Raid confusion.help!!

[Buda]

Setting up 2 boxes.One for Gigastudio the other one for Cubase sx and other soft synths,Reactor Absynth. I want to use a raid 0 set-up on both boxes using 2 maxtor sata 250gig drives on each box.Should I install the O/S XP pro on the raid array or use a third drive for the O/S.I don't want to use to many drives as the heat and noise factor come into play. Any configuration ideas greatly appreciated.
Ta.:confused:

[Jimi_l]

I think you should go with a RAID 1 array as opposed to RAID 0. While you will certainly have faster read and write times with the 0 setup, if anything happens to either drive you will lose EVERYTHING as RAID 0 is not redundant.

A quick rundown on RAID options is here-
http://www.uni-mainz.de/~neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html

As to the third drive I don't think it is a bad idea and have considered just that setup for a radio station machine I am in the process of designing and building now. I do not think one IDE drive will raise the noise and heat level to unacceptable levels.

Jimi_l

[Buda]

Thanks Jimmi Ive been to that site on my quest to find the most compatible configuration however it's still kind of blurry.eg.should I install XP on a seperate disk and sacrifice the speed of the O/S or should I install it on the raid 0 or Raid 5.Also can you partition a raid array. eg Raid 5 :3 x 250g sata HD say 50g for O/S 100g for library of samples and 100g for recording. That = 50+ 100+100 in raid 0 (2x250g disks or is it double 100+200+200?)(+the 250 for Raid 5 parity disk or do I need 500g.) Logic tells me 20 for O/S 240 +240 +500 for parity.I'm confused as hell.Some one please release me!!:confused: :confused:
Ps
And this is for only one box.(the cubase one)

[Jimi_l]

You certainly can partition a RAID array and most servers do because of extreme fragmentation commonly seen in a file server.

You don't need to in my opinion.... Keep it simple

Actually I would just install the whole shebang on a two disk SATA RAID 1 setup.... Keep it simple

RAID 1 will look like one disk from the O/S (end user) standpoint. In other words two 120GB SATA drives will look and act like 1 drive of 120GB but will be totally redundant in case of failure.

One drive with everything on it, one drive letter, one drive to maintain and manage...simple (are we sensing a theme here?) :)

Jimi_l

[Sonika]

Hey Buda,

I've got another setup that I'd recommend. It's what I run now and it works really well using both concepts.

I run two 120GB SATA drives set up in RAID 0 for better performance and one additional drive for storage of finished tracks, backup or ones that aren't being worked on at the time.

The dual SATA's have the operating system installed and all the audio appz so everything runs nice and quickly. With processors as fast as they are now, the hard drive is becoming the bottleneck of speed, and RAID 0 will accomplish more than a faster processor in a lot of cases. Unless of course the operation is being carried out purely in memory and CPU.

The projects your working on should be on the RAID drives and then backed up or copied to the backup drive.

That way you've got better performance and if you're worried about losing your data you can have duplicate copies of it. I still normally suggest backing projects up to DVD tho.

Hope that helps and u have a ball makin some tunes ;~)

[RogerLons]

I'm with Sonika on this. I use a 3 GHz P4 with 3 HD's. One for the OS (100GB 7200 RPM IDE) and backups, and 2 120 GB SATA drives in a RAID 0 config for speed. I also backup projects regularly to DVD-RW's just in case.

This has been the fastest configuration I've ever used. You need to be careful to backup regularly since there's no redundancy. But man, is it fast!

[xpine73]

u may try RAID 0+1 or Matrix RAID

[Jimi_l]

RAID 0 and 1 have identical read speeds and only slightly different write speeds. I seriously doubt it can be seen by the user regardless of the application. Across a file server with multiple users perhaps, but not one on one.

Jimi_l

[dawboxpro]

Be sure that you get a good motherboard that supports serial ATA raid and has at least two other S-ATA ports for other drives as well....

Asus and Gigabyte are my top choices, anyone else with good results on models would be a big help to this guy venturing into the raid arena!

I leave my os with only the programs since they can be replaced if a drive fails. Tracks and takes as well as cool samples you make up can't be restored when a drive tanks so leep that in mind when making your raid choice. Also, back up anyways. I have lost more good music from just plain using drives to store stuff. One drop of a backup drive or a small glitch could cause corruption so get a DVDRW and back up at least the bulk of a tune after the session is over.....

Your drives under the stress of digital audio only last a few years and after about two years of hardcore use day in and out they could simply tank. On the other hand I have had drives last for 4-6 years...

You can trust raid, but just like a pretty woman. You can never really trust it unless it is backed up to disk as well.

PS. Also make one more copy of your DVDRW or CDRW backup if you can. One scratch on one of those discs and your done!!! Put them in a box and tape them up!!!! I have lost many a good master from one scratch on the disc and bingo the backup will not load....

Also smart to make a tracking backup...The tracks as wave or aiff files one by one so if the bundle or condensed session corrupts you at least have raw tracks to work with...

Do not want to freak anyone out or make you think I have all kinds of issues. I have just modified and rebuilt my existing machine so many times that every time I do it it takes these things to keep it all working when you are reloading masters ect. ....I do it of course to know what works well and what does not...

If you do these things and keep it simple before hand you avoid the nightmare....

At the time your recording a song you may think it is not that great or not your best, but trust me after you go back to it 4 years later with an idea to make it that hit song you will want to be able to pull up every little detail!!!

Happy Raids!!!

[hvengel1]

All of the mother board RAID solutions are software RAID. If you have to install a driver it is a software solution. These depend on your CPU to do much of the work. To get the best performance you need a true hardware RAID solution which is not available on any mother board that I know of.

I would have a good look at the NetCell SyncRAID cards. These full hardware RAID cards offer a mode that is really RAID 3 (one drive is parity data only) that they call RAID XL. This unit uses on the fly realtime XOR hardware to calculate the parity data as it is being written to disk. You can setup a 3 disk array that will have the same storage and speed as a 2 disk striped array (RAID 0 is really not a true RAID as it lacks redunancy) but with redundancy. Tom's Hardware reports that the performance of this solution is excellent and that it works particularly well with larger file IOs like those used in audio work. See http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031128/ for a complete review of this hardware.

The 3 drive SyncRAID cards sell for $180 for PATA and $220 for SATA. The 5 drive version is around $250 for PATA or SATA. The 5 drive card can do either 3 or 5 drive in XL mode. See http://www.netcell.com/products_overview.html for more info.

[Jimi_l]

"All of the mother board RAID solutions are software RAID"

Not exactly all,

Intel RAID (the only one I have ever used personally) is a true hardware RAID but can be monitored VIA software from the O/S as well as from the controller's BIOS. The drivers that come with the board are for XP not the RAID array itself which can be created before or after the install.

Jimi_l