Re-striping array?

Good morning. We need to re-stripe our RAID array and I have a question about saving the media currently on those drives. We have discovered that our 12TB array (OWC's Qx2)has a parity check on both the write and read cycles. During writing, it hasn't been a problem..but when we try to do a digital cut, the read parity check leads to dropped frames and that's not good.

So, I'm willing to switch to either RAID 1+0 or just a straight RAID 0, but I would prefer not to have to re-dig and re-import all of our footage.

If I move all my Avid media onto another external drive, re-stripe my array and then move the data back onto the Qx2 that has partitions with the same names (although the sizes will be different!)...will Avid MC (v5.5) recognize my old media and bring the media back online?

Any advice or guidance (or good cookie recipes!) that you could share would be appreciated.

Thanks much...Bill

Avid MC 5.5 with Nitris DX
Mac Pro running OS 10.6.8
Qx2 hooked up via eSATA
Not enough RAM and a bunch of other gack hooked up to the CPU

Yes it will work fine. The drive name or drive letter (if on a PC) doesn't even need to be the same.
The easiest way is to copy off all the media to a spare drive.
If you can do a verify to check it's all copied over ok (Teracopy or some such)
Re stripe the drive and format it.
If on a PC add "everyone" as a user at the root level of the drive and set them to have full permissions.
Open Avid and create a piece of tone media from the Audio tool to that new drive. That will make the required Avid folder structure.
Quit Avid (never have Avid running while moving Avid media around as it causes all sorts of issues with quarantined files.)
Now on the new drive navigate to the 1 folder inside the MXF folder and delete it (it only contains the tone media just made)
Copy all the Avid Media from the backup drive to the new drive ensuring you are seeing folders numbered 1 (and possibly more) inside the MXF folder.
When copied again verify to check for errors and if all ok launch MC.
If the media databases are still intact MC may not even scan the folders but if it does just wait for it to finish.
Then all you media should be back on line.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US