What is the fastest HrdDrive Systm to run VIs?

[svonkampen]

What is the fastest HrdDrive Systm to run VIs?

Hi,

....so from you seasoned veterans, i need a shopping-list.....

I'm running 2 Mac G5s each with 8 gig of RAM.....currently each has it's own TeraByte firewire 800 drive.

So my question is whether to spread the various "instrument-sections" onto separate drives, to get better performance from VIs?

Should I construct a Raid system?
Should I use internal SATAS?

whar should I do?

Thanx,

SvK

[Jack Weaver]

SVK,

What I've done is added a SCSI card & purchased two 300 GB 10K SCSI drives and put them into an external cabinet dedicated to the VI. I have a chassis that holds up to 4 drives, currently inhabited by the two 300GB drives (Seagate Cheetah 10K.7 ST3300007LW 300GB 68pin U320-SCSI 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer) that are in a RAID 0 configuration. The SCSI card is an ATTO single channel Ultra320.

This should hopefully be enough disk space for VI products for some time to come - complete VI, Appasionatta, organ.

I'll be adding another, similar non-RAIDed drive for Pro Tools shortly. Pro Tools doesn't like RAID. To back up the Pro Tools I will add another FW drive as the SCSI drives are a bit expensive.

I haven't had any disk-oriented problems since going to this scheme. I don't really wish to take the time to do throughput testing on it - but needless to say it pretty much flys. The only thing that would be faster would be a Fibre Channel dual gig card and Fibre Channel drives. But that would have diminishing financial returns.

I still have the complete ESX24 VSL library on a FW800 bus with a LaCie 500GB Big Drive. A Big Mistake making me reconsider and go to SCSI instead. So glad to have the SCSI setup for VI. Since the old VSL will be used minimally I will leave it on the LaCie.

My rig currently:
G5 dual 2 Gig, 6.5 GB RAM, OSX 10.4.3, Logic 7.1.1, Pro Tools HD|Accel2, PT 7

Hope this helps add a POV. Thanks for your recent orchestral strings matrix. It gets used here.

Best regards,
Jack

[svonkampen]

Jack,

thanx...so much on this feedback...


also I'm glad you are getting some mileage out of that FXB [;)]

what sort of material are you using it for?

SvK

[svonkampen]

OK,


So I have decided to go with 10.000RPM SCSI drives...

2 per G5

Each drive will be dedicated to one of the String sections:

Drive1- Violins
Drive2- Violas
Drive3-Celli
Drive4-Basses

this way I can avoid Raid....and still get blazing access right?

I will relegate my firewire 800 drive to EXS24 duties.

[Vagn Luv]

Im curious Jack, what bad experiences did you have with the Lacie Big Disk?

Im' currently running 2x600GB FW800 LaCie Big Disks (they are hard-raided to RAID 0), one for VI, and other for all other samples. Idea was to spread out more VI collections over both drives when/if the need arises. So far no problems whatsoever. I'm taking care not to run any FW400 drives on the computer, as the FW bus only moves at the speed of the slowest interface, ie. making FW800 work like FW400 drives.

LaCie FW bus'es are the fastest around in single unit external drives, and was part of the reason I bought them in the first place. I've run SCSI before with my ProTools rig, and it works solid, but it's an aging design that seem to die out for consumer use (not enterprise server market). SATA is taking over everywhere, and I'm getting a 150 GB Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD, which is running 10k rpm on SATA, and will match in speed any (affordable) SCSI solution out there, and will set you back around 300$. This will be enough to run a shatload of VI from. I'm going to use it for ProTools as an audio recording disk, but I will prolly not be able to resist the temptation to run the VIs of it as well.

/ 10000 rpm / 16 MB / Serial ATA-150 / 4.6 ms

[Vagn Luv]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2690&p=1">http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2690&p=1

[cm]

i can vote for the raptors too - as i always do [;)] although i don't have the 150 GB model here a lot of 36 and 72 GB models are running here successfully (with and without raid - software and hardware raid).
besides the 10.000 rpm advantage the raptors also use the NCQ technology (native command queuing) like SCSI drives, which makes them so fast regarding seektime and they are still remarkable cheaper than cheetahs.

i've noticed also it constantly becomes more difficult to get (68-pin) SCSI devices - for servers those with SCA-connector is the model of choice and SAS (serial attached SCSI) is already out and advancing massively.

there are also some seagate models actually with 300 GB (7.200 though) using NCQ out - all devices claiming to be sATA II _must_ use this feature by specification. it is the way to go currently IMHO
christian

[Vagn Luv]

CM, according to the anandtech review I linked to above, having the NCQ option turned on drops drive performance around 9%, but I suppose that is only in sustained rad/writes? With the VI there is a lot of seeking going, and thus NCQ will actually increase performance, right?

[cm]

basically yes, unfortunately the tests do not compare average read with/without NCQ nor could i find a number for amount of bytes read during the average test - this is where buffer sizes come into play additionally (larger buffers might actually decrease performance).
i should have a harddrive test from adaptec around where you can set the number of read bytes in average mode - a figure that would be really interesting to know for sample streaming.
christian

[Jack Weaver]

Vagn Luv,

My apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

The LaCie 500GB Big Drive dual/RAID 0 is notorious (even within the confines of this forum, please read past posts) for heat problems. During a longer session with a lot of articulations it will slow down considerably and after a certain number of times has failed - including for me. Spending two weeks rebuilding VSL and other libraries was not my favorite thing to do. It's probably a fine piece of equipment for other types of files. I would also think twice before using it for Pro Tools also if your sessions have a high edit density. It's all the access activity that seems to be the culprit.

I chose my SCSI drives (see my orignal post on this thread) prinicipally for their screaming acces times and NCQ. High throughput is an additional bonus. The SATA drives that I was looking at had 3-4 times the amount of seek time. SCSI was the way to go for me.

I don't look at SCSI as been an end of the road technology for our purposes. It's simply faster and extremely robust. FireWire is nice. SATA is nicer. SCSI is nicest for my puposes of VI and Pro Tools.

But this is not a technology race to have the best rig. This idea is to make music and have tools that are dependable. My reasons for posting are simply a POV.

May your systems run long and cool,
Jack

[Nick Batzdorf]

cm, can you recommend a SATA card for Windows machines? PCI, not PCI Express, preferably with eSATA (external).

[cm]

i've been looking for sATA II with external connectors - couldn't find any, so i took sATA I (noname - called digitus) and use an own PCI-slot for external plug, 1.5 GB/s is enough ...
on another machine i just used the internal connector with a 0.5 m cable to connect an external drive - but, pssst, don't tell somebody, it might be bad for my reputation [;)]
christian

[julian]

@Nick Batzdorf said:

cm, can you recommend a SATA card for Windows machines? PCI, not PCI Express, preferably with eSATA (external).

My card (for a mac) has been working reliably for a few months it has windows drivers I believe and is available in various configurations

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata44.html

Julian

[Nick Batzdorf]

Thanks cm. I just bought a no-name one yesterday, and I'm glad to hear yours works. This one was very cheap and has an eSATA port, so I figure it's not a huge gamble. By the way, I'm sure you know about these things, right?

http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/saexsa2pcibr.html

Julian: I have the Sonnet eSATA 4+4 on my main G5, and yes, it's working very well. I'm also using one of these; hopefully it's as safe as they think it is:

http://www.g5drivebracket.com/

But I don't want to spend that much to add drives to that XP machine if I can help it. I'll move the Sonnet card to a Windows machine next time I upgrade, since PCI Express is the next tail we're chasing.

[cm]

@Another User said:

I'm sure you know about these things, right?

bracket - this was the word i've been looking for ... yes i had one but for some reason contact has not been very good, so i trashed it ... another one with a single connector works fine though.
happy that the connectors changed slightly with sATA II - they are more reliable for external devices now
christian

[Sergino Futurino]

For Vienna Horizon and Vienna Instruments working the best do you use NTFS or FAT32 partitions? and the cluster size?
Thanks
Sergino

[cm]

sergino, with XP i'd always use NTFS - it is much more reliable than FAT32. and use primary partitions wherever possible. for audio i'd recommend a clustersize of 4096 (default is 512), thus you can reduce the overhead and still use windows' onboard tools for defragmentation (doesn't work above 4096). IMO more also doesn't make sense for sample streaming.
christian