CalDigit's HDPro
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Steve Mullen
The 2.6TB RAID system provides reliable data storage.
Figure 1. The HDPro’s chassis holds up to eight drives and uses load-balancing power management to divide the workflow between two power supplies.
Click to enlarge
Two editing trends have come into conflict with the release of Intel's Dual Core 2 processor. Laptops now have the computer power to support online HD editing. This has led many to abandon tower computers in favor of laptops such as Apple's MacBook Pro. Editing multistream HDV, with its 3.5MB/s data rate, is well within the capabilities of these lightweight systems.
However, with Apple's release of its ProRes 422 codec, along with increasing use of the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), hard disk bandwidth requirements have increased so significantly that laptop-based, multistream, real-time editing is no longer possible.
One solution is to store media on an external RAID that plugs into a laptop whenever users need to edit. CalDigit's HDPro is a plug-in RAID that offers capacities from 2TB to 8TB.
System features
The entry-level HDPro has a 2TB capacity and includes a PCIe interface. All HDPro systems are compatible with MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, G5 and G4 computers, as well as Linux and Windows workstations.
Figure 2. CalDigit’s HDPro switch can expand the number of RAID towers.
Click to enlarge
The chassis can hold up to eight drives and uses load-balancing power management to divide the workload between two power supplies. (See Figures 1 and 2.) Power management enables the system to continue working in the event of a power supply failure. It supports eight, 3Gb/s, SATA channels. An integral Intel XScale core that includes up to 2GB of 64-bit DDR333 cache memory drives these channels. (The default cache is only 256MB.)
Unlike Fibre Channel, SCSI, FireWire and eSATA RAID storage, the PCIe interface connects directly to the host computer's bridge chip. A direct link to system RAM eliminates the latency introduced by these other interfaces.
Adding CalDigit PCle switches, each of which supports up to seven systems, offers users an unlimited media pool.
The system's integrated controller includes an environment monitor processor that monitors and manages all aspects of the system, including the hard drives, RAID set controller, controller cache, fan, power supply and enclosure temperature. A front-panel LED display provides visual feedback, and an audible alarm signals a controller or drive failure. It can also send users an e-mail error notification.
CalDigit's RaidShare utility is used for both setup and monitoring. Because it is based on TCP/IP, users can monitor and manage the RAID storage from anywhere.
With a four-lane interface to the host, and each lane delivering up to 250MB/s, a RAID 5 system delivers up to 200MB/s. Of course, that performance depends on a long list of other factors, including PCI bus traffic, host RAM available for I/O buffers, tasks — including decompression/decoding — competing for CPU cycles, stripe size, and the type of RAID employed.
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