SFrond

I am reconfiguring my harddrives / buying new ones.

I have a mobo with Sata150 connectors (2).
I use BFD and other emulator programs.

I was wondering if it would make sense to make a 40gb IDE my primary master (to run XP, Sonar, BFD, etc), and then run two 300gb in RAID-0 (mobo supported) on my Sata inputs.

Would the quickness I gain by using the Sata/Raid config be lost by having my primary on an IDE channel? Is there maybe a better way to go about this?

Thanks for any Help!!

H3X4D3C1M4L

Well look at it this way... your 40GB drive is slower than a single 300 gigger most likely. Two of them is that much faster. So... if you can get those programs to work on the SATA drives, do it and ditch the 40GB or use it for swap files etc.

Anything that relies on the 40GB disk will be slower than anything that relies on the 2x300GB disks... so its just a question of figuring out your options.

SFrond

Ok So how about this . .
What if I put two 40gig in Raid 1 on the SATA inputs on my mobo for my OS and Music Programs.

Then bought a seperate Raid controller card for one of my PCI slots and ran two 250gb in Raid 0 for all of my samples.

But Im still left with my original question: "Would the quickness I gain by using the Sata/Raid config be lost by having my primary on an IDE channel?" or in this case not an IDE channel but a raid card. I know they have Raid 0 + 1 but thats more hard drives then I care to have.

Also, would the raid card compete somehow with the raid config already in the mobo? hmmmmmmm

Tipstaff

Actually, an independent RAID controller card is far superior to any onboard one that is integrated into the chipset.. unless it's a crappy/cheap card. A good hardware one will be far more reliable. Think of it this way: indepenant RAID controller = Hardware, integrated RAID controller in the chipset = Software. Also, good hardware RAID controllers have their own dedicated memory, while onboard or even cheap hardware controllers rely on system memory to perform all RAID functions. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

BTW, if your samples are important to you, then you want to switch around your RAID around, especially if you intend to use the onboard RAID. The reason being is that RAID 0 can be highly unreliable when used with the onboard controller. Very unreliable. Not only that, but if one drive dies then you can kiss your data goodbye on both. There is no redundancy in RAID 0, and you can't recover from a failure (at least not 100%). Something to note (which most people never mention): the more drives you have in a RAID 0 setup, the lower the percentage of reliability. By that I mean if you have, say, 2 drives in RAID 0 then you just decreased the reliablity of your datas integrity by 1/2. The more drives you add, the more that reliablity decreases. With RAID 1 all your data on one drive is being mirrored on the other, so you get that redundancy. Your data is recoverable thanks to RAID 1s redundancy. So again, if your samples are important to you, then go with the ability to recover them. It's easier to restore Windows then it is to recover important data.

One thing people forget about RAID 1 is that it does give you an increase in read performance. It's get's forgotten becuase it's not as not as high as in a RAID 0 setup. RAID 0 would give you on average a 10% increase in read speed, while RAID 1 would give you about a 5% increase. BUT, since RAID 1 is redundant, that 5% difference in speed becomes a moot point. Reliablity/recoverability/minor speed versus high speed. Take your pick.

BTW, for a good read on RAID, check out Wiki's writeup HERE. Pay particular note to the "Hardware vs. Software" section, as well as the 2 that talk about RAID 0/1.

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PangingJr

people uses RAID0 for speed, with today's computer hardwares, i can assume that the number of RAID0 users is increasing everyday.
and when its known to have irreplaceable data on it, only a fool uses RAID0 as for a more important data storage without having a backup data set available.
get drives speed increase with the RAID0 and just backup your important data on a non-raid hard drive, the price of today's hard drives is easy to afford. but if you don't find any good with your RAID0 setup, then you simply don't use it.

SFrond

Well i have all of these samples on DvD backup as well as External HD backup, so yes they are important but I got this covered. The ONLY things that would be on these Raid 0 discs would be Samples. So if I lost a drive it would only be lost time to reinstall them.
- - - -
I read a really nice article written by Sound on Sound recently. It was about disc partitioning. Ive pretty much given up on Raid and SCSI, it seems like alot of extra cost and effort for little gain.

Smaller discs arent necessarily better. Im more convinced now that I need larger discs that I will never fill up. I could partition the outer edges for all of my main applications.

Here is my new scheme

80gb Sata
10gb Partition for OS/ Music Applications
70gb Partition for whatever, undecided

80gb Sata
10gb Partition for Current Project files
70gb Partition for completed projects

400gb IDE
158gb Partition for samples

Then I have an external for backing up as well as the 70gb unused above if needed.


I have recently realized that my BFD program has an option for loading all samples to RAM. I currently only have 1gig of ram and this eats up quite a bit of it. If I double my ram to 2gig, then I wont have to worry about my samples disc being fast since I wont be streaming samples anymore. The only drawback to this is if I ever get a soft synth that ONLY streams samples I would be at a loss to put them on my Giant drive and would have to find a place for them on on of the 80 gigs.

H3X4D3C1M4L

I don't know that a hardware PCI one would be superior to the ones integrated into chipsets... other than the CPU does the heavy lifting, vs. the card's processor. Infact, chipset RAID devices are plugged right into the southbridge itself these days and they get more bandwidth than going over the PCI/PCI-E bus and lower latency.... though hardware ones usually give you more features and such.


Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

And no 'quickness' is lost, like I explained, they both function at their own speeds, but anything coming off the 40 gigger will be slower than stuff coming off the RAID array

SFrond

Well I guess I didnt really mean lost in a literal sense. More like negated. i.e. it is a moot point that I have gained 25mb/s for reading samples, if Sonar is on a slower drive and does everything else slower. Its more of a big picture thing.