Could someone please explain Parity

[videoholic]

I\'m looking at getting a 10 drive array that is Raid 5.  With this each individual hard drive has it\'s parity written on the next hard drive so that if the drive ever fails you can drop a new hard drive in and your data will not be lost.  It will rebuild it using the parity files on the other hard drive.

What is the parity file?

parity is a form of error checking

raid 5 is striped with parity

any data that you save will be striped across all 10 drives

parity gives the computer something to compare against in case  one of the drives fails, you just swap it out with a  new one, and all the data that was on it will be reconstructed



raid 5 is a VERY secure method of storing data,  although pricey

a cheaper method would be to use mirroring (raid 1), where the same data is written to multiple drives, but its a reduction in space

[videoholic]

I was looking at Terabyte Raid 1 at first but I don\'t need a full mirror.  I\'m not worried about data loss that much.  I\'m hoping to do a 10 drive stripe using IDEs.  Another company I was with wanted me to go SCSI.  I think that\'s a bit much for only a single computer using the data.  I could probably get a couple work stations on the video with IDEs.  SCSI would get me up there in workstations, but I will probably never have more than 2 here.  Well, not until what I have already is out dated anyway.

yeah, SCSI is even more expensive

you must be doing alot of video capture to need a TB of space (home video\'s eh?)

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

doubt it\'s home vids.. illegal porn more like it.. dirty bastard.

[videoholic]

I need to go 10 hours uncompressed.  Probably 80% of what I do is studio based and I plan on dumping right from my switcher into a digibeta deck and go SDI into the computer uncompressed.

We need to be able to have on the hard drive at any one time 10-12 shows in edit.

We still may not get this suite.  I\'m trying to not get it to tell you the truth.  It\'s just a lot easier to do everything out of house.