SUN and EMC. That's their turf and they have it wired.
Bob
i am a designer at a local tv station. i am researching the equipment necessary for our inevitable transition to high def. i haven't been able to get a lot of feedback regarding what the best storage solutions are. basically, i know i'm going to have to dramatically increase the amount of storage space we have both for designing and for backup. i want to have multiple terabytes per workstation. this may get into the realm of video editing raids but i'd rather not simply because of the cost. i'm more interested in reliable high capacity external firewire drives. i've used lacie big drives in the past and have found them to be unreliable. i've had better luck with the maxtor line of 1tb+ drives. i don't think we will be doing much if any high def editing. the closest to that would be working in after effects or cinema 4D, photoshop, illustrator, etc.. so editing speed isn't as important as just having the storage space to work and to be able to back up that work. if i have to go the video raid route, my top candidates are apple's xserve raid, one of g-technologies products or one of HUGE systems (ciprico) products. again, i'd like to avoid that route because of cost but it's not out of the question. price is obviously an issue but reliability is more important...i'm willing to pay more for a device that is more stable.
does anyone have any opinions on the products i've mentioned or any other products? what do you use? what's got a good reputation (i.e. i've lost faith in lacie's external firewire drives...i've had several fail on me...i've found maxtor's to be much more stable)?
if i go video raid, an example of what i'm thinking is getting a 7TB xserve RAID per workstation, using half for daily use and mirror that with the other half (this in addition to the internal hard drives). if i go external firewire, what i'm leaning toward is getting several of the 1.5TB drives per computer and using half of each of those as a mirror to the other half.
if it matters, we are on Macs. right now they are dual g5s running 10.4.8 but i plan on buying all new macs with the above storage purchase. i'll be buying pretty much the top of the line MacPro at the time (at least a year from now), loading it with ram, internal storage, etc. (yes, i still want extra terabytes of storage in addition to the internal hard drives...i know we'll use it).
thank you in advance for your advice and suggestions.

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