Which Harddrives for recording?

G

Garak

New member
I'm looking to get a pair or so of new Harddrives just for audio.

I'm looking for bang for the buck but at the same time I can't have something that is going to fail two weeks after I get it.

I want to go with Stipped RAID. I want speed! 7,200 RMP is a must. Size isn't as important. I'm looking at maybe a pair of 40 Gig drives. That would give me 80 Gigs which is more than enough considering that I still haven't filled the 20 gig I'm using now(its been close but I often clean up old stuff and burn old projects to CD).

On the same subject which IDE RAID cards are the best bang for the buck.
 
First of all, do you need RAID, or do you just think you need RAID?

A single 7200RPM IDE drive in a proper configuration will do you for at least 32 24bit 96khz tracks. The rest of your system will choke well before you hit that mark.

If you're not doing video, you should really consider just buying a single 7200RPM drive of 20-30G in size.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Office Depot is running in their ad a Maxtor Diamond Max 20GB 7200 RPM hard drive for $69.99....

Slack is right about the rest of your system crapping out before the hard drive....there may be weaker links in your setup that you should consider putting your $$$$ toward before a Raid setup.......
 
I agree with Slackmaster2K and Gidge. You probably don't need a RAID system. You would be better off putting your $$$'s into another aspect of your system.
 
IDE raid is pretty cheep these days with cards around $100 or so.

I want blazing speed. I use cool edit pro for all my recording and saving takes forever even with 7200 RPM drives.

Also I do alot of live recording and I need it fast so I can save 12 15 min tracks @ 32bit 48k(its stored in 32 bit, its actually 24bit input) in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm using one of my friends computer alot lately and it has a 7200 RPM drive its much faster than my 5200 RPM drives but its still not fast enough.

I'm looking at getting something like an Athlon 1800+(~1.6Ghz I think, faster than the P4 2 Ghz)

Also I'm going to have a DVD-ROM, 2 CD burners(for duplicating), system HD. So all my standard ide ports are full. I need another ide interface card anyway. And I have a few computers around the house so if I don't notice too big of a diffrence I can move the spare drive to my brothers computer or my mom's computer.

Here is a question. How dose stripped RAID effect seek times?
 
If you are set on a Raid, thats fine....the answer is still Maxtor Diamond Max's, 20-40GB......
 
If you want blazing speed. Set up a RAID 0+1 system with 15k rpm SCSI drives. Lot's of money down the drain - but cool benchmark values...
 
20-40 is a personal preference.....its where i currently find the $$$/performance ratio sweet spot.....he did mention bang for the buck.....
 
Yes but the statement "I want blazing speed" sort of rules out good value. Good value is buying one 40ish gig IDE drive and be done with it.
 
I want blazing speed while still getting good bang for my buck.

I just picked up a Qutaum fireball 40gig 7200 RPM. I think I'm going to get another one to match it and a raid card. Mom's newcomputer paid for it :)

Scsi just cost way too much. I need another ide card anyway so IDE RAID is the way to go. (All my ide ports are in use, two burners, DVD rom and system harddrive)
 
Keep in mind that for maximum speed in DAW applications, you want mirrored (RAID0) discs and not striped. Mirrored discs will (can?) improve read performance while striped will (again, can?) improve write perormance. As read performance is the only thing that matters for a DAW, that's what you should aim for. However, mirored discs "wastes" one disc in terms of storage space, but you have protection against a HDD failure.

If you get a new IDE controller board, check this board before you buy. I think I read something about compatibility issues but I cannot recall what. I think it was that Adaptec's IDE card was no good. Better check it though.

Is IDE RAID good value. Hell yes, if you need RAID... I want RAID myself, just for the heck of it. I have no real use for it but I love the concept. How geeky is that?

Cheers

/Ola
 
Come to think of it, best bang for the buck would be to set up a RAID0+1 with 10ish Gig drives and get a larger drive for storage. That would give you around 20G of kick arse recording space, which would be all it takes.
 
If you had read all my post you would of noticed what I need is writing speed when saving everything.

Right now in the studio I have a PIII 733 with 256 megs of ram and a 40gig 7200rpm drive running win98se with cooledit pro. When its time to save the current project if its of any size I just tell the guys to go on to lunch because its going to take a while. I recorded a live show a while back at 24/48 and it took like an hour to save. Also when using the effects in cooledit it saves a backup of the file your working on and that takes around 15 seconds+ right now. It only takes around 5 -10 seconds to process the effect. Loading the files and stuff is nice and snappy right now.
 
Can anybody tell me if the Maxtor 7200 60 GB is a good choice? I can get these for $140. Is there a better choice?
 
Garak said:
If you had read all my post you would of noticed what I need is writing speed when saving everything.
Click to expand...
I have read all your posts - I just thought I misunderstood you when you needed high write speed, as that is usually not an issue in computer recording, which this forum covers...

What output are you talking about when you say "12 15 min tracks @ 32bit 48k in a reasonable amount of time"? Can your output move data faster than a single 7200rpm drive? If you're talking about saving tracks in Cool Edit, I doubt that the HDD will be a bottleneck.
 
Cooledit pro records directly to temp directories(well it does buffer to ram aswell) and splits the load between two harddrives. Then when I go to save it has to read from those two directories and write to one directory.

When your talking 12 tracks that are 15 min long or so at 24bit/48khz(atually 32 bit because thats how CEP stores it). Thats a lot of data to be moved and it takes along time on 5400rpm drives just for 4 tracks.

CPU speed and RAM have some effect on this but its still basicly just copying files.

CEP is very easy on CPU power, it runs fairly fast on my little PII 266 laptop but saveing data takes forever because its something like a 3 or 4 thousand rpm drive. CEP dosn't use real time effects or anything so I have no problem playing back alot of tracks. the HD seems to aways be the bottel neck when using it.

How hard is it to make ram drives in windows 98 or 2k?
I know its easy in linux I use them all the time to speed things up on the networking machines.
This would be a good test to see how much of a bottel neck the HD actually is.
 
Maybe if you record to one 7200rpm drive instead of two slow ones as in your current setup, this won't be a problem.

A RAID1 setup wouldn't help, would it? If you record to several temp directories on your striped drives and then save them to another folder on that setup, you'll still be choking the drives when it comes to read performance.

Also, those 4 tracks of 15min 32/48 would be about 700Mb, which would take about 20 seconds to move with a good single drive.

Help me understand this weird setup.
 
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