Ssd- raid0 vs splitting libraries vs pciE Ssd?

[popmann]

Anyone have experience? I have the chamber and solo strings...demoing the extensions-let's assume I buy them for the sake of this conversation. 

I want to put them on Ssd. I could either get two 240gb and raid0 (totaling 480) or a RevoDrive240. Or, I could buy separate smaller drives for the various sample libs, so that each sound set is loading/running on its own Sata channel. All being about the same price...the revo just being of a size that I could just put my most often used libs on it--vsl, bfd2, mojoHorns, and Scarbee's Clav, probably. The remainder of occasionally used stuff, I could keep on magnetic. 

I know the revo benches much faster in total transfer time, but I think individual seek times are better without RAID. Of course a nVidia raid 0 of the two 240s is kind of in between the two, and would hold every lib I have with room to spare. 

Anyone have thoughts or experiences as it relates to vsl and sample loading time in general?

[flashman]

I'm running two 256Gb Crucial SSD's in a Raid 0 and they work great - really fast. Some people run them as two separate drives and use Junction Links to combine them. There's a long post about that on soundsonline-forums. 

[Cyril Blanc]

Now that VSL is optimised for raid and SSD it is better to use a raid of ssd. This allow to load much more in memory.

For the other plug-ins I cannot help much. Kontak was quite good for loading fast on a raid 0 of HD but I did not try it on ssd

Best

Cyril

[popmann]

You realize both the options I posted are raid0 Ssd? I'm asking if anyone has real world experience with the PCIE variety. The benchmarks on the Revodrive3x2 are stunning...but, they always compare them to single ssds, not to a motherboard native raid0 of two or more...

Im not asking if Ssd will improve load times...of course it will...the question in my mind is do I get two fast 240gb ssds and raid0 them with the nforce chipset for 480gb or pay the same for a 240 revodrive? Does anyone know if nforce raid is limited by a single Sata2 bandwidth? If so, pcie becomes a no brained...as two ssds can push FAR more than sata2 bandwidth allows. Or do they actually utilize 2x300mbs bandwidth, in which case it might be closer in real world to the pcie solution. 

[Cyril Blanc]

re read what you wrote :

> Or, I could buy separate smaller drives.............

> Ssd- raid0 vs splitting libraries vs pciE Ssd?

[woy]

I don't know if this is helpful to you, but I have just installed 4 SSD raid configured drives from Angel Bird. I have to say that they are making a superb difference to the loading times of a 12GIG template.In addition, the company gave me enormously helpful assistance over the telephone when I was installing this into my Mac Pro.

Regards, Roy

[popmann]

Sorry, Cyril...potentially a language barrier--all of the options I listed are Ssd. Maybe easier if they get their own numbered options?

#1--2 Ssd drives, in a raid 0 config from motherboard, so one logical drive with all vsl products. 

#2-- same two Ssd drives, only NOT raid'd--with chamber strings on one and solo strings on the other. 

#3--   A Revodrive 3 x2 PCIe with all vsl samples installed. This unit is a raid0 of two drives not bound by sata bandwidth. 

For the same price, $700'ish usd, the revo is 240gb, versus the other two totaling 480gb. I can get all my vsl, plus bfd2 on the revo-the sample used in every project. But, if the performance is a mild real world improvement over a the other options, I'd rather get twice the storage. Looking for anyone with experience with both. I was hoping the devs had done some testing since they did the Ssd optimization in vip2. 

For the angelbird...how much improvement do you see in that 12gb template? Like, used to take 7min and now takes 30 sec, or more modest?

[Cyril Blanc]

Sorry I cannot help you with the Revodrive, All I can say about OCZ, be carefull that the drivers are availlable for your OS.

A year ago, Mac users have been fooled.

When you Order it, write "under the reserve that the driver for ... is delivered and working, if not full refund of the amount of xxx $ + xx $ for postage" -------this sentence it a direct translation from French, they may be a more appropiate juridical sentence in English)

- SSD solution : You will need a SATA III PCI CARD if your mother board is in SATA II

- Raid or not raid : the best is to do a trial . Normally 2 x disk in raid 0 it is 1.5 the speed, it should be the same for SSD

- Time : I load my full orchestra template now in 1:30 mn before it was taking 25 minutes (with VI 1)

- Because of the Buffer size optimisation I can load much more instruments before using the swap file

I hope it will help you

Best

Cyril

[popmann]

Cyril, so you're saying you saw that load improvement from a single Ssd?

revo is out for me. Too many failure stories. So, with the out, it means I'll likely buy the 2x240 Crucial M4s...try it with one...if I see improvements enough, I'll split them over the two...if i don't see the improvement I want, I'll look at RAID. I'm amazed how little people want to spend on the slowest part of any computer. It's like, if it doesn't benefit gamers, no one benchmarks pcs for anything. 

[Cyril Blanc]

@popmann said:

Cyril, so you're saying you saw that load improvement from a single Ssd?

it load AND play improvement with the reduction of the buffer size with VEP 5 and VIP 2

Don't forget you need a SATA III card

What computer do you have ?

[popmann]

Not sata3, which has only been native for like the last year's chipsets. Previous to that it was all third party controller chips. It's a C2Q 2.4/8gb with nforce chipset. 

[Cyril Blanc]

To get all speed from the Crucial, you need a Sata III

[popmann]

Understood. But 280'ish on a single drive, combined with vsl loading 1/10th of the data...math makes that load about 25x faster than a single magnetic. The access time has nothing to do with sata3...only the ideal world top bandwidth of contiguous file copy...start loading random files not laid together on the disk, even the 550 max m4 starts being closer to 350. Which means on sata2 it will be 280 all day any day any files in any placement in the file system. 

Raid0 doubles the theoretical bandwidth using two drives that can push it. 

Obviously, a new build would do much better new hex core Sandy-E with 4 Sata6 ports--OS apps on two 64gbs raid0, and samples on a pair of Raid0 256gb...audio on a magnetic drive on the legacy sata2 connections. 16gb of quad channel ram. nVidia Quatro video card. Cool. Really don't want to build a new PC though. Use the one I have as little as I can. Much rather buy more VSL samples. :)

[Cyril Blanc]

@popmann said:

Raid0 doubles the theoretical bandwidth using two drives that can push it. 

no, it is 1.5

SATA III is 6 gb/s

You do not need to change your mother board yo can add a PCI SATA III card it is  32-35 $

Where did you see that VSL is loading 1/10th ? I load 1/2th !

[popmann]

Your thinking about another raid number...that is the rule in what two drives put out minus the raid overhead. Never EVER in the history of PCs until now could drive output more than host controller bandwidth. I mean the host controller bandwidth itself theoretically doubles. But, it depends on how many pcie lanes the particular mobo has given to the Sata controllers. Which is why the cheap pcie cards are not what you might think--you have to get upwards of $100 to get the kind of bandwidth two M4s can push (again in a best case scenario). You need them to be pciex4 or better, otherwise, they're actually more of a bottleneck than most mobo built in sata2 controllers. And third party drive controllers give me the newbie newbies-bad experiences in the past. There is one a little over $100 that's Marvel, who also makes the M4 chip controllers, so that might be worth some investigating. 

Look at your buffer options in vip2. The stock for a magnetic drive is 32000(I'm rounding)...first step down is 16000--is that where you're set? I can set that on my single magnetic drive, and it only causes an issue during really heavy use...then there are 4 or five steps lower. I Meade a mental note that the lowest was 1/10th...I could be wrong, but it's three or four digits, so that can't be far off. Can you not get it to work well below the 16000 mark?

[popmann]

I couldn't remember why I wrote that option off early on...all of them limit to 600mbs, most 500mbps due to the pcie x1 bandwidth. And the only one that even goes to 600 is a Highpoint that has gotten bad reviews (and that was the third party I had trouble with years ago). So, the only viable option for raid0 on drives that can read 550 is a $450 intel "real" hardware raid card that sits in an pcie x8 slot. At that point, I'd be more likely to spend that on a  mobo/CPU/ram up grade to get native intel mobo raid, which if you read is what every M4 benchmark I've seen uses. You know?P67 or x78 chipsets. 

But, you would be right that, if you assume you will put one drive on it, AND the card works well, you would get more push from the $25 card.