Raid controller.

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:25 am

I'v my HD's bundled with Raid controller, now one of them is dying !
That means data is lost for both of them.

What would you do? bundle them again? or forget about Raid and just put one new (bigger) HD?

thanks

katano · Post by **katano** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:59 am

1. buy a 3rd disk an make a raid5, if you have a good controller, the raid activity won't slow down your streams to the disk.

2. buy two big disks an make an raid1 config (mirror)

3. i would never stripe 2 disks (raid0), without any backup option...

good luck
roman

[ This Message was edited by: katano on 2006-01-11 08:05 ]

Post by **garyb** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:30 pm

forget raid unless you need to mix like 50-100 tracks....

katano · Post by **katano** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:09 am

garyb: why forget raid? in thoughts of security, it's always a benefit to have a raid1 (mirror) or raid5/7 etc...

shure, raid0 (stripe sets over multiple disks) will reduce the security. the possibility of a crash and dataloss with two disks in a stripeset is factor 2 compared to a singledisk config and i.e. 4times higher with 4 disks...

greez
roman

[ This Message was edited by: katano on 2006-01-12 08:10 ]

Post by **garyb** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:37 am

security is a myth.

no, seriously, if you want to run raid, go right ahead. it's just another resource stealer for me.... even with tape things get lost once in a while. a hard drive which can be backed up later is more secure than tape ever was in the short term.

katano · Post by **katano** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 1:21 am

garyb: good point. if you have a backup strategy

virtualstudio: did you made your decision yet?

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 10:40 am

I've decided to keep the RAID, and bought 2 new HD's

katano · Post by **katano** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:04 am

and what kinda raid? 0, 1, 3, 5?

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 2:44 pm

I bought an expensive Scope box which had the Supermicro P4SCT+II w/ all this extra great technology which I found out that I didn't need. Being mostly a live performer I thought I needed a RAID 1 on O.S. + apps. HDD, and another RAID 1 on the audio HDD.So I purchased an internal RAID cage by 3ware. To keep my rig fast and stable, I disabled the RAID 1 configs, and still have copies of HDDs in a hot swapable cage. So if there is a problem, I swap out a disc for which ever Raptor goes bad. Besides if you ever hear a RAID rig take over for audio streaming during a HDD fail, it still misses a few beats, unless maybe your running an expensive RAID 3 set-up, like video/gamer/audio pros use the 64bit NetCell.

Strength Through Superior DSPs,

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:30 am

@Katano
that system was build for me when I started to make music with my computer, when I started I didn't know nothing at all about computer hardware, I've asked and asked and try to learn (I'm a bit older learning doesn't come so easy anymore)
by what I know now I would have never bought this MoBo(it has a Via chipset,and I know now Creamware doesn't like Via) with its onboard raid controller.
the guy that build it bundled the HD's as far as I know to gain speed not as a backup.
what I did is just replaced the drives and reinstalled the system, (Pressed F6 to install controller) I 'm not sure what I was doing
but when I start up I see something like:

1* stripe 2.0

so probably not the way you adviced me but it is working for now and soon I wil let my friend to set it up again. than I will give him all the input I 've recived here on Z.

[ This Message was edited by: virtualstudio on 2006-03-13 09:53 ]

katano · Post by **katano** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:53 am

1* stripe 2.0

stripe is raid0 and means that 2 or more hd's will appear as one to the os. if you have 2x80gb, you'll get a logical volume of 160gb. it can give you some extra speed cause the io's to the logical volume will be balanced between the two physical disks. but only if the raid0 is in stripe mode. the other raid0 mode is "concatenated", which means also to bundle 2 or more drives, but the io handling is different. in this mode, it'll be written on the first disk only till the disk is full, then the second disk will be written etc... the plus for this mode is that you can expand your logical volume live with a new disk.

keep in mind that if one disk in a stripe set crashes, the data of both will be lost!

sorry for my english... hope it makes sense to you

cheerz

[ This Message was edited by: katano on 2006-03-08 03:53 ]

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:04 am

NO RAID for DAWs!

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:48 am

ok, but explain me please why? I thought that for harddisk recording it would be better to have higher speed.

btw. Andre thanks for the reccomandation(long time ago) of the asus board. I'm very happy with that system!

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:55 am

there are a lot of reasons, @ least, it slows down the cpu-performance. (crackles)
the audio stream should take the direct way, without running throu any additional (pci)bus/controller..

3 hds, one for audio, one for sample straming and one for system/virtual memory make sens..
do you really need more then 120 tracks simultaneously?

best,
andre

[ This Message was edited by: AndreD on 2006-03-08 10:02 ]

katano · Post by **katano** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:21 pm

On 2006-03-08 09:55, AndreD wrote:
there are a lot of reasons, @ least, it slows down the cpu-performance. (crackles)
the audio stream should take the direct way, without running throu any additional (pci)bus/controller..

hi andre

i don't have a raid controller btw. but if i remember well, there are some hardware raid controllers with an onboard processor/chip for the io handling to avoid decreasing cpu performance. tell me if i'm wrong...

whats the difference between io's through an onboard ide/s-ata controller or an onboard raid controller. isn't the way data takes the same? *confused-i-am*

cheerz
katano

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:20 am

and the raid controller is connected to: pci, pci-express or what?

[ This Message was edited by: AndreD on 2006-04-11 02:25 ]

katano · Post by **katano** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:15 am

On 2006-04-11 02:20, AndreD wrote:
and the raid controller is connected to: pci, pci-express or what?

[ This Message was edited by: AndreD on 2006-04-11 02:25 ]

yes, pci of course... ok, I see what you mean, but s-ata or an ide-controller needs also resources, but not pci ones. so, ok, you loose some pci-performance but what has this to do with higher cpu usage?

cheerz