ATA vs RAID Hard Drives -ACID Product Family - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:ATA vs RAID Hard Drives Posted by: bflat Date:8/19/2004 4:37:39 AM Are serial ATA hard drives preferable to RAID drives for audio apps / ACID, does anyone know? Is there any problem having two internal HDs, each the same amount of GIGs, with the app on one drive & my samples / projects on the other drive? I vaguely recall reading about one audio app where the company recommended two drives. ***Also: Do all Sonic Foundry / Sony apps would seamlessly & bug-free together? I may end up sticking with one company's products, 'cuz I hate those glitchy problems when two applications fight it out.
Subject:RE: ATA vs RAID Hard Drives Reply by: Vocalpoint Date:8/19/2004 7:04:00 AM BFlat, "Are serial ATA hard drives preferable to RAID drives for audio apps / ACID, does anyone know?" No such thing as a "Raid" drive per se. RAID is just a configuration (Actually stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - R.A.I.D) of multiple drives to form one large, fast space to write data to. SATA or serial ATA are the latest breed of ATA drives with a better connection scheme and some say better performance than a standard (ATA) IDE drive with an 80 pin connector. I currently use a RAID 0 array using 2 - 36GB SATA Western Digital Raptor drives for a very fast 72 GB partition for audio and video. "Is there any problem having two internal HDs, each the same amount of GIGs, with the app on one drive & my samples / projects on the other drive?" No problem at all - matter a fact - it's a REQUIREMENT for any kind of decent performance. I have 4 internal drives (going to 6 here shortly). "Do all Sonic Foundry / Sony apps would seamlessly & bug-free together? I may end up sticking with one company's products, 'cuz I hate those glitchy problems when two applications fight it out. " No one vendor has "bug-free" apps. I use a pile of things from Vegas to Acid...Wavelab to Nuendo 2.0 - all in harmony. They all have strengths and weaknesses...just depends on what you plan to use each app for. Cheers, Cuzin B
Subject:RE: ATA vs RAID Hard Drives Reply by: JohnnyRoy Date:8/19/2004 7:09:54 AM There is no such thing as a “RAID drive”. RAID stands for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks. It is not a disk itself, but rather, how you configure disks to work together as if they were one drive. So, those “Inexpensive Disks” are usually ATA drives although you can have SATA or SCSI drives in a RAID configuration. There is really no need to use RAID for audio recording. Today’s ATA/SATA hard drives are plenty fast enough to keep up with the demands of audio recording but many motherboards come with on-board RAID so if you want to get the best disk I/O from your ATA hard drives, a RAID-0 configuration will do it. You will need two identical hard drives to configure them as RAID. As for having a second hard drive, this is a must IMHO. You should always keep your audio or video data on a physically separate hard drive from your OS, swap file, and applications. The second hard drive should also be a MASTER drive on your second IDE channel. Making the second drive a SLAVE to the first drive on the same IDE channel will serialize access and not give you the throughput benefits of having a second physical drive. If you use SATA drives you don’t have to worry about MASTERS and SLAVES so I recommend using SATA for at least your audio data drive. ~jr

Subject:ATA vs RAID Hard Drives

Posted by: bflat

Date:8/19/2004 4:37:39 AM

Are serial ATA hard drives preferable to RAID drives for audio apps / ACID, does anyone know?

Is there any problem having two internal HDs, each the same amount of GIGs, with the app on one drive & my samples / projects on the other drive?

I vaguely recall reading about one audio app where the company recommended two drives.

***Also:
Do all Sonic Foundry / Sony apps would seamlessly & bug-free together? I may end up sticking with one company's products, 'cuz I hate those glitchy problems when two applications fight it out.

Subject:RE: ATA vs RAID Hard Drives

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:8/19/2004 7:04:00 AM

BFlat,

"Are serial ATA hard drives preferable to RAID drives for audio apps / ACID, does anyone know?"

No such thing as a "Raid" drive per se. RAID is just a configuration (Actually stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - R.A.I.D) of multiple drives to form one large, fast space to write data to. SATA or serial ATA are the latest breed of ATA drives with a better connection scheme and some say better performance than a standard (ATA) IDE drive with an 80 pin connector.

I currently use a RAID 0 array using 2 - 36GB SATA Western Digital Raptor drives for a very fast 72 GB partition for audio and video.

"Is there any problem having two internal HDs, each the same amount of GIGs, with the app on one drive & my samples / projects on the other drive?"

No problem at all - matter a fact - it's a REQUIREMENT for any kind of decent performance. I have 4 internal drives (going to 6 here shortly).

"Do all Sonic Foundry / Sony apps would seamlessly & bug-free together? I may end up sticking with one company's products, 'cuz I hate those glitchy problems when two applications fight it out. "

No one vendor has "bug-free" apps. I use a pile of things from Vegas to Acid...Wavelab to Nuendo 2.0 - all in harmony. They all have strengths and weaknesses...just depends on what you plan to use each app for.

Cheers,

Cuzin B

Subject:RE: ATA vs RAID Hard Drives

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:8/19/2004 7:09:54 AM

There is no such thing as a “RAID drive”. RAID stands for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks. It is not a disk itself, but rather, how you configure disks to work together as if they were one drive. So, those “Inexpensive Disks” are usually ATA drives although you can have SATA or SCSI drives in a RAID configuration.

There is really no need to use RAID for audio recording. Today’s ATA/SATA hard drives are plenty fast enough to keep up with the demands of audio recording but many motherboards come with on-board RAID so if you want to get the best disk I/O from your ATA hard drives, a RAID-0 configuration will do it. You will need two identical hard drives to configure them as RAID.

As for having a second hard drive, this is a must IMHO. You should always keep your audio or video data on a physically separate hard drive from your OS, swap file, and applications. The second hard drive should also be a MASTER drive on your second IDE channel. Making the second drive a SLAVE to the first drive on the same IDE channel will serialize access and not give you the throughput benefits of having a second physical drive. If you use SATA drives you don’t have to worry about MASTERS and SLAVES so I recommend using SATA for at least your audio data drive.

~jr