x
anonymous 12 November 2002

Hello,
I need to sort out some lingering ?'s. Firstly, I have heard about this software RAID option in XP and 2000 In "Tom's HW.com". Any experience(s)?
Secondly, Is the sustained transfer rate composed of the actual amount of Info with which the HD is able to consistently feed the bus (so a new HD is capable of giving 40-50 MB/Sec of files/reads to Cubase)? Or, Is STR just some irrelevant test where they see how much of one 100MB file gets through the bus in a second? Since Access time has not changed much I bet on the latter. Finally, does having 2 HD's, one for App's/OS, and the other for Audio, actually increase performance? If so, please explain In layman terms(AMAP) how this works? Is this as efficient as a two disk RAID array with a cheap Card/Onboard controller? IF NOT, How/why is Software RAID/Mobo RAID/PCI Card RAID more efficient for track counts and why?
Finally-Finally,In arranging a dual HD setup, does it make a differance(of course I ask- WHY?)If the HD's are configured On Primary Master+ Secondary Master or can one or both be hooked up to a slave? and Is there a benefit In the OS/App's HD being primary or is it irrelevant? Thank you,
Alex Napack,
PS. Have you heard of the new IBM 180GXP, w/8MB Cache AND some "Tag & "*^&%" Queing" protocol which affects repeated accesses into drive memory?

Comments

Opus2000 Wed, 11/13/2002 - 09:06

Well, Tom's hardware is great and all but the word on the street(well the [H]ard forums street!) says that if you believe Tomshardware you are a fool! Those guys know what's going on so I would believe them!
Anyhue....I would go for the regular RAID option rather than implementing something Microsoft has fooled around with in the OS!!! I feel safer that way and others will agree with that.
Sustained Transfer from anything will be 35-40MB/s tops with bursts up to or around 100MB/s...I can't truly say whether or not RAID gains you anything on the PCI bus but the controller card will in fact help to speed it up. But performance is not that much of a difference in reality between a RAID setup and using any Hard drive with an 8MB cache on it.
In order to get performance on RAID you need to do a striped set and not a mirrored set. At that point you take the chance of losing a drive and losing half of your data!
My philosophy is install the OS and Apps on one drive...keep the registry clean that way. Audio data should be on it's own drive for performance sake...keep the drive for one purpose.
More later
Opus

Tommy P. Wed, 11/13/2002 - 17:09

To answer one of the questions OPUS left out ;)

Tommy P.

Also, unless your RAID card is a true hardware RAID with its own onboard processor, you will eat up CPU cycles, the smaller you set the stripe size with one of the inexpensive RAID cards, the more work your CPU has to do reading/writing data back and forth between the two drives.
You will also see a PCI performance hit. Some cards allow you to limit PCI bandwidth usage in software for the RAID controller.

Opus2000 Thu, 11/14/2002 - 15:59

Ok, I spoke with a very knowledgeable IT guy today and got some cool information(in which I posted some stuff already earlier today!)
The way to get performance out of RAID is RAID 3 or 5...not sure what that is right now but I will look into it.
He agrees that Mirrored RAID loses performance in the long run due to the main redundant back up going on.
So stick with striped sets...
As far as Master Vs. Slave...I recommend master setups for the OS for a very obvious reason..it should be the master...it's the OS!!!!
As far as the audio data goes...it does not matter...it's only a recommendation and it's nothing to be set in stone about.
Regardless of that a CDR(whether it's an R/W or not) should be on the primary to give the audio data drive on the secondary cable it's own bandwidth. Nothing else will tag it.
IBM drives are garbage..nothing new there. They are Fujitsu drives with an IBM logo...simple as that.
Maxtor use Quantum technology in which we all know is good.
Opus

anonymous Fri, 11/22/2002 - 22:45

Thanks,
I appreciate your time and think that I will avoid RAID for the time being, as I need to make more music. I ordered a WD 8MB Cache disk so I will now have my Quantum Fireball Plus LM be the new System Drive, letting me deal with 64-96 track counts w/o RAID...or I can buy 2-3 Studer 2" beasts. I'd rather buy a nice house . Such difficult decisions...
Thanks for the help,
Alex Napack
PS, that Asus link makes me want to upgrade from PIII to PIV.

x

User login