[SOLVED] RAID Power Up In Standby

[Penniless Film Maker]

I am planning a Video Editing Workstation and have encountered a question

Proposed System.
Processor: Intel Core i7 10700K
RAM: 4x 16Gbyte DDR4 DIMMs
Motherboard: MSI Z490 Tomahawk
System Drive: Nvme M.2 1T SSD - Using online backup
Video Scratch Drive: Nvme M.2 1T SSD - Temp Drive Only, No backup
Utility Drive: SATA 1T SSD - Using online backup
Video Archive: 2ea WD Blue 6T HDD in RAID 1 array. No online backup

The archive will be used to store 4K footage in Blackmagic Design RAW format. 500Gbytes/hour of footage. Online backup is too slow to be useful. It would be cheaper to just purchase a new array when this one is full and to keep it offline on site. My plan is to rely on the fault tolerance feature of RAID 1 to restore a degraded array.

Video editing happens only a few times per year. 98% of the time there is no need to spin up these drives. I would like them to Power Up In Standby, PUIS. They should be recognized by the system and accept read or write commands with an execution delay of ~15 seconds. After 10 minutes of inactivity they should return to standby. They should not spin up when the system wakes up from sleep or hibernate.

Is this doable using MSI bios firmware? I have read the manual for the Z490 Tomahawk and no details are provided for PUIS. Is this doable by Windows alone? Does this require some combination of Windows and BIOS?

 

[kanewolf]

RAID is not a replacement for backups. Two independent copies of your files would be more reliable than RAID1 for most situations. OR an 8TB USB drive as backup of the RAID1.

 

[Zerk2012]

I would probably be looking at a hot swap bay instead.

EDIT since your rebuilding you can always buy a case that one will fit in.

 

[USAFRet]

The archive will be used to store 4K footage in Blackmagic Design RAW format. 500Gbytes/hour of footage. Online backup is too slow to be useful. It would be cheaper to just purchase a new array when this one is full and to keep it offline on site. My plan is to rely on the fault tolerance feature of RAID 1 to restore a degraded array.

RAID, of any type, is NOT a substitute for an actual backup.
It does nothing for the more common forms of data loss. Accidental deletion, ransomware, corruption, etc, etc.

 

[Penniless Film Maker]

RAID is not a replacement for backups. Two independent copies of your files would be more reliable than RAID1 for most situations. OR an 8TB USB drive as backup of the RAID1.

In the interest of brevity I did not review all of my backup options.

CFast Cards are rather expensive so I cannot store camera originals in that form. By using RAID 1 I get two copies automatically with an alarm if one copy is degraded. The CFast cards will be erased after being copied to the Archive drive. I am still contemplating what is reasonable beyond that. FYI, I do not derive my income from video editing or film making. Most of my work for done for free for non profits.

 

[USAFRet]

And still, data that lives on a RAID 1 is but a single copy. The user and the OS sees only that single file.
Accidental deletion - Gone.

An 8TB external is cheap and easy.
Free software does backups easily.

2 or more actual copies.

 

[Penniless Film Maker]

RAID, of any type, is NOT a substitute for an actual backup.
It does nothing for the more common forms of data loss. Accidental deletion, ransomware, corruption, etc, etc.

Thanks for the reply. As stated above I do not get income or even actual cost for my work. I am not setting up a facility. This machine is my daily driver and it will be used for editing a few times per year for no profit or even reimbursement of cost. My current system cannot do 4K hence the interest in storage solutions.

My question is how to get information on how to set up PUIS? These drives will only be used a few times per year and I would like to prevent them from spinning up unnecessarily. It is interesting that this feature exist but I find no information on it including on WD's and MSI's website. As I indicated I have read the manual for the motherboard and there is detail on how to use BIOS to create and delete RAID arrays but nothing on PUIS. I understand that there are headers on the back of the drives to enable this feature

 

[USAFRet]

PUIS - Power Up In Standby?

If only used a few times a year, why not just unplug them?

We're just saying that relying on a RAID 1 for data protection is a losing proposition.
In conjunction with a good backup, sure. But if you have the actual backup and don't need that 24/7 uptime...the RAID 1 is not much good.

 

[Penniless Film Maker]

In the interest of brevity I did not review all of my backup options.

CFast Cards are rather expensive so I cannot store camera originals in that form. By using RAID 1 I get two copies automatically with an alarm if one copy is degraded. The CFast cards will be erased after being copied to the Archive drive. I am still contemplating what is reasonable beyond that. FYI, I do not derive my income from video editing or film making. Most of my work for done for free for non profits.

Generally I follow the rule of having three copies in at least 2 different locations. I cannot do that in this case due to the speed of online backup and the fact that CFast cards must be reused. I will have to do something else.

 

[Zerk2012]

I still would use the hot swap bay. keep one large drive in the PC, download it to that, pop in the other drive and copy to it much faster that a USB external drive. Pop the drive out of the hot swap bay and you now have 2 separate copies.

EDIT I have the same motherboard and have not seen that feature anywhere.

 

[USAFRet]

Generally I follow the rule of having three copies in at least 2 different locations. I cannot do that in this case due to the speed of online backup and the fact that CFast cards must be reused. I will have to do something else.

An external USB drive?

 

[Penniless Film Maker]

An external USB drive?

Well, I really appreciate these responses. They have caused me to think a second time. I started with the idea of two drives and two copies commands. I found the RAID information in the motherboard documentation and thought that a more elegant solution was provided.

If I just use the two drives without RAID I still need better backup. I will have two files in the same building.

The problem of getting them not to spin up remains. I can do it manually but I am building a computer and my expectations were that equipment or software that I already have should address this problem. I have a large drive attached to my router that is a part of my backup architecture for the computer, second copy on site, and it too spins all the time. PUIS is mentioned on the WD website but is not detailed in any document that I can find. I did find that the jumpers on the back of the drives are there for compatibility with older systems that do not support current software based control of this function.

 

[USAFRet]

Below is my general backup routine.
Modified a little since this was written, but basically the same.

My "offsite" is a drive in a desk drawer at work. Bring it home every once in a while to refresh the data, and verify operation.
Could just as easily be 2x externals, rotated on whatever time frame is good.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

PC -> NAS -> NAS external
Life critical data offsite, refreshed as needed.

 

[Penniless Film Maker]

This is interesting. I have not seen this thread for some time. The system is now complete. It has changed somewhat:

The CPU is now an 11900k.
The motherboard ended up as a Z590 Ace
There are now 3 M.2 SSDs and no SATA SSDs
The two 6T drives are now external. They are used only for long term storage of 4k RAW video files as backup for them online is impractical. With an external enclosure they are completely unpowered when not in use which meets my original requirement. They do not dump more heat into the case and completely clear the airflow path from the bottom front fan to the power supply.

This solution came to me because my custom power cables were too long and quite inflexible. Rather than force them in I just removed the hard drives and have what I wanted in the first place. No drive noise or heat when not in use and lower temperatures under that shroud.

I now have the 4k camera and have started my educational process with color grading within Resolve.