to Raid, or not to Raid?

[XenosoniK]

Hello, everyone. I am thinking of upgrading my computer and am wondering if running a Raid config would be a wise decision. Here's my current specs and what I'll be upgrading to.

Current PC:
Intel P4 2.66Ghz
1GB DDR2 4200
(3) IDE HDDs
winxp

Upgrade:
Intel Core2 Duo 6300
1GB DDR2 6400
(3) SATA HDDs

I produce electronic music and I also record acoustic instruments as well. So, my hard drives will have to be able to keep up with direct from disk sampling as well as writing multiple tracks of audio.
Now, my question is will having a RAID configuration boost my performance significantly, and is it worth the hassle? A coworker of mine told me that I should expect about a 25% performance increase from striping but that it might not matter much since SATA 300 would be able to handle sampling and writing audio just fine.
What's your take on this?

[guanche]

What is RAID?

[130dB]

What is RAID?

Redundant Array of Independent Discs

[Bops2000]

I am hearing more and more 0n raid setups, all good.
however , I THINK, for a dedicated daw, why go there, there seemss to be the same issues of scrambled info amomngst different drives, i would go hot swappable hard drives, or simple usb maxtor backup. I don't know squat about

[terry]

XenosoniK

Yeah Ive raid before. you can raid for speed or volume actually both. and you can raid for back up. Unless you follow your instructions on your mobo to the letter you could spend a lot of time correcting mistakes. there is not a lot of return for the effort unless you are raiding several drives. one advantage is when you raid two drives together you are in a sense staking your platters plus you are also doubling your hd buffer side. lets say your hd has 5 platters to write too. when you raid it is seen as one drive now you have 10 platters as seen as one drive. twice the threw put to your hard drives. also you now have twice the buffer since it is seen as one drive. If you are looking for speed id buy two of the fastest drives you can afford and a regular one. the reason the fastest drives on the market today don't have the capacity as a regular drive does. set it up with one with your operating soft ware IE xp and your Daw soft ware as well, then put all your vsts and such on the second one. As far as the third one use it as a backup. you will thank me later for it

[XenosoniK]

Thanks for the replies.

How much of a performance increase did you notice? And would it be wise to use RAID if I'd be sampling direct from disk and recording at the same time?
The way I had it before was that I had an OS drive, a sample drive, and a recording drive. If i were doing all 3 tasks, the drives would be dedicated to a single task.
How would this work in a RAID configuration? Would the drives be able to handle reading samples and writing audio data at the same time?

Thanks again.

[terry]

It wouldn't, you cant raid it and use them as independent drives there would no benefit. if you set it up as 3 drives IE c:\ , d:\, and e:\ then they would all be read at the same time independently. If you raid 2 or 3 together it would be seen as one drive. IE c:\ .

[mgrowe]

Raid comes in various flavours

Raid 0 - just individual drives with no striping etc
Raid 5 - This is the best as it spreads the load and give some backup

Raid 5 uses a minimum of 3 drive but you will effectively loose 1 drive as it stripes the data across all three drives and uses a third (For three drives) to store the info to rebuild if you loose 1 drive.

Raid 5 will speed up reading but actually slows slightly writing as it needs to write both the data and the redundant copy.

It will mean you can loose one drive and not loose the data (A good reason to use it). If you had 4 drives again you loose one

So if you have 3 200Gb drives and do raid 5 you would end up with 400 Gb usable space.

Sata should handle your stuff OK so I would personally only use raid 5 if you need to have redundancy. Also software raid is much less reliable than hardware raid (IE a dedicated raid card).

Hope that helps

[XenosoniK]

So, having SATA II drives should suffice for what I want to do? Because I don't understand how reading samples and writing data at the same time would benefit from having a RAID config as opposed to having dedicated drives. If someone could explain to me how and if this is possible (and if it were beneficial) then I would definitely move to a RAID config (striping and mirroring). Otherwise, the dedicated drive technique sounds a bit more practical.

[itsplayed]

Skip a RAID array unless you plan on doing very high audio track counts(80+) in a high res. mode(192khz) or doing extensive high def video work. Three internal drives( OS, Samples, Audio files) whether it be IDE or SATA and an external drive for backing up your work is more than adequate for most power users.

[TimOBrien]

Sound-on-Sound did a review on RAIDs last year and they found very little increase in performance. (10-20% at best) RAIDs do not scale up linearly. In other words, if you can stream 50 tracks with one drive, two RAID'ed will not get 100 and on and on.

A dedicated 7200rpm drive can stream upwards of 100 tracks and you are only increaing complexity and chance of failure. Dedicate drives for audio and samples and you'll be much better off.

[terry]

Every body keeps talking about reliability, I did raid almost for two years with out even a hick up. it is no more than a performance tool like turning every thing off that isn't necessary. to do this right your mobo has to be able to Handel 2 raids and 1 regular drive. that would take 5 drives. 4 to raid into 2 raid 0, and the last one for backup. every little bit helps. you don't need to go out and buy these large capacity drives as long as you can add two together to get the size needed. no more no less. as far as using external drives realistic they are great for laptops but not so much for desk tops plus you can schedule your back up time late at night when not in use.

thats my two cents

[jmail]

If you lose a drive on most raid setups used on home computers, you lose data on all in the disks in the array, unless you "mirror", which most folks don't want to give up half their disk space for duplicate data, and it slows the write down anyway, so "performance loss"... I'd vote "No"... not for a home computer DAW. Now, a server on a network, very cool...

[terry]

jmail

To each his own, Well any ways he asked and I gave him two options, 3 separate drives or raid 4 into 2 raid 0 + 1 regular for back up. Ill let him decide for him self. :)

[130dB]

Raid 0 - just individual drives with no striping etc


Not correct.
RAID 0 stripes data across all discs in the array set. It is the fastest of the RAID configs, but has zero fault tollerance. One disc fails, and all data is lost.

My personal favorite config is RAID 0+1
Requires at least 4 discs. It is a RAID 0 with another set mirroring them for backup as a RAID 1.

I agree with jmail. RAID arrays are great for network servers, but not such an advantage for desktops.

[mgrowe]

Not correct.
RAID 0 stripes data across all discs in the array set. It is the fastest of the RAID configs, but has zero fault tollerance. One disc fails, and all data is lost.

My personal favorite config is RAID 0+1
Requires at least 4 discs. It is a RAID 0 with another set mirroring them for backup as a RAID 1.

I agree with jmail. RAID arrays are great for network servers, but not such an advantage for desktops.

Sorry mate but my mistake

Raid versions are as follows

*

Level 0 -- RAID level 0, often called "striping," is a performance- oriented striped data mapping technique. That means the data being written to the array is broken down into strips and written across the member disks of the array. This allows high I/O performance at low inherent cost but provides no redundancy. Storage capacity of the array is equal to the total capacity of the member disks.
*

Level 1 -- RAID level 1, or "mirroring," has been used longer than any other form of RAID. Level 1 provides redundancy by writing identical data to each member disk of the array, leaving a "mirrored" copy on each disk. Mirroring remains popular due to its simplicity and high level of data availability. Level 1 operates with two or more disks that may use parallel access for high data-transfer rates when reading, but more commonly operate independently to provide high I/O transaction rates. Level 1 provides very good data reliability and improves performance for read-intensive applications but at a relatively high cost[2]. Array capacity is equal to the capacity of one member disk.
*

Level 4 -- Level 4 uses parity[3] concentrated on a single disk drive to protect data. It's better suited to transaction I/O rather than large file transfers. Because the dedicated parity disk represents an inherent bottleneck, level 4 is seldom used without accompanying technologies such as write-back caching. Although RAID level 4 is an option in some RAID partitioning schemes, it is not an option allowed in Red Hat Linux RAID installations[4]. Array capacity is equal to the capacity of member disks, minus capacity of one member disk.
*

Level 5 -- The most common type of RAID. By distributing parity across some or all of an array's member disk drives, RAID level 5 eliminates the write bottleneck inherent in level 4. The only bottleneck is the parity calculation process. With modern CPUs and software RAID, that isn't a very big bottleneck. As with level 4, the result is asymmetrical performance, with reads substantially outperforming writes. Level 5 is often used with write-back caching to reduce the asymmetry. Array capacity is equal to the capacity of member disks, minus capacity of one member disk.
*

Linear RAID -- Linear RAID is a simple grouping of drives to create a larger virtual drive. In linear RAID, the chunks are allocated sequentially from one member drive, going to the next drive only when the first is completely filled. This grouping provides no performance benefit, as it is unlikely that any I/O operations will be split between member drives. Linear RAID also offers no redundancy, and in fact decreases reliability -- if any one member drive fails, the entire array cannot be used. The capacity is total of all member disks.

Still wouldn't use raid unless you want redundancy for this application though

[XenosoniK]

i think i understand now.

for me to incorporate RAID in the setup i want, i would need at least 2 RAID setups and 7 drives. 3 drives for audio in RAID 0+1, 3 drives for samples in RAID 0+1, and an OS drive.

Sadly, that is way out of my budget. Plus all the heat and noise from those drives would drive me insane!

I appreciate everyone's input. ATM, i think going with 3 dedicated SATA II drives will suffice.

[sabianq]

yea, I agree, Don't RAID. RAID is great for non linear video editing when you want speed, but there is a zero tolerance for error, lose one disk, all data disappears. or the other flavor for safe keeping of data where you have redundant disks, this is a memory hog, two 100 GB drives will only yield 100 GB. granted you will have your Data forever, but not worth the money IMHO.

The best set up for audio is multiple hard drives all independent of each other on SATA or EIDE. Keep one drive dedicated to operating system and applications and the other hard drives for projects.

store your master files on optical media.

[tech1]

I consider a RAID 1 to definitely be worth the money. If a drive goes down with all of your sessions, they are G*O*N*E forever. With RAID 1, you can use the other physical drive to rebuild your array. The cost of an extra drive is WELL worth the security of having "data forever."

My current home PC is in the build process right now, but I will be incorporating a RAID 1 on my recording drive. The peace of mind is well worth the extra initial cost to me.

[terry]

XenosoniK

Bottom line it doesn't matter if you raid or don't raid. Whether you lose a disk raided or not you still lost the data. Back up, Back up, back up!! and if you did not get the point back it up!!!!!:) :) :)

[XenosoniK]

agreed. i will have an external hdd hooked up and running regular backups for sure. i was interested in RAID mainly for striping and performance. for my situation, an external will do.

thanks again, guys.

[terry]

XenosoniK

Despite what others opinions are. raiding is just another tool to increase the performance of your PC. Even if some one stated 10 to 20% gain i seriously doubt that much. But just the same it is just one item on a list of several items. No more No less. :) :)