SATA drive(s) for audio on my new DAW

[scalez]

Just got my new system up and running and looking for a new dedicated audio drive or two. I know nothing about SATA and Raids so I'm just wondering what the heck to get and how to set it up.

My mobo is a A8V Deluxe, and I have a Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with WinXP Pro. My system drive is a WD Caviar SE 80GB Ultra ATA100, and I have firewire drives for backup.

I consider myself pretty knowledgable about computers (5 years doing software testing professionally), but I have never touched a SATA drive and don't know how to hook this all up at all. Just a general nudge in the right direction about what type of drive would be the best for me to get and where to plug it in would be a nice start.

Thanks!

[scalez]

first of all, there's SATA 3.0Gb/s and then there's Serial ATA150. Sup with that?

[Bops2000]

You will just need the drivers with the sata, -not on the xp install.
I run both ide and sata HD's on my asus athalon.

[scalez]

You will just need the drivers with the sata, -not on the xp install.

I'm not clear on what you mean here, and I think it wasn't directly related to my question. Maybe I should reiterate.

I want to know what SATA drive or drives would best suit my purpose. I plan on using this drive for recording audio. What drives are people using for this with A8V Deluxes?

[steve 9atx]

scalez

I am also in the market and have only found two: "laCie" and "CMS", both SATA I transfer rate (1.5MB/sec, I believe). I haven't found an external drive that supports the SATA II protocol. I'll have to flip some dip switches on my motherboard because it is native SATA II. Hope this helps.

Steve

[Bops2000]

Oh,
I just run a maxtor 120 gigger as secondary (audio) drive.
I am no pro in audio though. I haven't had any hiccups. seems stable enough.
I have some vsts on that drive as well as primary, and ocasionally run both drives with 24 bit audio...
Files drag drop pretty quick, defrag and sys cleanup is a breeze in NTFS
format.

[scalez]

I am also in the market

OK so we're in the same boat. maybe someone who understands this stuff can post something helpful for us.

[scalez]

I'm pretty sure all SATA drives are much faster than 1.5Mb/s. What I'm wondering is, are the 150Mb/s ones just as good as 3.0Gb/s ones at recording up to 16 tracks of 24-bit 96K audio and playing back up to 50 tracks at low latency? I don't want to spend money I don't have to, but I don't intend to get something less than what I need.

Also, will 16MB cache benefit me over a 8MB? What are the extra things to think about if I try a RAID+1 config? Do any particular models or brands of drives run on a RAID+1 better than others?

[scalez]

Woops, I meant Raid 0, not Raid 1 (and definitely not Raid+1 since that doesn't mean anything). Sorry for the confusion, I just read up on this today for the first time.

[scalez]

And how about Raid 0+1. Does it make any sense to do that for an audio drive?

[steve 9atx]

scalez

The deal with Raid 1 as I understand it is that you're running a drive in parallel with another drive on your system. The "laCie" drive I mentioned is apparently capable of this. I can't see the advantage of this, unless, like we have our server configured at the office, it is for redundancy. That is, if one drive fails, the other is hot swapped in with identical information on it. I think this is what the RAID 1 protocol literally is. In any case, SATA I is very, very fast, 1.5MB/sec.. SATA II should almost be indistinguishable from reading/writing to your hard drive; however, I don't know of a stand-alone drive in one box that supports SATA II. You might have to buy a seperate case and internal hard drive to get this transfer rate. Yes, a 16MB cache is always better - buy as much (or in my case, more than) drive as you can afford.

Steve

[itsplayed]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154414

[steve 9atx]

itsplayed

Do you know of a package external drive that supports SATA II? That is, not an internal drive in an external drive enclosure but a one-piece external drive.

Steve

[scalez]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154414

One of the reviews on that page complains that this drive is loud. Itsplayed do you have any first-hand experience with this drive?

Also, did you follow my questions about RAIDs? Does it make sense to do a RAID 1 or a RAID 0+1 with two physical drives to make one super fast and efficient drive?

Steve, you seem to need some clarification on RAID (which is cool. I needed the same clarification 24 hours ago). RAID 0 is what you're thinking of - redundant. The two drives are identical in case one fails. I don't think I would do this with audio drives. RAID 1 is sort of the opposite... It treats two drives as one and writes one part of a file to drive 1 and the other part to drive 2. I think this could be a great config for an audio drive since it can load and save data twice as fast, but you've got two physical drives and therefore twice the chance of catastrophic failure, so I wouldn't try this without another drive to back stuff up on (I already have an external lacie firewire drive for that). But is that worth it is my question.

Again, Steve. SATA150 transfers MUCH faster than 1.5MB/s. Some are 150MB/s, some are 300MB/s. The upper-bound scenario I talked about in an earlier reply was 50 tracks of 24-bit 96K. Just doing the math, that comes out to 14.4 MB/s, so i guess 150MB/s is plenty. So i guess cache size and latency would be the issue for me?

[itsplayed]

Is their a particular reason why your looking for such a drive? One of the benefits of externals is they're hot-swappable, another reason why such a drive is not a good idea, is....what do you do when the drive fails? Such a drive is not so cost effective.
SATA and SATA 2 are really marketing hype at this point. There's no question that they are providing the path for future drives, but most drives haven't even hit PATA's ceiling yet.
At 100 MB/s (UltraATA/100), the interface's maximum bandwidth is gradually approaching a region that subsequent generations of drives will soon achieve. Up to now the interface has not caused any bottlenecks in terms of performance, as ATA hard drives barely reach bandwidths of 70 MB/s. So as far as overall performance is concerned, switching to SATA does not represent any progress, even if the interface is being hawked in an ad-savvy way with "150 MB/s" or "300 MB/s".
With Firewire 400 or USB2 interface, you'll see a more realistic transfer rate of around 12-15 MB/s. Firewire 800 transfer rates have been reported up around 32-35 MB/s. Standard Pata or Sata's clock around 48-58 MB/s. Going internal is the clear choice, unless external is your only solution.

[itsplayed]

One of the reviews on that page complains that this drive is loud. Itsplayed do you have any first-hand experience with this drive?

Yes, I use this drive. You'll always find someone, somewhere complaining of something others do not. When he says it's loud....what is he comparing it to exactly?
The Seagate's Barracuda 7200.9 offers the best overall performance, competitive right out the gate. The only drive that I know of that's quieter and is as competitive to the Seagate, is the offering from Samsung.
Fastest drive.....Hitachi
Quietest drive.....Samsung
Least expensive drive.......Maxtor

[scalez]

Looks like the one you linked to (NL35) is even better than the barracuda.

After doing the math on transfer rates, there doesn't seem to be any reason to do a raid, unless I just get an itch to waste money. I'll pick up one of those NL35's and I'll be happy.

Why would you want external SATA anyway? SATA is not hotswappable.

[steve 9atx]

scalez

My understanding is that an external SATA drive is hot-swappable or "hot plug" capable as my motherboard documentation describes it. In any case, my interest in SATA began because I'd used up all the firewire and USB ports on the back of my machine. This prompted me to look at another curious port on the motherboard, a SATA port. I shopped for a packaged external SATA drive at MicroCenter and other places without success. So, I began looking on the internet. My purpose is purely archival, though. I just need the fastest drive that I can to make an image of my hard drive periodically and be bootable in case of a crash. I also like the hot swap feature so that when leave town, I can just disconnect the drive and leave it at the office or in my fire safe. And I do understand the RAID scenario you're talking about: I found a website that describes all of 'em from 0-7 (or 8?, I forget). But no RAID scenario makes sense for me because to write files over multiple drives would take away all portability from the external drive and the writing in parallel scenario would erase common files on all drives not allowing you to restore accidentially erased or corupted files.

Sorry, this has strayed considerably from your original post.

Steve

[ab420]

What drives are people using for this with A8V Deluxes?


I have an A8V Deluxe, so I may be of some help to you... First off, if you ae overclocking your system, know that the A8V Deluxe (on revision 1) has no PCI/AGP locks, so you won't get far, Revision 2 fixed that with the right BIOS, but they don't seem to like SATA drives when overclocked high. If you aren't overclocking, cool, forget that stuff:

I have used a few different WD Caviar SATA drives in this system and they have all been great, no problems. I also tried out one of the Maxtor DiamondMax16 drives with the 16MB cache, and that was nice too, especially with samples and other files falling below that 16MB mark. For ultimate speed in SATA, get the Western Digital Raptor series drives. They spin at 10,000RPMs instead of 7,200 like most of the rest. Unfortunately, they only come in sizes up to 150GB, and are very expensive (but still less than SCSI)

SATA 3.0 vs. SATA 150:
Doesn't mater what so ever. Yep, I said it. Here's the deal, not a single drive in the world has ever come close to hitting 150MB/s....EVER! Having 2 Raptor 150's in RAID 0 still won't break that barrier, so it's really not all that important. ASUS A8V Deluxe has SATA 150 (USE THE PROMISE CONTROLLER NOT VIA RAID!!!!!) Most SATA 3.0 drives will work in SATA 150 ports no problem and vice versa, there are of course a few (rare) cases where the motherboard doesn't like it, but this is taken care of with a jumper on the SATA 3 drive.