To RAID or not to RAID

[Simon Ravn]

Excuse me if I am taking up an old discussion, but I don\'t recall finding any definite answer to this: Will using a RAID setup improve GS performance? I want to set up a new machine in the near future to take care of EWQLSO and I need something that can perform as well as possible, so I was considering trying out a RAID configuration. Anyone actually compared this to normal usage and found it to be superior or not? I would buy a mobo with onboard RAID and two WD 8MB cache drives for this machine.

[Beckers]

I have onboard RAID, with 2 HD but chronic polyphony problems. I am told a RAID PCI performs better and is not much more expensive. Onboard RAID obviously still occupies an IRQ, so doesn\'t have much advantage. No hardcore wisdom here though.

[seclusion]

Ya I\'ve been using IDE Raid 0 fora couple years..
No crashes etc.. I know people swear there is no difference, but I definetly have more tracks/Plugs(Logic) and 0 glitching on the giga system. Than when I ran just 1 7200 IDe drive.
I think another thought is that I don\'t hear the drives being hammered.. They just click away..
Sorry I didn\'t do any hard AB tests.. I just used a suggestion from a bud a long time ago and I don\'t think about audio problems anymore.
Bri

[Ian Livingstone]

I personally feel raid is a waste of time for sampling apps. I spent alot of money a couple of years back on a SCSI U160 raid array - 4 drives racked up, and yes it was fast on tests, but caused me so much trouble (although more down to the scsi I have to admit). I swapped it all for 1 fast IDE drive (at about a 10th of the price from my array) and noticed virtually no difference in performance.

At the time (this was before my multi giga setup) I was running 7 HALions and The Grand - all disk streaming apps, simultaneously with often as much as 64 audio channels in cubase all running on one PC, and the the only limitations were down to the CPU and RAM - not the hard drive. Admittedly the libraries I was running with HALion were smaller Akai based so was probably less reliant on the drive.

Ian

[Simon Ravn]

OK thanks guys. It looks like it\'s not something I am very likely to plunge in to. If I can\'t be sure of a performance boost then I am not gonna experiment.

[Luigi]

I thought the RAID was meant only to improve performance. Reading these stories it seams that you\'d better not plug the harddrives into the RAID connectors.
I have two Western Digital SE 120 GB. Can I plug them into the onboard Raid Connectors or is that not whise then?

[Ian Livingstone]

for me it wasn\'t a case of Raid not being faster - it was a case of good ide drives (eg 7200 ata133 drives with 8mb cache) running non-raid being more than adequate for giga / audio recording these days, without the extra hassle. If you watch the giga disk meter bouncing up and down, and vst performance meter (or whatever sequencer you\'re using) you\'ll see the cpu shooting up but very rarely the hard drive meter.

Another problem with raid running at max performance (not the backup stripeset option) is that if one drive goes down you lose both.

Ian

[Briody]

If you\'re going to consider RAID, look into a dedicated card (as opposed to onboard raid).

The onboard RAID seems to be a mixed bag. It works great for some folks but is nothing but headaches for others.

I know that some of the onboard RAID function are handled by the CPU, while a dedicated card will handle all RAID functions by itself.

Mark

[Briody]

I second the suggestion for Western Digital Special Edition drives. Very fast!

I actually use my onboard raid controllers, but not for raid. Raid controller 1 (IDE3) is my main driver. Controller 2 (IDE4) is my sample drive. Then the normal IDE controllers hold a DVD-r and CD-RW.

Four drives with each as a bus master. Works like a charm.

Mark

[Luigi]

I have a MSI 845 Ultra ARU Daughterboard. Is that a good motherboard for GIGAStudio?