Advice on an external RAID enclorure....

[glasswave]

Hi all,

I'd like to set up an external RAID array for video editing. I have done some searching, but remain a little confused.

I currently have 4 ea. Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM SATA III 6Gb/s drives w/64MB cache to install in the array.

My workstaion:

asRock X79 Extreme6 MB with eSATA III 6Gb/s port
i7 3930K six core
32 GB 1600 RAM (4x8GB)
2 ea 256 GB Samsung 830 pro SSD's
Asus nVidia gtx660ti graphics card

I am looking for a good enclosure w/both eSata and USB 3.0 connectivity. I would like to run eSATA at home and use the USB 3.0 if I need to transport data or if I choose to use it w/my late 2013 MacBook Pro retina, i7 4960HQ, 16GB, 1TB ssd. Most of the 4-bay RAID enclosures I have looked at, while supporting sata III 6 Gb/s drives internally only have SATA II 3Gb/s eSATA ports which at average sustained hd speeds (1030 Mb/s) would be under, but close to saturating the RAID array back panel.

Does anyone know of a 4bay RAID enclosure with USB 3.0 and eSata 6Gb/s?

Also, should I configure in RAID 3 or 5 for best performance?

Is there any tremendous advatage to going with internal RAID?

Any advice is appreciated.

thx

 

[drtweak]

As for exclosure not sure. The thing is even with it running at eSATA II on SATA III Drives I highly doubt you will saturate the SATAII speeds.

But i would do a Raid 10 or 0+1 for best performance and reliabilty. Raid 5 Has Poor Write performance along with Raid 6.

Raid 2 3 and 4 are almost unheard of and honestly I have never see a RAID card that supports these modes of RAID

 

[glasswave]

As for exclosure not sure. The thing is even with it running at eSATA II on SATA III Drives I highly doubt you will saturate the SATAII speeds.

But i would do a Raid 10 or 0+1 for best performance and reliabilty. Raid 5 Has Poor Write performance along with Raid 6.

Raid 2 3 and 4 are almost unheard of and honestly I have never see a RAID card that supports these modes of RAID

Thx, for the reply.

Apparently, and somewhat shockingly, external enclosures are much harder to get decent performance out of than is internal RAID. It seems as though we have all these great i/o protocols (eSata 6Gb, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, etc) and nothing in the way of peripheral hardware that can truly take advantage of all that speed. Yet, somehow, magically, if you do it inside the case all is milk and honey.


Right now, I am hoping to employ a Sans Digital 6G eSATA enclosure and use a SATA 6Gb to USB converter Cable to allow access to other machines. It seems to depend on whether the cable can work w/port multiplier enabled eSATA.

towerraid-6g-esata-port-multiplier-performance

usb-3-0-to-esata-6gb-s-adapter-cable

Anything else I have found that supports eSATA and USB 3.0, seem to be lucky to get 150MB/s in a 4 drive RAID 5 setup (50% faster that a single drive), but Sans Digital is claiming 300 MB/s for their new 6g 4-bay enclosure. Thunderbolt seems to remain out of reach for Windows users and I have seen nothing that incorporates thunderbolt and USB 3.) anyways.