Blackmagic Forum

I have done a speed test on my SanDisk Extreme 480 using Blackmagic's speed test. The numbers I am getting are drastically lower than the speed they recommend for 12 bit 2k RGB 4:4:4 (Which I think are the BMCC's 12 bit 2.5k raw specs) Am I reading these numbers correctly? Should I be getting better numbers? I am using a Newer Technology eSATA Dock into a CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 pci card. The files I recorded on the BMCC using this card all seem fine and I did not get an error message about dropped frames. It is the performance during grading and editing i am concerned about.

I am guessing it's most likely the eSATA connection, but I might be wrong. Maybe a BMD representative could reply and clear this up? I'd be interested to know since I ordered this SSD as well.

its the eSATA dock slowing it down.
I can get 3 times that using a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro card.

That speed test app seems strange. I get write speeds of around 165MB/s and read speeds of 198MB/s on my Crucial M4 256GB SSDs through USB3 yet most of the options are crossed out as a unwritable.

I assumed that MB/s is megabytes per second, so that assumingly can write 125MB/s raw with audio channel. I use the 5GB stress test. They also need to add a 2.5K DNG raw format to the list.

Eric Santiago wrote:its the eSATA dock slowing it down.
I can get 3 times that using a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro card.

Is it the dock or the eSATA/USB3.0 pci card? (which by the way I cannot get to work with the usb 3.0 connection)

You don't require that much bandwidth when recording goth the camera because it is a bayer image, not RGB. You will need about the same bandwidth as regular uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2 video.

Benton wrote:Is it the dock or the eSATA/USB3.0 pci card? (which by the way I cannot get to work with the usb 3.0 connection)

I cant say but we did some tests with eSATA and a USB 3.0 drive but using other drives and found them to be slow compared to PCI and Thunderbolt.

The Sandisk 480 Extreme is the right choice for the BMCC.

Just for comparison, this is what I get through my Thunderbolt port on my MBPr with these :-

1. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... apter.html

2. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... design.com

Eric Santiago wrote:

Benton wrote:Is it the dock or the eSATA/USB3.0 pci card? (which by the way I cannot get to work with the usb 3.0 connection)

I cant say but we did some tests with eSATA and a USB 3.0 drive but using other drives and found them to be slow compared to PCI and Thunderbolt.

I am using a PCI eSata /USB 3.0 card in a power mac.

Andrew Deme wrote:

DiskSpeedTest Intel 520 Thunderbolt.png

Just for comparison, this is what I get through my Thunderbolt port on my MBPr with these :-

1. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... apter.html

2. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... design.com

This is MUCH faster than what I'm getting! Unfortunately, there are no Thunderbolt solutions that I am aware of for the Power Mac.

Kristian Lam wrote:You don't require that much bandwidth when recording goth the camera because it is a bayer image, not RGB. You will need about the same bandwidth as regular uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2 video.

Yes, I agree, the in camera recording is just fine with the Sandisk 480. It was using these cards for grading and editing that I was questioning. Right now when viewing files directly from the card sitting in a dock, the audio stutters and the motion appears a tiny bit slower (but smooth).

I am getting 122MB/s write and 131MB/s read times. Is this speed normal for these cards?

Did I just read that someone has a PowerMac?

Eric Santiago wrote:Did I just read that someone has a PowerMac?

Sorry! Mac Pro! I'm old school, but not that old school!

Benton wrote:

Eric Santiago wrote:Did I just read that someone has a PowerMac?

Sorry! Mac Pro! I'm old school, but not that old school!

Im old school, still have my PowerMac 6100/60AV

Eric Santiago wrote:Did I just read that someone has a PowerMac?

Editing 2.5k RAW on a PowerMac. Now that would be something

Benton wrote:I am getting 122MB/s write and 131MB/s read times. Is this speed normal for these cards?

Nope. This doesn't look right, especially if you're hooked up via eSata.

Benton wrote:

Eric Santiago wrote:

Benton wrote:Is it the dock or the eSATA/USB3.0 pci card? (which by the way I cannot get to work with the usb 3.0 connection)

I cant say but we did some tests with eSATA and a USB 3.0 drive but using other drives and found them to be slow compared to PCI and Thunderbolt.

I am using a PCI eSata /USB 3.0 card in a power mac.

What are the other PCI cards you have in your system ??

Even USB3 should be able to handle huge data rates. USB3 can theoretically handle 625MB/s.

Andrew Deme wrote:What are the other PCI cards you have in your system ??

Using a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI card.
It houses one to two SSD drives and you can RAID it to your flavor.
My last set-up is two Crucial M4 512s.
In both Mac Pro and Dell Blacmagick Speedtests topped out at north of 400 on both read and write.

What are the other PCI cards you have in your system ??[/quote]

NVIDIA Quadro 4000, CalDgit FASTA-6gu3 (eSATA/USB 3.0 input)

Benton wrote:What are the other PCI cards you have in your system ??

NVIDIA Quadro 4000, CalDgit FASTA-6gu3 (eSATA/USB 3.0 input)[/quote]

I would try swapping PCI slots.

One of my internal Crucial M4 128gb's for comparison (i have two internally - one for OSX and one for Windows 7):



And this is my internal raid of 4x1TB seagate barracuda's for media (backed up to another 4TB external raid) to give an idea of some speeds that get most 'checkmarks':

I think I need one! ^^

Is that 4 drives in RAID 0?

CaptainHook wrote:One of my internal Crucial M4 128gb's for comparison (i have two internally - one for OSX and one for Windows 7):



And this is my internal raid of 4x1TB seagate barracuda's for media (backed up to another 4TB external raid) to give an idea of some speeds that get most 'checkmarks':

SOLD!! The Seagate Barracudas are not SSDs correct? All four 1TB drives are used in your raid set up (for speed) for a total of 1TB of storage? How are you connecting your external array?

Nick Bedford wrote:Is that 4 drives in RAID 0?

Yep, which is why i back them up to another 4TB external raid (2x2TB). Gives me speed and a backup.

Benton wrote:The Seagate Barracudas are not SSDs correct?

Yeah, they're just standard internal Sata3 drives.

Benton wrote:All four 1TB drives are used in your raid set up (for speed) for a total of 1TB of storage? How are you connecting your external array?

4TB total, it's a striped raid (RAID 0) for best performance just using apples Disk Utility app (hardware raid should be better/faster) so NO redundancy. If one drive fails, it's all gone. They're all internal connected via sata, then it gets synced onto 2x2TB via 2xfw800 ports for at least some kind of backup. This is on a Hackintosh machine by the way.

I use Synk Pro for backup after demoing a lot of products and liking it the best so purchased it. It's only $60USD as well.. it has a great feature that i also use for syncing two Macs and a 15TB NAS (in raid5 for 12TB total) where if data on one mac is updated, it tells the other mac it's happened so it syncs and backs up to the NAS. They call it 'SyncSharing' i think.

Thanks! No redundancy GULP! Is there a way to use just two fast drives (like SSDs or the WD VelociRaptor) in Raid 0 and the other two for redundancy? Flying without a parachute is too much for my nerves!

That's basically what i'm doing with the external 4TB raid.. it's "redundancy" for the internal 4TB raid. So i have 2x 4TB "blocks", one is fast for performance, the other is much slower but it's a backup so i'm not worried about speed. The external 4TB is just a couple of 2TB western digital enclosures striped into a 4TB block that i purchased specifically for a backup (i actually have 14TB of space connected directly to my machine and a 15TB NAS).

I could have just used raid 5 (giving 3 drives for storage and 1 for recovery via parity) but it would have been slower with less space. I'm basically doing a 'semi-auto' raid 10 as i have a 4TB block that's striped and then mirrored onto another 4TB block (this one is 2 drives instead of 4 and connected via fw800 so much slower). Does that make sense? 4TB in the machine that's fast and 4TB outside the machine that's slower and used as a backup for the fast 4TB.

Nick Bedford wrote:I think I need one! ^^

Is that 4 drives in RAID 0?

Dual channel 6Gb/s SAS cards are the way to go. I could not find the BMD Disk Speed Test but these are the results using the AJA System Test using the 16GB file test option.



This is using raid 6, and the card allows for 2 drives to fail and still keep working while rebuilding the array.

I'm using the Intel RAID Controller RS25NB008, with 8 3TB seagates inside of the Stardom 8 drive SAS enclosure.

Have been using this for well over a year now and it works like a charm. I assume there's better drives and better sas raid cards now but I built this myself last year for less than $2600 including 2 extra spare drives. Works so well I ended up building 2 more identical units. I may end up doing a little research on building one with a newer card and using 4tb drives. I'm pretty ready to shoot and edit RAW. I think 8 drive RAID 6 SAS setups is the current sweet spot for price/performance. 16 and 24 drive enclosures get pricey quick and 4 drive solutions leave quite a bit to be desired, I think. I like the security of knowing 2 drives can fail and I can still recover everything by putting 2 new drives in, and then have the whole thing backed up on an identical raid setup.

That's pretty smoking!!
I can't justify the price at this stage for what i do though.. my 4TB raid cost me $330USD in drives (NZ is expensive) so it was a quick/easy/cheap way to get good performance. I'm getting renders at about 40fps from the BMCC raw footage posted with about 5-6 nodes which is alright for the price i paid for my whole setup. I'm only using a GTX580 for GPU and a 550ti for the UI. That SAS card looks pretty awesome though!