I just had a red light go on a drive on a 10 bay 320x Avid Videoraid. The Videoraid has 10 - 250 gig drives installed. Can I buy a regular hard drive to replace or do I need a Avid branded drive?

Hi Ya derrik....

I would recommend that you get a drive from Avid under the spares/FRU program.  I believe we have plenty to support the RTR's remaining support period. We would not recommend a  customer going with the mixed drive scenario, unless they acknowledge that they would be on their own with regards to “Support”.   I don’t think there are many PATA Enterprise class/quality 3P HDDs out there nnyway.   And..... if you use ‘generic PATA HDD’ then performance and quality will likely be less than our pure Avid RTR/HDD approach.

My advice........

The drive may still be under warranty depending on when you bought it.  You should check with Spares first. May not cost you anything and it certainly doesnt cost anything to just check.

But....  If it’s out of warranty and more support for my initial comments above,  you would  really have to replace the raw drive with another drive from the same manufacturer because there’s a bridgeboard in there that is specific to the maker of the drive. PATA drives weren’t standardized like SATA drives are so each supplier put the data connector in a different place.

HTH

Marianna

Thanks for the valuable information. I checked and the drives were out of warranty in April '09. I figured that with my drives out of warranty and the Avid VideoRaid EOL'ed that I would be on my own to find parts.

Interestingly, I pulled out the the drive to get model and part numbers from the drive and when I reinserted the drive back into it's slot, it began to rebuild. I let it go for about an hour or so and now the lights are all green again. So I hope it was just a false alarm.