DAS Xternal RAID HDD --- Important

am based in the uk.
a freelance visual effects compositor and editor.
i am currently working on a fully loaded precision m90 and want to upgrade my hdd.
currently my desk is cluttered with 1 external hdd case. 1 2.5 hdd and another internal hdd connected via a sata to usb connector.

i want to get rid of all this and buy an external raid case.
i had been looking at Lacie 2Big eSata II drive.
am unable to post url as of now which i understand. but if you put this in google:
LaCie 2big Dual (2-disk RAID)
the first result is the product page.

my question is does it use the same connector as esata or a different one?
i will need an esata xpresscard to add esata connectivity to my laptop. which one should i go for?
does this xpresscard connector need to have some kind of raid management thingy?

is it sensible to think that the above mentioned hdd casing would working fine with my laptop when connected via an xpresscard adapter?

am i missing out on any important points to consider?

How are you going to backup your data? 2TB is quite a lot to lose, especially with a LaCie. If the harddrive inside is broken you will need to fork out a fortune to recover the data, and you will not be able to RMA the harddrive.

The LaCie will perform RAID0 internally so it will appear as a single drive to your eSATA card and therefore it will not need raid management at all.

Also, depending on what speed you want your storage to be, if speed is not important, you can buy a NAS box that will perform RAID1. Cheaper boxes will perform at 30~50% of the speed of USB harddrives.

If you just want to add more harddrives, you can just get a USB hub and more USB external drives.

speed is very important.
thats one of the reasons i didnt opt for a NAS which provides a bandwidth of maximum 1000gb/sec.
a DAS thats connected via SataII would provide me 3000gb/sec.
when working on thousands of frames while editing and vfx, its important to get the best throughput bandwidth you might me writing and reading 500gb worth of data for a small project.

as for data loss, that can happen any time and any moment. the best i can do is use it in mirror mode.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by amarjeet

as for data loss, that can happen any time and any moment. the best i can do is use it in mirror mode.

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By "mirror mode" I assume you mean RAID 1 which would be a sensible option and mitigate against data loss (and RAID 0 speed increase is likely to be minimal - especially for reading)

You have obviously thought through the requirement carefully - but is this going to be a 'working in progress' disk or one where your finished work will reside? If the former you may consider RAID1 is sufficient mitigation against drive failure, howver if the latter, then it probably isn't. The conventional mantra is "RAID is NOT a substitute for backup"

What backup (if any) you take comes down to your own risk assessment, but a hard drive, as an electro-mechanical device, will fail at some point - the only unknown is when.

its probably going to be a work in progress disk, since i cant really afford to be saving all the footage on to 500gb disks and archiving them.
once the project is approved i transfer it to tape or dvd medium and send it off. once the project is delivered i keep the footage for not more than 2-3 weeks. therafter deleting it and making space for further projects.

i do understand that raid is not a substitute for backup, and honestly Nothing can be.

my requirement for raid is because of capacity and speed.

anyways going back to my original question:
any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

thanks.

bump

Something like this?

Overclockers UK Forums - View Single Post - *** Desk and Room Gallery***

There are a selection of cards here

Amazon.co.uk: esata

although they may not be the lowesrt prices. Not sure if there is a 'best' or which - if any - is fastest - the limiting factor may be the cardbus side of things. If you are using XP, then they will probably all do the job, if you are using Vista, then you may want to dig a bit deeper to see if the drivers are available. If you are using Linux, you may want to dig deeper still to see what the chipsets are and if the drivers are built in to your linux kernel, or are available open source.

There is a bit more info on one of the above here KustomPCs.co.uk - ACRyan eSATA 2-port PCMCIA ACR-SA50274 where it is claimed to offer 3Gb connection speed - although how that translates into throughput is another matter - and one that depends on other factors (nature of the transfer, drive cache etc etc)

The connector on these looks to be standard Esata.