RAID vs Recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter MrStitch
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MrStitch

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I'm in the process of building a new PC to match this awesome Firestudio I just got in the mail. I was thinking of setting up a raid (stripping) for speed, so i got on here searching for clues. Found lots of opinions in regards to mirroring and stripping, but nothing in regards to stability while recording.

Does anyone have any pro's or cons using raid, from the perspective of recording? (nevermind backups, failed drives, data integrity, etc.... just the process of recording). Anyone have frequent problems using raid?
 
How many simultaneous tracks do you plan on recording at one time?

I tracked up to 12-14 tracks at a pop to a single drive and never had a problem....at 88.2kHz/track.
My audio drives are SCSI 10k RPM drives.
 
Most of the time just one, but i'll have a few moments where i'll be using all 8 inputs for separate tracks.
 
A 7200rpm drive can stream well over 100 simultaneous tracks.

RAIDs are not required and due to the added complexity and points of failure are actually less reliable.

Separate drives for uninterrupted streaming of A) OS/apps/plugs, B) sample libraries and C) Project data are all you need.
 
The simplest way to speed up your audio machine is to have a separate audio drive from the operating system drive.
It means the disc doesn't have to read all the data required by your OS and software, just the actual audio info.

It'll help a heap!
 
I just use RAID1 for duplicating my OS/Programs drive after going through drive failure and reinstall twice in one month. Never again (knock on wood). External 7200 USB 3.0 drive for audio files that gets backed up to another drive weekly. Never had an issue streaming 60+ tracks.
 
I guess a pretty good solution would be to have a dedicated audio harddrive, and run a raid0 striped pair of discs as your OS drive.
That way you get a very responsive machine, with a stable audio data supply too. At least, that's what worked for me :)
 
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