FancyCache, SuperCache, caching systems in general - any good?

[Compyfox]

EDIT:
SORRY! This belong to PC Config. Can the mods please move it?!




I tried a couple of HDD tools yesterday to see how my HDDs perform. Only to realise "now wait a sec, my Western Digial are around 20MB/s slower than my Samsung and Seagate". All of them being SATA-II, connect through either SATA or USB3 (man, I love this update - and it was so affordable!).


While looking up HDD tools to read out specs, I found (once more) certain caching systems, which claim to drastically speed up your HDD usage.


I did indeed try the one or another tool last night, only to realise "meh - not worth the trial and error".

It did add a tad in terms of read/write speed for my USB2 module (18MB/s read, 7MB/s write) which I'm currently using as portable app module. But I had to mess around with the tool for almost an hour, and I then had a RAM cache of up to 1GB just for having speeds that are better than an average HDD.



So my question to the studio rig builders out there:
Is it worth the hassle to go for a RAM caching system for HDDs and USB sticks? Or is it just a pain in the butt?

I ask because it might speed up read times in terms of samples (especially large ones), or multitrack recordings. But... if the writing is with a latency (which can be variable setup) and you have to have 2GB of cache in order to get at least twice as fast write times than before - it's definitely not worth the hassle (IMO) - unless you have like 24GB built in.



Any feedback from people like Kaine?
Go for it, or hands off? (currently I'm thinking: hands off)



Or should I rather get SATA-III HDDs, with at least 32MB cache?
I mean... what makes a recording card even "fast"?!

[Burillo]

caching is always a trade-off. in this case, you're sacrificing reliability for speed (e.g. if you suddenly reboot, everything your RAM cache holds will be lost forever).

i would better look at various RAID systems if you want to speed up your HDD's - RAID is a compromise too (you're sacrificing hard disk space for speed) but it's a better one than RAM cache IMO.

[Compyfox]

And slot spaces are wasted as well...


I'm just wondering - like I said, I could significally up my read speeds, but the write speeds were shite. Took more efforts to setup, and this introduces a write lag.

Modern "Cache" systems do offer backups of what's written in the ram, or forces a flush after the "latency" time is over (read: it will be written on HDD).

Power outage was never a problem for me.



So yeah... I just want to get some feedback on this - and whether or not it does make a significant difference in the audio realm. Gamers love that stuff. Also RAM disks - but RAM disks are limited to the size of your RAM. While "caching" through RAM might offer a better read/write performance.

But, as I said several times now, setup is a b*tch.

[Burillo]

And slot spaces are wasted as well...

yep. just i said, a tradeoff.

I'm just wondering - like I said, I could significally up my read speeds, but the write speeds were shite. Took more efforts to setup, and this introduces a write lag.

RAID does increase write speeds as well, all without write lag.

Modern "Cache" systems do offer backups of what's written in the ram, or forces a flush after the "latency" time is over (read: it will be written on HDD).

...which still means that your HDD speed is a bottleneck because you just delay the writes, not increase the speed of them. which means that whatever wasn't written, won't be written and will be lost.

Power outage was never a problem for me.

power outage isn't the only possible source of sudden reboots. BSoD is another one, ESPECIALLY if you're heavily using some fancy-shmancy RAM caching instead of industry standards such as RAID arrays.

So yeah... I just want to get some feedback on this - and whether or not it does make a significant difference in the audio realm. Gamers love that stuff. Also RAM disks - but RAM disks are limited to the size of your RAM. While "caching" through RAM might offer a better read/write performance.

you might want to look at SSD caching - Intel SSD's offer something like this, don't know about others. They will speed up often-accessed data though, not read/writes per se. otherwise, yeah - SSD or RAID are much better and more reliable ways to go.

this is all IMO of course.

[eidenk]

i would better look at various RAID systems if you want to speed up your HDD's - RAID is a compromise too (you're sacrificing hard disk space for speed)

Nope, you're going to sacrifice HD space for data safeguard if you configure your array in a mirrored/parity/mixed mode but if all you want is higher read/write speed then a Mode 0 array will offer you just that without any space penalty if I am not mistaken.

[Burillo]

i would better look at various RAID systems if you want to speed up your HDD's - RAID is a compromise too (you're sacrificing hard disk space for speed)

Nope, you're going to sacrifice HD space for data safeguard if you configure your array in a mirrored/parity/mixed mode but if all you want is higher read/write speed then a Mode 0 array will offer you just that without any space penalty if I am not mistaken.

you're correct, yes. but i wouldn't recommend using RAID0 for anything that requires some form of data reliability (which studio PC certainly does). the problem with RAID0 is it's highly dependent on how it was set up, and you can easily end up not being able to recover ANY files AT ALL, should you suddenly lose your RAID array (e.g. one of the drives fail).

[eidenk]

i would better look at various RAID systems if you want to speed up your HDD's - RAID is a compromise too (you're sacrificing hard disk space for speed)

Nope, you're going to sacrifice HD space for data safeguard if you configure your array in a mirrored/parity/mixed mode but if all you want is higher read/write speed then a Mode 0 array will offer you just that without any space penalty if I am not mistaken.

you're correct, yes. but i wouldn't recommend using RAID0 for anything that requires some form of data reliability (which studio PC certainly does). the problem with RAID0 is it's highly dependent on how it was set up, and you can easily end up not being able to recover ANY files AT ALL, should you suddenly lose your RAID array (e.g. one of the drives fail).

Well, if you don't have a RAID array at all, you'll loose everything too if your drive physically fails and since using a RAID array shouldn't increase the likeliness of drive physical failure I don't see why Mode 0 couldn't be a sensible option (if all one needs is read/write speed increase).

[Burillo]

i would better look at various RAID systems if you want to speed up your HDD's - RAID is a compromise too (you're sacrificing hard disk space for speed)

Nope, you're going to sacrifice HD space for data safeguard if you configure your array in a mirrored/parity/mixed mode but if all you want is higher read/write speed then a Mode 0 array will offer you just that without any space penalty if I am not mistaken.

you're correct, yes. but i wouldn't recommend using RAID0 for anything that requires some form of data reliability (which studio PC certainly does). the problem with RAID0 is it's highly dependent on how it was set up, and you can easily end up not being able to recover ANY files AT ALL, should you suddenly lose your RAID array (e.g. one of the drives fail).

Well, if you don't have a RAID array at all, you'll loose everything too if your drive physically fails and since using a RAID array shouldn't increase the likeliness of drive physical failure I don't see why Mode 0 couldn't be a sensible option (if all one needs is read/write speed increase).

yes but the problem with RAID0 is that if one drive fails (or if e.g. RAID controller suddenly drops one drive from the array, which i saw happening once or twice), everything on BOTH drives is not recoverable. that is, if you had a 2x500GB drives, you lose 1TB of data, not 500GB.

[Compyfox]

Not an option for me then.

I've had way too many issues with data loss due to HDD crashes and controller failures in the past. I'd rather go for a RAMdisk solution in this case.

[Burillo]

what i would also suggest is getting a small-ish SSD (60GB? those can get pretty cheap). use it when you record (e.g. REAPER allows to specify directory where to put recorded files, other DAWs should be able to do that too) and then move the files to your normal HDD once you're done recording. would that work?

[eidenk]

Yes of course, in Mode O data on all drives of the array is lost if one fails but I didn't know the controller/driver could occasionally "drop" a drive (resulting in the loss of everything), that sounds very bad indeed.

[Burillo]

Yes of course, in Mode O data on all drives of the array is lost if one fails but I didn't know the controller/driver could occasionally "drop" a drive (resulting in the loss of everything), that sounds very bad indeed.

well, the event is extremely rare, and it didn't happen to me personally (i only saw a couple of cases like i mentioned before). and it's *usually* recoverable. it's just some motherboard RAID controllers' firmware may be buggy. shouldn't happen these days though. but the point still stands - physically failing drive is much more catastrophic for RAID0 than it is for regular storage or other RAID types.

[Compyfox]

what i would also suggest is getting a small-ish SSD (60GB? those can get pretty cheap). use it when you record (e.g. REAPER allows to specify directory where to put recorded files, other DAWs should be able to do that too) and then move the files to your normal HDD once you're done recording. would that work?

That could work, and 60GB seems reasonable for most projects. Unless it's a 128track one at 96kHz.


But I am wondering, if I can still improve my HDD usage currently with such caching systems. And I'd love to hear feedback from the likes of Kaine with his PC service.


I currently have SATA-II drives (300MB/s per channel alltogether). Nowadays, you can only get SATA-III (600MB/s per channel). But that doesn't mean that this HDD is faster if I connect it into my PC.


I'm kind of looking for certain criteria currently, which tell me:
- fast HD for recording/samples/editing
- longevity
- moderate cache (if this is helping anything)


Apparently, I have SATA-II HDD's with 16MB and 32MB cache by WD, Seagate and Samsung (the Seagate builds already). Funny enough, the WD's are slower with about 15-20MB/s compared to the Seagate ones. And the Seagate/Samsung HDD's I have are usually with 16MB cache as well (only the Baracuda I have is 32MB).

Why? They're all 2 plate's, SATA-II, moderate cache.



And even though I do not have any issues currently in terms of HDD usage in Cubase/Reaper/Wavelab (heck, regular 24track standalone HDD recorders aren't any faster!) - I want to weight in what's possible.

My CPU is a different issue.

[Gamma-UT]

Although reads are extremely fast, the write performance of flash memory is not very good at all and unlikely to beat a hard drive performing sequential writes to neighbouring tracks. You also have the issue of long-term write endurance if the purpose of the drive is mainly to capture recordings.

For aggregate performance on tracking/recording, I would expect a RAID5 to give the best tradeoff between throughput and data protection, but does call for three or more drives in the array. A write cache for those applications isn't going to help much except to hide disk seeks if it's fragmented as, once the cache fills, it's more or less useless to you until there's a break in write activity.