing uncompressed video- or need only 3 layers to playback.
    I test these systems day in day out for the last 4 years.

    Gareth posted something yesterday about a RAID he had made - but he really only shows how poorly they work most of the time.

    I can get at least 8 layers of DV out of my XServe RAID - for a 2 disc set.
    No unbuffered internal raid is ever going to come close to this.

  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by peppe View Post
    The ultimate way should be to have layer 1 to read from disc 1, layer 2 from disc2, layer 3 also from another disc etc.etc

    The when you hit layer 5 you access disc number 1, layer 6 from disc 2, etc
    The you will have max 2 files going on one disc.

    The discs are getting bigger and bigger, but (as always, Richard is right)
    they are to slow to handle multiply files on a disc , and thats often the setup with a Catalyst system.In this case I get good results (as I don´t want to use DV codec) with multiply FW800 discs and a extra FW card....

    But it is tricky to place all the files to be handled correct since everyone wants to "create on the fly", but that´s how I use to handle a system that I know need to NOT play any files under 25fps whatever.....
    So, would this really work? I just need to use 8 layers or so, and have a MacPro with 4 drives in it.

  3. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by peppe View Post
    The ultimate way should be to have layer 1 to read from disc 1, layer 2 from disc2, layer 3 also from another disc etc.etc
    .
    So, would this really work? I just need to use 8 layers or so, and have a MacPro with 4 drives in it
    unfortunately at the moment - the operating system and quicktime dont work like this - this technique doesnt work - i do keep checking - i first tested this over 5 years ago-

    the time for movie playback is single threaded and accumulative - so its as slow as the worst performing drive.

  4. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by samsc View Post
    i have just begun testing an MTRON 32GB SATA SSD drive.
    SATA means it can be plugged into any G5. Intel needs a SATA extension, until i find a drive tray adaptor.

    SSD have very variable performance - they arent all fast. at all.
    The SAMSUNG SSDs are only available with IDE interfaces. i have one - and the IDE interface is the limit to its performance.

    MTRON drives are more expensive but much faster.
    http://www.dvnation.com/nand-flash-ssd.html

    Tests in my quad g5 show its almost as fast as scsi on most codecs - but can playback more than 10 dv layers at once (SCSI does about 7 ) . without any problems.
    Will this mean that any G5 will do, included the G5 1.8 PCI-X?

  5. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
    Will this mean that any G5 will do, included the G5 1.8 PCI-X?
    no. of course not.

    i have no idea. i dont have one.

    because cpu speed is important as well.

  6. #16
    Here you'll find some caddy's and sleds :

    http://www.transintl.com/

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