[Tig] Minimum RAID bandwidth for 2K playback?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 19 Jul 2008, Bob Kertesz wrote:
>
> I'm running an AJA 2K card, and I am looking to move away from an Adaptec U320
> SCSI controller with 8 15K Seagate drives. I'd like to move to SATA, but I'm
> having a hard time finding real world info on what is required.

Depending on how many U320 ports your controller has, the SCSI 
interface may be the bottleneck in your current situation.

> And can you recommend better 7200 rpm drives than the Seagate 
> 7200.11 series?

The Barracuda ES.2 series are likely a better choice and more suited 
for RAID since their firmware is designed to work with RAID.  You will 
find them in the "Server & Enterprise Storage" section on Seagate's 
web site.

Note that these "enterprise" SATA drives are slower than higher grade 
(much more expensive) 15K SAS drives.  The seek time is about 9ms and 
the transfer rate is just over 100MB/s.  Compare that with seek times 
of 2ms and a sustained transfer rate of 171MB/s.

If you get a controller which supports both SATA and SAS (SAS 
controllers normally also support SATA) then you preserve the option 
to install SAS drives.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/