Needed: Help With Thunderbolt 3 RAID Set-Up

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  • Last Post 08 November 2016
Ray Sherman posted this 07 November 2016

Needed: Help With Thunderbolt 3 RAID Set-Up

  I’m looking for some suggestions for a Thunderbolt 3 RAID set-up for the upcoming (fingers crossed) iMac. Once available, I will be maxing it out spec wise with the exception of Apples overpriced RAM.

  I’m looking for a smooth 1080 and 4K editing experience without any lagging and/or time consuming issues. My editing events are anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour on the timeline. I do like using some effects, plugins, transitions, chroma keying, pictures and music therefore, I do use multiple timelines. Rendering times are not important to me, I usually do so overnight.

Planned software;

Apple FCPX

Apple Motion 5

Apple Comperssor

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5

 

My following equipment only consists of;

Sony XDCAM PXW-X70 w/ XAVC L(GOP), AVCHD with 4K

GoPro Hero 2

Sony RX100 V with 4K (near future)

 I was about to pull the trigger on a maxed out iMac (2015) and a Pegasus2 R8 24TB (8 x 3TB SATA) RAID Thunderbolt 2 System. I held off from that purchase due to rumors of Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C coming in the near future. I’m glad I did...........

I’ve been waiting for this all summer wanting a Pegasus3 R8 24TB (8 x 3TB SATA). Unfortunately, this particular one isn’t offered in the Thunderbolt 3 lineup. There are only two being offered in an 8 disc array, 32TB (8x4TB SATA) and 48TB (8x6TB). Also offered are 4 and 6 drive configurations. (Sizes are found accordingly under Specifications)

My decision for the Pegasus3 R8 24TB (8 x 3TB SATA) was mainly due to learning the fact that seamless playback/throughput of 4K is directed to how many drives you have and not the overall capacity in a hard drive subsystem.

  Now, I have a couple questions due to the huge difference between Thunderbolt 2 and 3. With Thunderbolt 3 40gbps being double that of Thunderbolt 2;

1) With the speed of Thunderbolt 3, would you still stick with an 8 disc array?

2) Would a 6 disc array with Thunderbolt 3 offer faster throughput than an 8 disc array Thunderbolt 2?

 Please give me your thoughts, ideas and/or recommendations that may come to mind. Your  help would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks, Ray

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Raghuraman Kannan posted this 08 November 2016

Hi Ray,

The transfer rate for both Peagsus 3R6 and Pegasus 3R8 would be the same as both would be using Thunderbolt 3 port.

It is the RAID level which you have to be concerned about. As you know , RAID 0 provides maximum Read and Write Speeds. The results would differ depending on what RAID level you are going to choose. 

Thanks 

Ray Sherman posted this 08 November 2016

 Thanks for the reply......... My plan is to use RAID 5. I have considered RAID 0 due to backing up everything on Apples time machine on a different drive. Using RAID 0 would be risky, fastest read/write speed but no redundancy. I realize that it's important to have more drives than space for read/write speeds, but was hoping with the new Thunderbolt 3 that I could step down to a 6 drive array instead of and 8 drive array. I don't want to break the bank, but I want a great workflow without any hiccups. I'm assuming that the drives are 7200rpm, correct? Thanks again for your help. 

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