Hard Drive Benchmarking

  • Thread starter Thread starter peritus
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bennychico11 said:
Pro Tools doesn't support RAID...and never has as far as my knowledge.
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sounds like bennychico11 might have the answer.
 
bennychico11 said:
Pro Tools doesn't support RAID...and never has as far as my knowledge.

as far as glitches in your audio on your Firewire drive...what do you mean? static...clicks and pops? what speed is your drive running at? have you tried adjusting buffer settings in the program?
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They are pops and clicks...

As far as the RAID issue

Here are the speeds...(all drives are ATA)

(7200 RPM / 2 MB cache) C: = Misc Programs/Files

(7200 RPM / 8 MB cache) F: = Win XP SP2 and its pagefile (home of Pro Tools install)

2x (7200 RPM / 8 MB cache) X: = (Raid-0 pair) / (home of Pro Tools sessions)

(7200 RPM / 8 MB cache) Z: = (Firewire drive) / (home of samples, vst, rtas, and plugin patches)

I hear artifacts only when recording to firewire. I am unable to record (at all) to any other drive, raid or no....
 
Let me clarify further... I created a session on C and when trying to record I get the "hard drive may be fragmented or is too slow" message (this happens on F as well). Would the shear exsistance of the RAID effect this drive?

P.S. all drives are defragged...
 
I would drop the raid config and give it a whirl. That firewire drive transfer rate seems pretty low. Also, you seem to be running a pretty low latency to me. I know you said you tried alot of settings but I would bump it up to 5+ ms for tracking.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
I would drop the raid config and give it a whirl. That firewire drive transfer rate seems pretty low. Also, you seem to be running a pretty low latency to me. I know you said you tried alot of settings but I would bump it up to 5+ ms for tracking.
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That's where the system refresh would come in... I left out one big detail... I have a huge Mp3 collection on X and would have to migrate the data off before dropping the Raid config (or I would lose my entire digitized cd collection)...

On the latency, how can I determine it in milliseconds? Aren't I stuck with samples and dae levels?
 
Yo Travis.. checkin out your music while I'm thinkin... I really like that $2 blues man... great stuff
 
peritus said:
On the latency, how can I determine it in milliseconds? Aren't I stuck with samples and dae levels?
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I have to retract that dumb question... lol.. I can do basic math to figure that one out.. lol :rolleyes:
 
Okay... Here goes nothing....

If you read the article. This should at least make a little sense... But either way, this is the plan...

A:\ Floppy Drive

D:\ CD Burner

E:\ DVD Drive

Maxtor 80 GB (Physical Drive 1)
F:\ Partition 1 (20 GB): Audio Project Space (Active)
W:\ Partition 2 (60 GB): Audio Project Space (Archive)

Maxtor 80 GB (Physical Drive 2)
J:\ Partition 1 (80 GB): MP3 Space (Active)

WD 40 GB (Physical Drive 3)
G:\ Partition 1 (15 GB): Sample Space (Active)
H:\ Partition 2 (5 GB): Plug In Space (Active)
X:\ Partition 3 (20 GB): General Space (Archive)

WD 20 GB (Physical Drive 4)
I:\ Partition 1 (5 GB): Audio Application Space (Active)
C:\ Partition 2 (15 GB): Boot Space (Active)

Maxtor 160 GB (Physical Drive 5)
Y:\ Partition 1 (120 GB): MP3 Space (Archive)
Z:\ Partition 2 (40 GB): Backup Images (Archive)

= 380 GB Total Storage


:p Thoughts, anyone????
 
that's alot of drives/partitions! :eek:

thanks for the comment. that stuff is old as hell.........was just some experimenting when I got my first condensor mic and pc for recording.
 
peritus said:
I found this free utility to measure my hard drives to make sure I'm picking the right one for audio data.

HD Tune

Do you see any reason that Pro Tools acts like it likes my firewire hard drive better than my raid-0 pair (see graph)?
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11.6% CPU usage? That's pretty steep. Otherwise, it looks like it has faster throughput and lower latency, so the only thing odd I see is the high CPU usage....

Another possibility is that the performance of the RAID might be hitting a cache really well if the test isn't using a large enough transfer size for testing. Try testing with a larger transfer size.

You may also find that, when recording, a RAID 0 array performs worse than a single drive because it has to write on multiple drives concurrently. I notice that this performance test doesn't say if it is testing reading or writing or both, so my guess would be reading. Might be worth checking to see if there is an option to test read/write performance.
 
peritus said:
Do you see any reason that Pro Tools acts like it likes my firewire hard drive better than my raid-0 pair (see graph)?
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Yes.

RAID is slower at writing than a single drive.

The intent of RAID is redundency, so a failing drive does not bring down a system. This is great for databases and web servers, but inappropriate for DAW use.

A Firewire or SATA-II interface with a high performance, high RPM drive will do the job nicely. Leave RAID out of it.

******

Extra partitions require additional navigation cycles for every disk access. You mentioned more than (4) disk channels, so you must be running a RAID or other multi-disk controller card. All that disk navigation requires CPU cycles, plus you are at the mercy of the idiot who wrote the disk drivers.

Bad ju-ju.

Use the onboard Firewire, SATA-II, or IDE disk channels for fast, reliable disk access. Limit yourself to either 2 or 3 disks, 4 are possible, but a CD is required. A simple system runs a whole lot faster and more stable than one with a 3rd party controller and after market drivers.
 
Thanks for everyone's help and input! I rebuilt the machine very similar to what I posted earlier (plus I added a special page file partition, put the recording apps and XP on the same drive, and made the leap to Pro Tools M-Powered 7)...

And it works like a charm now (Goodbye RAID)!!!! :) :p :) :) :p :D :cool:

Sweet.. Now I can get back to work....

Thanks again people!
 
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peritus said:
Sweet.. Now I can get back to work....
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Now THAT is a quote I'd like to see more often...

It is too easy to get lost in gear and tweaks, when the point is to record that music.
 
bgavin said:
Now THAT is a quote I'd like to see more often...

It is too easy to get lost in gear and tweaks, when the point is to record that music.
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No joke! :)
 
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