#1039232 - 07/01/05 09:49 PM
Raid
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smk
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Hi. A friend of mine helped me set up my new computer and he raided (Raid 0) the drives. I'm not sure if it was done correctly, though. He said he did it in Windows XP. I don't have a hardware Raid controller. Is there a way to check to see if the drives were raided properly? I believe the two 250 gig drives have been combined to form one big 500 gig drive and that's all I've been able to check so far. I think I'd feel more comfortable with a Raid 1.
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#1039233 - 07/01/05 10:22 PM
Re: Raid
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smk
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I'm running a P4 3.0 gig Asus w/2 gigs ram. Would Raid 0 or Raid 1 help w/40 tracks of digital audio and softsynth/samplers? Both of my 250 gig drives are SATAs...
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#1039234 - 07/01/05 11:21 PM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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Scott, I have not done a software RAID-0/1 for some time. If you have the CPU headroom, doing a:
- RAID-1 (Mirror) will give you more HDD speed. But, at the size of one drive.
- RAID-0 will give the same speed. But, make the two drives look like one big drive.
I prefer using a hardware RAID controller to do the RAID on my workstation. It does the work internally, without having to bother the CPU for overhead.
Quite honestly, today's drives are robust enoungh to track 16 tracks at 24-bit/96kHz. The speed advantage will be from editing functions.
To check the setup, Disk Management is hiding in Computer Management. (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management). If you are not familiar with using it, be sure to have someone walk you through it, first. It is easy to pop a partition and lose everything forever.
Are you on USA West Coast time? I could be coaxed into a telephone tutor... :rolleyes: Good luck!
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#1039235 - 07/02/05 06:16 AM
Re: Raid
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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Originally posted by smk:
Hi. A friend of mine helped me set up my new computer and he raided (Raid 0) the drives. I'm not sure if it was done correctly, though. He said he did it in Windows XP. I don't have a hardware Raid controller. Is there a way to check to see if the drives were raided properly? I believe the two 250 gig drives have been combined to form one big 500 gig drive and that's all I've been able to check so far. I think I'd feel more comfortable with a Raid 1.
A decently set up DAW has been able to get 60 tracks or more on a single drive since the days of the overclocked Celeron 400.
Rather than keep a bunch of projects on one drive, some audio guys use removable drive caddys, and create individual drives per project.
If the need is for massive storage for really large projects that take more than 200 gig, then I guess that a RAID is required.
Bill
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#1039236 - 07/02/05 02:12 PM
Re: Raid
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smk
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So with the 250 gig SATA drives that I have, it wouldn't be necessary to Raid the drives to get 40 tracks of audio and software synths like Kontakt or Reason running all at the same time?
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#1039237 - 07/02/05 03:03 PM
Re: Raid
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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RAID or not, most people that I know who are running soft synths do so on a dedicated machine just for that purpose. I don't run software synths at all (just audio), so I don't know the demand of such synths on resources. But I can tell you that the software RAID, post OS, is costing you resources and that can't possibly help.
Bill
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#1039238 - 07/03/05 07:26 PM
Re: Raid
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philbo_Tangent
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Beware.
If you are not using a dedicated RAID controller, (for example, a motherboard with builtin RAID) be very scrupulous about making backups.
A friend did this, and when the motherboard died 3 years later there was NO WAY to get any of the data off the drives - - the motherboard was long out of production, and used a proprietary RAID system that no other RAID hardware could read. He lost thousands of hours of work from this.
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#1039239 - 07/04/05 07:29 PM
Re: Raid
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smk
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Originally posted by philbo_Tangent:
Beware.
If you are not using a dedicated RAID controller, (for example, a motherboard with builtin RAID) be very scrupulous about making backups.
A friend did this, and when the motherboard died 3 years later there was NO WAY to get any of the data off the drives - - the motherboard was long out of production, and used a proprietary RAID system that no other RAID hardware could read. He lost thousands of hours of work from this.
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Scott
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#1039240 - 07/09/05 02:05 AM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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There's a dirty side to the most popular RAID configurations:
- RAID-0: Two identical drives are “striped” together doubling the total size as a single drive. Data is written across the drives acting like one. This effectively doubles transfer rate of data. It is best to use a hardware RAID controller in real time applications, to reduce the CPU load. But, if one drive goes down, everything is lost.
- RAID-1: Two identical drives (at least they should be) are “mirrored” so that data written to both drives making an exact duplicate. In theory, if a drive fails, the other remains intact. But, you can’t get to it without some effort.
. – Most hardware RAID controllers won’t let you access the surviving drive without replacing the failed one. Usually, moving the good drive to a standard non-RAID controller will allow the drive to act a s a single drive.
. – Software RAID can be tricky. The “Break RAID” option is non-destructive. The “Remove RAID” option will destroy everything. The bad drive needs to be removed from the system, or “Break” is grayed out.
- RAID-5: Requires at least 3 drives. 4 and 5 drives are common. The number of drives gets expensive. The hardware controllers are not cheap. And, the software option is CPU taxing. Properly set up, the advantage is a drive could fail and be replaced in real time… without any loss of data or accessibility to the data.
For more RAID types - http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html
Hardware RAID-0 is the most preferred, for real time applications like video & audio recording, because of the speed. RAID-0 & RAID-1 are the only software available options in XP (without hacking the Disk Manager). In the past, as Phil mentioned, Microsoft OS versions prior to Windows 2000 were not cross compatible (mostly because of changes in NTFS). So, it wasn’t possible to move a RAID set between NT v3.1, v3.51, v4.0 & v2000. Today, XP, 2000 & 2003 use compatible NTFS file mangers.
Drive failures are always possible. Remember to BACKUP!
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#1039241 - 07/09/05 07:46 AM
Re: Raid
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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Originally posted by AudioMaverick:
Hardware RAID-0 is the most preferred, ....
And for most of us doing small studio/home studio audio, the expense of doing it right is stupid. But if you REALLY REALLY GOTTA have a RAID, the best way, last time that I looked, was via a fibrechannel (that's copper) or fiberchannel (that's optical) SAN. I had one, (I think that it ended up costing about $3200) and dumped it in favor of the plain old SATA 7,200 RPM disks. (under $200).
to reprise: if the CPU is thinking about your software RAID, then that is fewer cpu cycles that it has to devote to audio tasks.
Bill
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#1039242 - 07/20/05 08:33 AM
Re: Raid
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smk
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Ok. To make a long story short, we raided (raid 0 in windows, not hardware) two 250 gig drives. Before putting anything on the drives, I decided that I didn't need to raid because these are SATAs. Trying to unraid, my friend and I managed to seperate the drives, but they only show as 128 gig drives now (originally after raiding, it showed as one 500 gig drive).
Anyone know what we're doing wrong or what can be done to fix this problem?
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#1039243 - 07/20/05 11:26 AM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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Odd... that is a new board & the drives are SATA. That limitation was resolved with BIOS updates and new controllers, a couple of years ago. Are you sure you can't change the number when setting up a partition from scratch? And, you have SP1 installed onto XP (or Sp3 onto 2000)?
You should be able to set these drives up as individual drives, roughly 10% below the rated unformatted size (approx. 225GB).
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#1039244 - 07/20/05 07:23 PM
Re: Raid
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smk
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I might be messing up my computer trying to raid then unraid. I'm not usually always so stupid!
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#1039245 - 07/21/05 01:59 PM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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As long as you remove the volume and the drive looks cleared, Windows will not acknowledge any previous information on the drives.
It has been three weeks since you started this post. I hate to see this drag out any longer. Are you in one of the 48 contiguous United States? I can call most numbers for a nickle a minute. Sounds like like something we can resolve for under a dollar!
Send me an email, if interested.
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#1039246 - 07/22/05 06:43 PM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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Originally posted by bpark@prorec.com:
For what it is worth...
Bill
I, personally, have seen every bad breakdown of mirrored RAID-1 configuration that could happen... both hardware & software. It is not a practicle fault-tolerant solution for the serious-minded. I am currently transferring over 100GB of data that I had to recover from a mirror to a RAID-5 replacement set.
Doing a RAID-0 is only for the speed. And, it needs to be treated as a single drive with half the life expectancy of a single drive.
I realized, after rescanning the posts on this thread, that this point was not made. I think it is worth iterating for those reading it and making a RAID decision. I am definitely going to be working in a RAID-5 solution when that project studio becomes a reality for me.
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#1039247 - 07/22/05 06:49 PM
Re: Raid
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JPA
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RAID is usually used as a security measure so that you do not loose data if one of your hard drive crashes. Raid can also help with data transfer rates. Depending on which type of RAID config. you are using you may be required to have 2-4 hard drives.
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#1039248 - 07/23/05 12:29 AM
Re: Raid
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AudioMaverick
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Absolutely, JPA. I guess we were being too wordy, or skating around that point. But, that is the gist.
Nothing replaces backups, though. Raid is a form of security. But, it is also prone to corruption. I have even had RAID-5 fail me -- twice. When 2 drives fail, all is lost. Once, at my previous employer, a transformer exploded and fell off the power pole in a ball of flames. Some server UPS batteries even exploded. And, the acid fumes led us to run from the server room holding our breaths! Oh, the computer carnage was unbelievable. Charred circuit boards and drives. It was enough to make one cry.
I am not sure what the limit of drives is for the various RAID types (other than RAID-1). When I passed the Netware CNE, in 1994, the number was 7, for RAID-5. That was the limitation of a SCSI controller, at the time. The advantage to more drives is faster data transfers & less CPU load for calculating the parity drive data. But, the hardware cost is a big factor. Adaptec has a 12-drive SATA box utilizing Fibre channel (which Bill mentioned) -- Adaptec FS4500 Fibre to SATA RAID . I helped a friend scope this out 6 months ago for a client who needed 2TB of unattended real-time storage for a year of video stream!
RAID management is an interesting topic, all by itself. But, for most of us here, diligent backups really negate the need for fault tolerant RAID to do our tasks. And, this is about where *smk* (who started this thread) is at.
By the way, JPA... only 5 posts. Welcome to the forums!  Have you been lurking a while? Do you have a *Hello!* thread somewhere? I (and the others here) look forward to sharing knowledge with you. Check out the other forums. Even though some of them are migrating to the Harmony Central forums, there are plenty of forums to browse through.
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