In Review: EZQuest Studio V

By Ned Soltz

With the almost universal adoption of solid-state workflows, even individual editors who up to this point either daisy-chained FireWire drives or relied upon JBOD RAIDs, now see the need to move to the capacity, speed and redundancy that more powerful RAIDs offer.

This segment of the market is also the most price-sensitive. Many content creators just moving to RAID might also be shooting lower-data-rate formats such as DVCPRO HD, AVCHD or Sony XDCAM. They may be editing in formats up to ProRes HQ or somewhat higher DNxHD rates. Thus, they would have no need for units with dedicated I/O cards and expandable drive capacities.

This is just the market niche that EZQuest is targeting in their Studio V series.

The Studio V interfaces to Mac or PC via a single eSata or USB 2 cable. For SATA operation, all that would be required is a PCIe SATA card (two-port cards run under $200) or a computer with an internal SATA port. A little known fact, for example, is that the MacPros have one unused SATA port on the logic board. EZQuest bundles with this unit an internal jumper cable with connectors and slot interface. Of course, they include instructions. It has five drive bays.

The Studio V is controlled totally by the front panel. Simply follow the simple menu commands and the unit will create a RAID 0, 1, 5, or 10 configuration. For video purposes, RAID 5 is the preferred configuration, striping parity across all of the drives and allowing failure of one drive.

After creating the RAID using the control panel, then partition and mount using the host computer’s disk management software. The manual thoroughly explains both PC and Mac set up.

My test unit came populated with five 2TB Hitachi drives. Configuration was a snap. Just pop in the drives (they do not ship in the enclosure), turn on the unit, follow the set up menus to create a RAID 5, creative one RAID partition in Apple Disk Utility and voila — it mounts as a RAID with a formatted capacity of 8TB.

Because this drive is both eSata and USB 2.0, this is the perfect RAID for notebook computer users — provided of course that notebook has either eSata port or an Express34 slot to install an Express34 SATA card.

I was able to test this unit successfully both on a MacPro with internal CalDigit SATA card as well as on a MacBook Pro with a Sonnet Express34 SATA adapter.

The greatest compliment that anyone can pay to his or her RAID is that you basically don’t know it is there. I have run the RAID over a month without turning it off, copying and deleting data, editing from drive and using it as medium-term archives. It is quiet, has not failed, and runs cool. I only know it is there when I look beside my computer and see its flashing drive lights and front panel LCD.

While the drive can work perfectly well formatted internally and partitioned by your OS, users would definitely want to install EZQuest’s GUI software. This RAID management software sets parameters for rebuilds, has some ability to tweak settings and most importantly to send notification if computer has internet connection.

A major difference between what I would call an “entry level” raid such as the EZQuest and more costly solutions is the interface to the host computer. The EZQuest does its magic with an internal port-multiplying bridge board and RAID configuration options encoded into rom. Larger devices, such as the iStorage Pro iT8SAE iT8 SAS Expander, rely upon dedicated RAID controller cards with on-board processors. Those processors handle all I/O, error correction and sequential data functions. In the case of devices like the Studio V, a “dumb” SATA card is merely an interface and all I/O operations are handled by the host processor.

The result is that read/write speeds will be slower on the Studio V than on a device with dedicated card. But here we need to address the question of how much speed to you need relative to the cost of that speed. If you are not editing ProRes 4444 or 2K frame sizes, a larger system is overkill.

Indeed read/write speeds are slower with the EZQuest. Connected to the slower bus of the MacBook Pro via the Sonnet card, I could achieve about 168 Mb/s write and 264 Mb/s read. Write speeds when connected via the CalDigit SATA card to the MacPro rose to 230 Mb/s. Note, though, that these speeds are more than adequate for ProRes 422 or even ProRes 422 HQ. Likewise DNxHD 145 should not present any problems.

The Studio V is available in both 5TB and 10TB configurations. It is a solid performer and can provide a wide range of users the speed, security and capacity essential in this solid-state world.

 EZQuest Studio V

SCORE: 

PROS: Easy configuration and simple interface to computer. Rugged enclosure.
Quiet but effective fan. Drives mount securely in the enclosure bays.
CONS: Not as fast as costlier RAIDS with dedicate controller cards. Not
available in bare configuration for those who want to add their own
drives.
BOTTOM LINE: A solid performer that will provide a wide range of users the speed,
security and capacity they need.
MSRP:
$999 5TB; $1,599 10TB 
CONTACT: www.EZQuest.com