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NAB 2014 Wrap-up. Top 10 Products. G-Tech Studio.

UPDATED 0626 G-Tech got company! And it seems surprisingly good. Western Digital just launched the “Duo” to compete directly against G-Tech’s SPEED Studio and G-Tech’s RAID Studio line.

G-SPEED Studio and G-RAID Studio.
By Eduardo Angel and Sean Davis

G-Technology made our 2013 Top 10 list with their innovative Evolution Series. This year the company is back with two awesome high-performance storage systems clearly targeted to 2K and 4K workflows: the G-SPEED Studio and the G-RAID Studio. Both systems feature the latest technology with two Thunderbolt 2 interfaces (up to 20Gbits a second on paper), both use HGST Enterprise-class 7,200 RPM drives, and both offer hardware RAID.

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• What’s the difference between SPEED and RAID??

We created this chart to help illustrate the key differences:

G-Tech Studio Series

The most obvious difference is that the G-SPEED offers four bays and the G-RAID only two. Since the hard drives can handle up to 6GB per bay, if we win the lottery we could cram up to 24 TB on the G-SPEED’s relatively small enclosure. The catch is that while small, given its shape it still takes up some significant desk space. Another key difference is how the RAID can be configured on each system: the G-SPEED offers user selectable RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10, while the G-RAID can handle (also user selectable) RAID 0, RAID 1, or JBOD.

For a simple introduction to RAID Systems, check this out.

Another significant difference is speed: The G-SPEED Studio is capable of a theoretical 660MB/sec. (megabytes per second), while the G-RAID Studio can handle up to 360MB/sec. Both systems will support multi-stream compressed 4K and 2K workflows, and since the G-SPEED Studio can be daisy-chained via dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, the possibilities seem endless!

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Of course, nothing is perfect: the black shiny enclosure is a fingerprint magnet, the size and especially the shape of the hard drives will use some significant real estate from our already maxed out desks, and lastly, there’s the price. While the “entry level” 4TB model costs a reasonable $649, the high-end 24TB model goes for $3,600, about the same price as some very nice workstations.

Shipping in May, drooling right now.

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What do you think about these storage solutions? Feel free to join the conversation on Twitter (@EA_Photo)

This is our 1st post on our favorite toys at NAB 2014. The other highlighted products are:

1. G-Speed Studio and G-Raid Studio
2. Grass Valley’s EDIUS 7
3. Syrp’s Genie
4. Kinemini 4K camera
5. AJA Cion camera
6. Blackmagic 4K Film Scanner
7. Livestream’s Studio solutions
8. Edelkrone pocket series
9. Atomos Shogun and Ninja Star
10.NHK 8K Camera

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G-Tech’s Evolution Series.

 
The media storage announcements last week at NAB were pretty boring, with one single exception: G-Tech’s Evolution Series. There are three flavors: G-DOCK ev, G-DRIVE ev and G-DRIVE ev PLUS.
 
G-Tech’s Evolution Series All
The G-DOCK is a Thunderbolt, two-bay, swappable drive system. Consider it as the “housing” and main component of the Evolution family, and it can be configured as RAID 1 (protected) or RAID 0 (performance). Click here to learn more about RAID Systems.
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Cloud Storage Solutions and Adobe Lightroom.

 
In the past couple of weeks, we have done several One-on-One Consulting sessions where the “Cloud Storage” question came up. This is a very quick overview of the most popular online storage options with pricing and direct links to each.

My own situation:
• My Lightroom Catalog has 70,000 RAW Images. I shoot a lot, but I am merciless editing.
• The entire catalog (NOT the RAW files) takes about 26GB of space.
• The RAW files take about 860GB of space.

This means I need about 900GB of storage space if I wanted to move my Lightroom Catalog, including all RAW files, to the Cloud.

Dropbox customers are provided with 2 GB for free. 

100 GB
Monthly $9.99
Yearly $99.00

200 GB
Monthly $19.99
Yearly $199.00

500 GB
Monthly $49.99
Yearly $499.00

IMPORTANT: If you don’t have a Dropbox account, use this link to get started. You get 2GB for free, and we both get an additional 500MB as a bonus. Hurry up!

Click to keep reading  (more…)

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Reliable RAID Systems, an overview.

 
Professional photographers and filmmakers,  are always (and should be) concerned with storage devices, such as hard drives to create reliable backups and efficient workflows. All hard drives will fail eventually, that is why using RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) systems is often our recommended strategy. A RAID is a set of connected hard drives designed to store digital files and information in a much more reliable manner. Most current RAID units can also monitor a Hard Drives’ system health, fan, and power supply and warn users when there’s a potential failure.

There are several different levels at which a RAID system can be configured. In the photo and video industry, we generally use RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 6. One way to remember them is: Fastest (0), Mirror (1), Safe (5), and Safest (6).

Interested in learning more about RAID systems? Then read this article we recently wrote for Canon’s Digital Learning Center to better understand how they work, their differences on performance, compatibility and size. Don’t wait until it’s too late to establish a good backup strategy! If you need help, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Image of Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks