If you are editing video ─ especially HD video ─ you probably already know that you need a RAID storage system to be able to store and play back all that data. Since RAID technology spreads the data over several drives, the trick is to find drives that are reliable, at a price that you can afford. Drives come in three levels of performance: On-line, Near-line, and Desktop. These drives fall into the middle category.

I have been using eight of Seagate’s on-line SAS drives for about a year now, and have had no problems. The eight 150GB SAS drives with the Enhanced Technologies RAID case ran about $6,000 for 1TB of storage. It gave a rock-solid performance, but it is kind of pricey ─ in terms of dollars per GB. 

I am now testing four of the new Seagate® Barracuda® ST31000340NS SATA drives. The really cool part about these drives is that they each hold 1TB of data. Four drives give me four terabytes of storage, which is ample for any project that I plan to do.
I hooked them up to my MacPro Dual Quad core computer (with the AJA Kona card) to a 3Ware Sidecar (four drive RAID case) via the 3Ware 9650SE-4LPME controller. Now I have quadrupled my storage for about one third of the cost.

The ST31000340NS drives are part of the Seagate’s new ES.2 line, which uses second-generation Seagate perpendicular recording technology to provide up to one terabyte of storage in a single, 4-platter hard drive.

They spin at 7200-RPM, and were designed for reliability and rotational vibration tolerance. If you are an editor, you know that sometimes your computer is hammering away at your drives 24/7.

Having a drive fail in a RAID “0” configured system, means losing all of your data and having to start over. That’s a real client-losing situation, unless you happen to have backed up your project. With some of my projects running over 100 GBs, I often don’t have the time to back them up while I’m editing on a deadline.

My answer is to use RAID 4, which allows you to swap out a drive and re-configure your data. I also like to use the best drives that I can find so that I never have any down time.

The ES.2 series of drives have several features that make them suitable for video editing. They are designed to work well in high-density, multi-drive system designs, running cool during periods of prolonged activity. The integrated PowerTrim™ technology optimizes power consumption when operating or idle, without any host interaction or performance loss.

The Barracuda ES.2 drives come with in-drive data integrity protection guaranteed through Seagate IOEDC/IOECC technology, and you have a choice of either SATA or SAS interfaces for convenient system integration.

The SAS interface allows Barracuda ES.2 drives to be freely attached to any SAS host in single or dual-ported configurations and provides full duplex support with two active data channels.

Seagate has applied its design and manufacturing expertise to deliver a 1TB 7200-RPM drive that meets the needs of our 24/7 editing world, and it’s backed by a five-year limited warranty…oh yeah, and the best part is, it’s cost-effective too.

MSRP: Street price about $300.
Contact: www.seagate.com 1-800-SEAGATE (1-800-732-4283)