Seagate Hard drives??ATA66/100???

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peter miller

peter miller

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are seagate hd drives ok?
what is ata 66 and ata 100 and what does ATA actually do
when I bought my computer I didn't know anything then I find out that I should have had a faster h/drive and this and this and that. And the more I search the more I find out I don't know. ah well nothing like hindsight is there.
:) :)
 
Raving on bout HDD article!

I posted this link on another thread somewhere.....if you want to buy a HD for audio READ this http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/1A37C1C69674D6D786256950005D2C39. "Information is power. Have some juice"(from the intro)

I'm on my third read and getting more every time. Blah blah blah I'm raving sorry.

If you have a question on HHD's related to DAW and the answer ain't there I'll eat my new seagate 72000 20gig ATA66 (which is doing all I'm asking of it BTW).

I bought it after my fist read of the above.
 
Note that the above link doesn't work. Remove the dot at the end and it works. Good reading. However, Bones, you can start eating that drive right away - there's not enough (or even correct) information on RAID, which is of importance to high-performance DAWs

/Ola
 
I reckon the sight is great. Although I have heard of raid
and I am curios to what it is. Could someone tell me.
 
kjhgkjsdan;kdjgkjds
hmm contrary to popular belief (yours truly included), my mouth ain't big enough.

I'm with Peter on this one though. The RAID option is something I know too little about.

Ola could you send me a link to anything you've found (as well as the mayo, the cable is a little dry).

That review was pretty complimentary to the c-port BTW, still looking for the bogey though.

Cheers for keeping me honest.
Bones
:)
 
Can I tell you anything about RAID? :-)

Dear Peter,

1. Click the "Search" button (The little "earth-n-magnifying glass" in the top right corner...)
2. Enter "raid" in the "keywords" field.
3. Press "enter" and wait half a minute.
4. Read the provided information.
5. :D

Bones - See above. Also, the mayo will be a bit stale by the time it arrives but I'm sure it'll lubricate the cable a bit... Rember, don't eat chunky mayo, or yellow snow for that matter.

/Ola

P.s. here's a few tips;

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=17454
http://www.dell.com/us/en/biz/topics/vectors_1999-raid.htm
 
:) :eek: I have checked it all out thanks for your
rplies. A bit of knowledge everyday keeps the men in white suits away. :) :)
 
Nanook Of the North

From Frank Zappa's song Don't Eat the Yellow Snow.
Written in 1st person by "Nanook"

"Watch out where the huskies go,
And Don't you eat that Yellow Snow."

Isn't that where your yellow snow referance was from Ola?
 
It was a general advice on things you shouldn't eat. Someone shuold have given a few tips to the guy who came up with the expression "shit-eating grin".

Well, whatever. Need any clarification on the RAID stuff?

/O
 
Whatever....

Ola;
The White paper is very full on and complex in language, esp for someone who has no PC experiance except with DAW use.

From what I can discern the best RAID setup for DAW useage would be the RAID10 combination with a write/back cashing controller, to help with the write performance.

This looks like going down the SCSI path as far as cost goes and will put the option out of reach (personally at least) till the recording I'm doing warrants the expense.

Do you know of anyone actually running a DAW with this frankenstein yet? What's the consensus, can you actually get 100mbs and will the CPU bandwidth allow you to use those extra tracks with FX ect in a meaningful way?

Interesting none the less.

Bones
 
all this raid talk . I'm confused! It's out of my reach for a while anyway. scsi,raid quite expensive I think.
Hey guess what I heard.Macs use scuzzi as a standard!!
I wish pc's did. Hey bones is your real name Deforest Kelley
:eek:
 
I don't know if I misinterpret your post Bones but you don't need SCSI for RAID setups. A IDE RAID setup will outperform a single SCSI disc at a lower price per megabyte. A RAID10 setup with 7200rpm IDE disks will smoke just about any SCSI disk at a fraction of the price. The redundancy is just an added bonus. It is not even certain that SCSI beat IDE in DAW applications, RAID or not. SCSI is better in server setups with many users sharing one storage (thousands of reads of tiny files) but DAWs are the opposite with relatively few but huge reads.

Anyway, for someone with little knowledge, you certainly know your stuff:) I don't know what the MB/s rate can get up to but I'd guess it's more than you'll need. Apparently, the FastTrak eats some CPU (I have no facts on this though) but high-MHz CPUs are getting cheaper and cheaper every day. As far as I can gather from people's stories here, PCU is rarely the bottleneck.

Eddie N has a RAID0 setup on a FastTrak66, or did anyway.

I'd love to be able to give you some DAW related benchmarks etc. but I don't even have a computer at home and my laptop at work isn't really fit for the job:) As soon as I can afford a computer, I'll get a RAID10 setup and the whole shebang. Benchmarks will be posted...

/Ola
 
Yo Peter, no that isn't my name, though I'd love to know where you got the idea.

Ahoy Ola
The thing that got me with the RAID-SCSI Costs is that according to that White paper;

"Although software-based RAID can provide cost advantages, it also places demands on the system's microprocessor resources, particularly if data must be regenerated. This resource conflict can adversely affect the performance of application programs running on the host system. However, if an entry-level system is I/O-bound, spare system-processor bandwidth may be available, making software-based RAID a price/performance-effective solution."

This is bad because for Audio you need all the processor power you can get. ATM I can run over 40 tracks of audio (Seperate Seagate 72000 for Audio and P3 500 Oc'd@666)no worries! If I try to use any software based FX however........that's at 16bit. 24bit requires half as much data throughput as 16bit again so this is probably where RAID will come into it's own.
My current limitation is mainly in CPU bandwidth, I think (might be wrong here but that's how I understand it), and no matter how fast your HDD I/O the CPU still has to process it all. The current theory is that 32bit is somehow more stable (something to do with 'Floating point processing') and will enable more FX processing than 16, 20 or 24bit. Unfortunately 32bit converters arn't, to my knowlege, available commecially yet and when they are...$$$.

The RAID Hardware controlers seem to be souped up SCSI controllers (they use SCSI commands to I/O to the HHDs), and to get a write/back cashing one would be I expect (didn't see any prices anywhere but I will follow it up :)) more costly than a normal SCSI controller. I do aggree that the HDDs will be cheeper but you do need minimum of 4 to run RAID 10 (0-1).

Indeed IDE has cought up to SCSI in many ways as that arcticle that I mentioned earlier (the one that got me munching them) was written to point this out :).
For me the only area that SCSI beats IDE is in the number of connected devices.
The way I had envisioned of getting round that limit of 4 devices was to buy a new 72000 IDE in a removeable cradle every time I start a new project( I have one ATM). This RAID thingo might be another way, but I'd love to see some prices on controllers.

So in effect mate, no you didn't misconstrue me, I jus wasn't specific.

Keep em comming, this is very interesting,

Bones
AKA Paul.

ps, I do rave on though don't I!




[Edited by Bones on 10-26-2000 at 00:57]
 
hey Ola

I've got the machine that Eddie built (or the ghost there of) I just put her in a new body! To 10GB 7200 Maxtor drives and the Fasttrack on a RAID0 setup. not very expensive of a setup.

hmm... the Fasttrack66 eating up CPU? I haden't even considered that. where did you hear this ola?

-jhe
 
Lo James,
What kind of throughput does the RAID0 setup get you; MBS.

Is the fastrack a software based controller and have you had any data loss issues using the most error prone type of RAID.

If these questions are stupid jus say so, I only heard about this option a few days ago.

Bones
 
James - I read it in one of the reviews of the FastTrak66, cannot remember which. I have no facts on it and if it uses CPU, I doubt that is much at all.

Bones - The CPU hungry RAID you refer to (from the white paper) is software based RAID. Software RAID is simply a program that runs in Windows (or whatever) as any application and it uses CPU power to calculate where the data should go and you connect the disks to your regular IDE ports on the motherboard. The benefit is that you don't need any additional HW. However, that is not what we want. We want hardware based RAID. HW based RAID uses a RAID controller card with its own dedicated little CPU to calculate where the data should go/be read from. It's faster, doesn't use your motherboard's IDE slots (which you need for CD drives) but it costs more. Up to a few years ago, SCSI was the only way to get HW RAID for PC as the IDE drived were too poor to use where RAID was necessary and thus no RAID controller cards were available. Now there's a (few?) RAID controller(s?) for IDE. The one I have looked into is the FastTrak66 from Promise. It is indeed a souped up IDE controller and it costs something like $50(!). Check http://www.pricewatch.com

Bones - As described above, the FastTrak is a HW based RAID controller. I'm not sure if I understand your second question but I guess that you wonder if there's a big risk in using the most insecure RAID configuration. If that is your question, then yes and yes indeed. RAID is originally developed for data redundency (i.e. to be able to recover all data at a disk failure). RAID0 isn't really a true RAID as it doesn't offer any data redundency and is actually worse than a single disk when it comes to data security. If one disk fails in a RAID0 setup, you loos all data on all disks in the setup as they need eachother. That's why I promote RAID10 wher you have the added security, at a higher price though.

The conclusions are;

1. Don't use SW RAID in a DAW, you need the CPU for better things.
2. SCSI RAID is or at lest mey be) better than IDE RAID but at a much higher price.
3. RAID controllers for IDE are cheap nowadays.
3. RAID0 gives the best price/performace but is more prone to data loss than a single disc. Backup often
4. RAID10 is the best option but it is a bit pricey.

/Ola
 
Ola;
Excellent, we've come to the same conclusions allthough I was unaware of the IDE based option.

This is getting more and more interesting, I actually have two spare 4.1gb IDE's floating around....hmm.
They are'nt very fast but if I ran a RAID10 array with 2x 72,000 rpm drives for striping and the two average ones for mirrors do you think it would gel.

Mind you it will have to go to the end of my spending queue. New sound card is next. BTW what are you running the C-port on Ola? That laptop you mentioned?

I hav'nt posted on it yet because the local dealer is out of stock, I think that's a good sign :) Will let you know when I hear it.

Bones
 
You would need four disc of the same size (and preferably make) in a RAID10 setup. If you use different sizes, the smallest one sets the limit. I presume that the two 4.1GB discs you have are 5400rpm, right? I would guess that those two in a RAID0 configuration would beat a new 8GB 7200rpm disc. They won't stand a chance against those 72,000rpm discs you mentioned though:) The controller is only US$50 so it's a cheap way of putting those discs to good use.

I'm not runnig the C-Port on anything at the moment. I had a good computer a couple of months ago but it belonged to my old job and I had to give it back when I quit. Were you refering to the C-Port when you said it was out of stock? Check out this place: http://www.buydigital.co.kr/digital/english/products_showcase.htm for a bargain on the C-port (called DSP24 with ADC/DAC2000). It's only US$360. That's where I got mine and they shipped fast and with all pieces arriving safely.

/Ola
 
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