Help, RAID1- How to Format?

[Booda]

I'm setting up a RAID 1 system for my Audio drives. I was under the impression that Windows would just see these 2 drives as 1. In Disk Management they are showing up as 2 separate disks to Format.

In my BIOS I set up the RAID mirror w/ the disks, then in XPpro I installed the RAID drivers.

Is this right? Am I suppose to Format each drive separately and then Windows will then see em as one?

Also I just read that RAID is suppose to be setup as 16kb clusters. I normally do 32kb for my Audio drive. Does this matter?

Thanks,
B.

 

[Ford Van]

At the MOST, how many tracks of continuous audio do you think you will need to run?

I use an ATA 100 8mb buffer 7200 hard drive, and have ran over 80 tracks of 24 bit 48khz sample rate audio. A buddy of mine used similar drives and could do like 60 recording while playing back 60 tracks.

RAID is a waste of money for audio. A modern drive is QUITE capable of HUGE track counts that far exceed anything you will ever need for your "average" production.

 

[Mindset]

At the MOST, how many tracks of continuous audio do you think you will need to run?

I use an ATA 100 8mb buffer 7200 hard drive, and have ran over 80 tracks of 24 bit 48khz sample rate audio. A buddy of mine used similar drives and could do like 60 recording while playing back 60 tracks.

RAID is a waste of money for audio. A modern drive is QUITE capable of HUGE track counts that far exceed anything you will ever need for your "average" production.

ok, your reading it all wrong.... RAID 1 is for backing up stuff, your getting a exact image of the first hard drive... which when 1 hard drive fails, the other kicks in, and you don't loose your data. Why the hell is that a waste of money?? especially for audio... or accountants, or a lawyer with valuable data, or the porno freak down the street? RAID 0 is for performance. RAID 0 is a waste of money, unless you really like a HUGE speed increase...

Anyways, your setting it up ok, however you still need to go ahead and format both drives, as for the 16kb cluster vs 32... if it says go with 16kb go with it... the differences are if you get a 16kb txt file for instance, when writing to the disk/hd, the computer will save it 16kb, and all your space in that cluster is used up right.... now if you do that with a 32kb cluster, than you just wasted 16kb (32kb - 16kb txt) The smaller the cluster size, the more efficiently your disk stores information. Which is better for you running a RAID 1 setup anyways

 

[Reggie]

RAID 0 is a waste of money, unless you really like a HUGE speed increase...

Or unless it is cheaper to buy two 200GB drives than it is to buy one 400GB...as it was in my case recently...
The added headroom is a great bonus though...

 

[Booda]

Thanks Mindset.
So I changed my plan... please tell me what you think. (anyone)
While setting up my new Configuration I had a couple Easy small questions that I could find No clear answer on the Net... & I'm good at the research thing. I also Read many times that the RAID 1 is really no longer the setup of Choice. (I Guess I must be Old School since I've been doing this more than 5 years ) Where B4 people would say if you can afford it do it... and now they say it's a waste and only slows down the disk write... and you still need to have another back up system with RAID1 because if a file gets corrupt it's corrupt on both drives.

SO what I decided to do... I converted the 2 320G drives from Dynamic to Basic, Formatted them and will use then independently of each other... 1 for Audio the other for Back up.

This is how I've always done my Configuration but I would only Have 2 drives 1 Large drive partitioned for (C: )Windows and Apps & (D.) Backup of Audio files. then Another smaller drive for my Audio drive (E.) I would then just Copy and paste my projects from (E.) to (D.). & it's saved me 2x from mega data loss. The RAID 1 idea was to just skip the Copy and Paste procedure... lazyness.

I'm just doing things as I did before but now I have 3 drives. I didn't know my On-board SATA RAID controller could be used to just run drives Not in a Raid array... but it's working so this is what I'm thinking of going with... Unless someone helps me see a better way

Thanks,
B.

 

[Ford Van]

ok, your reading it all wrong.... RAID 1 is for backing up stuff, your getting a exact image of the first hard drive... which when 1 hard drive fails, the other kicks in, and you don't loose your data. Why the hell is that a waste of money?? especially for audio... or accountants, or a lawyer with valuable data, or the porno freak down the street? RAID 0 is for performance. RAID 0 is a waste of money, unless you really like a HUGE speed increase...

Anyways, your setting it up ok, however you still need to go ahead and format both drives, as for the 16kb cluster vs 32... if it says go with 16kb go with it... the differences are if you get a 16kb txt file for instance, when writing to the disk/hd, the computer will save it 16kb, and all your space in that cluster is used up right.... now if you do that with a 32kb cluster, than you just wasted 16kb (32kb - 16kb txt) The smaller the cluster size, the more efficiently your disk stores information. Which is better for you running a RAID 1 setup anyways

Oh crap, yeah, I forgot that Raid 0 is the combined thing, and Raid 1 is a mirrored setup. My bad! Indeed, that would be quite helpful. Carry on folks with my apologies!

 

[Reggie]

Sounds pretty solid. I think there are some utilities out there that will automatically back up anything that has changed, instead of re-writing entire folders and such; but I'm afraid I haven't used them and don't know what they are.

If you still want to have fun with RAID0 on your two identical drives, you could use extra space on your system hard drive to store a backup of your current projects only. That is what I do.

 

[johnny5dm]

Sounds pretty solid. I think there are some utilities out there that will automatically back up anything that has changed, instead of re-writing entire folders and such; but I'm afraid I haven't used them and don't know what they are.

Windows has some automatic backup stuff in the system tools folder, and I've also used Norton Ghost. Both are easy and work well, although I think Norton may be a little faster/more efficient with space, backing up only the changes instead of the whole thing.

 

[Mindset]

Yeah, if a file is corrupted in one of the raid array's it'll be corrupted in the other. IF it gets copied over in time... Sometimes you'll get a corrupted file right then and there, and destroy your system, but doesn't get copied over to the mirror drive yet. Another thing for raid 1, is that some drives will die before other drives. The Mean Time Before Failure of 1 drive might be tomarrow, but the other drive, 5 months from now. 1 drive dies, the other one takes it's place, and you replace the failed drive. I myself run RAID 0, 2 74GB Raptor drives, 2 250gb seagates. Pretty quick.