Guy,

Well, you already have a second internal 500GB SATA drive. That can hold VSL. If you wish to keep everything at SATA speed simply get an external SATA drive (or drives) solution from one of the various reliable manufacturers and use it to hold VI as it becomes available. Make sure that it is an expandable system.

Away you go! It sounds like a great system.


Best regards,
Jack

Jack, thanks!

So my 2nd drive 500 MB will hold all my VSL.

I presume I should get a SataRaid 2 or 4 drives in which one will hold VI. So far is that right? And since VI is about 500GB then the drive will have to be 500GB?
Or something like that? [*-)]

Did some research and decided to purchase two LaCie external SATA hard drives. Each drive is 250GB (but larger configurations can be obtained), and each come with a PCI card to plug into an available PCI slot in the computer (I happen to use Mac G5). Two hard drives can run off of one PCI card, and each drive can be powered by the internal drive power wires within the computer. *Much* faster than my older Firewire 800 drive, and stiping as Raid-0 (easy with Apple's included software) makes it that much faster. No room in the computer for more *internal* SATA drives, so this seemed a good choice. I've used many LaCie drives in the past and have not had trouble with them (I have no connection to LaCie). Here is a review of the LaCie (the review is a little older- prices have come down since the review was published): http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32842

Just a footnote on the Lacie: I know you're not suppose to put in the middle of your studio, but why do they make them so they're so easy to tip over? And when that happens that could seriously damage it! I've witnessed this several times.
I had the experience of having a Lacie overheat and thus had to wait 10 days before getting it back from the repair shop. I was lucky I wasn't in production then! I guess it depends on the continuos time you spend on it for it to overheat. So in my case it's heatville! Not for me... What about an external Sata raid system, can you have problems with that?

Guy and mdfmuse,

Please don't misunderstand me, I really didn't mean to be down on most LaCie drives. The LaCie Big Drive I had was a special case where they offered two 250GB drives in one cabinet that used a RAID 0 configuration. That was their shakey product. I have two of them on the shelf as a testament to my poor purchasing decision. Generally most people I know have had good luck with their individual drives.

You might want to check the VSL Forum archives as I believe that the compressed format in which VI will be delivered actually is closer to about 350GB. Perhaps cm can chime with an authoritative figure on this. You might be able to get by for a while with one drive. However getting two would be a better way to go.



Regarding the tipping over issue, I placed the LaCie drives flat on a table with rubber spacers below and between them to allow for adequate airflow. They run a bit hot.

sorry, no authoritative answer right now ... but the average compression rate should be 65%, so ending up with 350 GB (real size, not palliated harddrive size figure) sounds realistic.
christian

btw: i never understood why the LaCie BigDrive doesn't come with a fan - they get really hot actually when simply copying files on them ....

Can anybody explain to me what's a Raid 0? (Stripping and mirroring) I see there's Raid 1,2,3,... When I look it up it's often so technical that instead of learning the term, I end up with 3 things I don't understand! [*-)] [*-)] [*-)]

Thanks, (consider it as charity work [:D])

Guy.

RAIDing drives is the way to make more than one drive appear as a single drive. These drive groupings can also be made into smaller partitions called volumes.

It is done with software in just a few clicks. There is software already resident on your G5 that will allow you to do this. There is also another product for Mac called softRAID that is a bit more elegant. Also, chances are that whatever hardware solution that you purchase will have their own RAID software and should come with detailed instructions on how to do this.

RAID level 0 is when you stripe two or more drives and use them as one larger, and ususally faster drive. The only problem with this configuration is that if (or probably when) there is a failure of one of the drives you most likely lose all the information on the drive set.

RAID level 01 occurs when you stripe two or more drives to act as one and simultaneously mirror (duplicate) their activity with an exact hardware copy of the first set of drives. In other words, if you use two hard drives for your first drive set (which need to be entirely identical hardware) you need two more entirely identical hard drives for your mirror set and they will become clones of whatever is on your first set of drives. In the event of catastrophic failure of your first drive set you will probably have to relink your VSL and VI instruments to the data on the mirrored drive set.

For your purposes, I would not spend anytime trying to wrap your brain around the other RAID types. For safey you might want to find a local Mac technician when your drives arrive to help you install the SATA PCI card and create the RAID striping.

However, since cm has pretty much confirmed that VI will sit comfortably on one 500GB drive - you don't necessarily need a RAID configuration. This will simplify your life and be easier on the pocket book.You still might want to get two drives simply to make a backup clone of your VI samples.

Always remember to have your drives no more that 85% filled with data - individual or RAIDed.

Best regards,
Jack

I fell across this whilst searching on the net http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm it has a comprehensive coverage in not too difficult language of all the benefits/pitfalls of all the various raid systems. Good bedtime reading!!

Julian

@cm said:

one more time ... be warned ... raid controllers behave different. even the Xraid has to be configured to give you best throughput for streaming

Hi Christian,

I use a Kano Tech (super-quiet) external 4 drive SATA rack for all my sample libraries, but they are not setup in any kind of RAID. They are JBOD (just a bunch of disks). So far, things are really working well, but are you suggesting that I should try a software RAID with these disks? I've always understood that for sample streaming RAID may not be the best solution, however, manually distributing the libraries across 4 drives as I've done may not always be a match for a particular orchestration. Maybe a certain piece uses many samples only from a single drive. For this reason I'm asking if I'd be better off with a RAID setup. What do you think?
Thanks,
Gary

@Jack Weaver said:

However, since cm has pretty much confirmed that VI will sit comfortably on one 500GB drive - you don't necessarily need a RAID configuration.

Jack -- I think that although the entire library will FIT on a 500GB drive, you'd be putting that single drive through the wringer trying to make it access and spit out enough samples for a large orchestration. (CM -- please correct my if I'm wrong.) Maybe one of the newer drives with a 16MB cache, but I would doubt it.

@Another User said:

... but are you suggesting that I should try a software RAID ...[code:1:7fb1e74b40]
gary, no i'm not (assuming your rack is connected via FW800 or actually sATA) - i've just noticed it is more performant in most cases as a (usually cheap) hardware raid, because of the special demands of audio streaming.

i'd say software raid adds 3-5% load to the system - so if you need just these 5% performance (for an additional instance of VI, for some other plugin) the software raid would be contraproductive.

to spread a library *right* across multiple drives can be tricky and depends of course also on the type of performance you have to arrange.

the most significant value for a drive is IMO the average seektime (for our needs), thats why NCQ (found with SCSI and some sATA) is the superior thechnology when we look at sampling.

christian[/code:1:7fb1e74b40]

Christian -- not sure I a understand what you mean. (BTW, I have a SATA card connecting my 4 drive rack). I understand you do not prefer software RAID, but are you saying that a hardware RAID is better than manually spreading the library across 4 drives. Also, what is NCQ? Thanks.

Gary

gary, sATA drives connected via sATA is a very good solution - i'd say no need to experiment with software raid.

NCQ is Native Command Queuing (aka Tagged Command Queuing) - a technology originating from SCSI.
in a nutshell: if the operating system (OS) requests data (say portion A-B-C-D, 512 bytes each) which resides in different sectors of the harddrive NCQ can re-order the requests (say to B-D-A-C) to minimize the movement of the heads (in the harddrive) - this reduces seektime to the half (average 8,5 ms to 4,5). this happens in the interface sitting on the harddrive itself.

a hardware raid makes only sense, if you can be sure it does not try to cache files (and so effectively reducing your performance) and also uses NCQ _and_ an intelligent read-algorithm.
my example here:
IBM expansion unit SCSI 160 drives, i5 controller, raid5 = ~20 MB/s
EONstore (sATA drives to SCSI), 39160 controller, raid 5 = ~120 MB/s

your sATA drives should give you around 60 MB/s and i'd assume you will not reach this limit with any arrangement, especially if the (instumental) sections are spread across several drives. sATA I (the bus itself) is 150 MB/s - capital B means Bytes

christian

christian

Thanks Christian -- very helpful info.
Best,
Gary

@Guy said:

-G5 Quad, 6.5 GB RAM
-1st internal drive 250GB
-2nd internal drive 500GB (being installed)

-Logic Pro

-VSL Pro Ed and Perf Set
-VI Library

-Redmatica

I'm looking seriously to get SOHORAID SR3600/2 X 500GB from my local Mac retailer. Will this carry the load? Opinions....


http://www.stardom.com.tw/main_e.htm Click on SR3000 Series.


Jack,

Thanks for that explanation, I actually understood it! [:D]

garylionelli,

I currently use a single drive for VSL orchestral mockups. I usually run into a Digidesign coreAudio issue long before I ran into drive issues. So perhaps I did not have the opportunity to hit the ceiling of drive throughput. Perhaps after NAMM and I see MIR so I can figure out what shape my VI system will eventually be and get a new interface for Logic other than having to use my Digi 192 I will have more first hand experience. I don't have the real world VSL experience of cm, naturallly. However, I did own a company that built Fibre Channel networks for nonlinear video workstations, Pro Tools and digital film dubbers so I have a feel for the crude basics involved.

There are a lot of ways to do this. I haven't checked recently for pricing on the higher rotational speed SATA drives but per the Seagate website:
Barracuda 7200-RPM drives with SATA NCQ match performance of 10K SATA drives at much higher capacity and better price per gigabyte (in apps with higher-transaction workloads)

You want to access all those little .wav files as quickly as possible. Having them on more than one disk would be fine. Higher rotation speeds aid in faster seek times.

I haven't yet seen the utility that is supposed to come along with VI for linking the instruments with the samples, a la EXSManager (which to the best of my knowledge won't work with VI since there are no EXS instruments). However I can envision having two external SATA drives (in JBOD mode) each with the full VI on it - using one to link, say strings, and the other to lin to winds, brass, percussion.

This way you could have the advantage of accessing sample files from multiple disks for speed and, in the case of catastrophic failure you would still have a full copy of VI to use in the mean time.

Of course, gary, this is assuming that you aren't recording audio in addition to composing with VSL/VI. Currently, I use a second, internal SATA for recording audio from Pro Tools. I generally don't record with Logic.

cm is certainly correct about the throughput of SATA being more than adequate - and seemingly everything else regarding this for that matter. He should be considered the final authority on these matters. You might not need software RAID for speed. RAID mirroring might be nice though.

I sure do look forward to going to NAMM and finally figuring out what's going to be required for the rest of the system, including the PC that hosts MIR. Everything is a bit on hold for me until that time.

Hmm, maybe I should ask cm now what I need? OK, I have one G5, Pro Tools HD2 Accel w/ 192 interface and Logic. I record audio in Pro Tools, MIDI in Logic and mix in Pro Tools. I have Pro Cube w/ Performance Set & most of the Horizon stuff - all in EXS. I've ordered VI and think I want MIR.
I need to get another audio interface (probably FireWire) for Logic because of the Digidesign coreAudio problems. I am replacing all my FireWire drives with an external SATA drive system (JBOD, RAID?). That will take up my third and final PCI slot.

What will I need for a MIR PC? How do I link the MIR PC with the G5 with Logic on it. Can I still mix in Pro Tools? I don't mind changing my methodology as VI will make it all worthwhile. However, I have a ton of TDM plugins. Note: Pro Tools v7 doesn't work with Logic in TDM mode. Eventually it would be nice to simply work in Pro Tools with the, ahem, RTAS version of VI.

Thanks,
Jack

I've already ordered the 2 bay internal RAID 0,1 Module, with 2 X 500GB.(and it ain't cheap!) So if you have bad news don't say it. Just pretend it's an excellent deal! [:D]

Jack -- your seup is similar in some ways to mine. I use an internal SATA for audio too. Sounds like from what Christian said, as long as the library is split into orchestral sections, JBOD will be the way to go (as I'm doing now).

I'm not sure we'll ever see an RTAS version of the VSL VI, though - it might be a wrapper (hope not). That's the reason I'm thinking of setting up my new Quad without ProTools (I use DP as a front-end to PT). Hope we can find out more specifics about VSL's plan's for RTAS soon -- I'd like to get moving on my setup.

Guy,

It's an excellent deal. Spot on.


Gary,

So you will end up with two G5's - one for Pro Tools and one for DP? Add MIR to that and you have a ton of hardware. How are you going to get audio back and forth between DP and PT? Lightpipe through an RME Fireface or bounce and send files?

The dual core, dual processor cpu's look great but I haven't seen enough to persuade me to get one now. Sometimes I actually like to use this stuff instead of spending all my time trying to make it work together.

I'm still holding out hope for RTAS. As much as I like Logic it would be nice to have one platform instead of two, especially the one that is definitely more stable. My thoughts on this are that there is a purely financial reason VSL would develop RTAS. There's all those individuals and companies that own Pro Tools who perfectly fit in with VSL's customer demographics. I think I understand why they didn't develop it first - they had their hands full and they needed to get out new product quickly to get a substancial boost in income and also to satisfy their current customer base first. After all, it never worked within Pro Tools to begin with. And maybe Digidesign got a little sticky with them. The issue may not be on VSL's side.

VSL did say that they plan to have it working sometime in the future. I'll just hold that thought in a positive mode. Besides, much to VSL's credit they run in 'silent' mode until a product is just about ready to ship.

Best regards,
Jack