KVR Audio

Alde · Post by **Alde** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 8:49 pm

I have four hd drives:60+120GB ATA and 80+120GB SATA. The SATA drives are configured as a 156GB Raid 0. Is the increased transfer speed enough to justify the disadvantages, compared to plain SATA? I have not yet used the Raid drive(s)as I have had enough of hd space, and I can easily return to normal SATA. What do you think?

My system:
P4 2,8GHz, Intel D865PERLL, 2GB PC3200 DDR, WinXp Home, optimized for audio only, HT disabled.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 9:00 pm

Well, you're already wasting 1/3rd of your larger SATA drive by striping it, and to be honest any single SATA drive has more than enough grunt for most people's audio needs, so IMO - ditch the RAID.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 9:11 pm

Just as the Rabbyt said, ditch the Raid for audio. If you were doing video with large frames, THEN go for RAID, otherwise, you're just wasting a lot of space since you have different sized drives, and aren't really benefiting on top of it. At 44.1khz, you're pushing 167k per second on the bus. Aren't your drives pushing 50+ megs a second? See the trees through the clouds now?

Devon

Alde · Post by **Alde** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 9:24 pm

Thank you, no more clouds. Raid shall go.

Alde

bandasound · Post by **bandasound** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:52 pm

what do you guys think you could get out of SATA running 44.1k/16bit....how many tracks.....and @44.1/24bit........

anythoughts while your at it

Pouckypluysch · Post by **Pouckypluysch** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:19 pm

@ bandasound: of course it depends on your CPU. But to give you an idea:

Yesterday I opened a project with 36 tracks with wave-files on 48/24. I had about ten effect-plugs running. That's when I noticed some stuttering, so I increased the buffer size in my audio card settings a notch. I have an Athlon 3000+, and I'm running an SATA Raid controller on two of my harddisks.

My question is about the latter. I have a C-harddisk to run my OS on, and some non-audio-related stuff. An SATA Raid controller makes my pc 'see' the two other harddisk as one D-disk. All my audio-related stuff (software and data) is placed on that D-disk.

But, being convinced by this thread to try to remove the SATA Raid controller, I wonder when I do that, how the software and data will be devided among those two disks...

Can I just remove the controller, or should I move the everything I have on those disks temporarily to the C-disk?

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:24 pm

Your data willbe gone. RAID0 is striping, which means 64k blocks of data are striped one after another between the two drives, back and forth. Back up your data first, obviously.

Devon

nuffink · Post by **nuffink** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:27 pm

Two unambiguous articles (from a couple of the webs more authoritative sites) detailing why RAID 0 is such a bad idea...

http://www.storagereview.com (scroll down to "Stop the RAID0 Insanity!")

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

Funkybot · Post by **Funkybot** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:31 pm

Be careful, based on how SATA is configured on your Mobo it's possible to run into conflicts with your sound card. I know I have a SATA drive on my system that sits disabled most of the time because of the conflicts with my Delta 66 due to the SATA being built into the PCI bus on my mobo. I've played with PCI latency timers, moving cards, etc with minimal benefit. Apparently if you're running a newer Intel chipset, or an AMD 64 system you should be ok, but I know that my AMD XP/ASUS-A7NX board do not like SATA and audio recording over here. Of course it sounds like you're already not having these problems, but this is just an FYI for anyone who may be considering SATA in the future.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:07 am

Funkybot wrote:Be careful, based on how SATA is configured on your Mobo it's possible to run into conflicts with your sound card. I know I have a SATA drive on my system that sits disabled most of the time because of the conflicts with my Delta 66 due to the SATA being built into the PCI bus on my mobo. I've played with PCI latency timers, moving cards, etc with minimal benefit. Apparently if you're running a newer Intel chipset, or an AMD 64 system you should be ok, but I know that my AMD XP/ASUS-A7NX board do not like SATA and audio recording over here. Of course it sounds like you're already not having these problems, but this is just an FYI for anyone who may be considering SATA in the future.

Which motherboard do you have? I believe (If I'm remembering correctly off the top of my head) that usually the SATA controller sits on the SouthBridge, and NOT on the PCI bus. (It used to be on the NorthBridge for IDE before, newer chipsets flipped it around). If I got it flipped, please correct me here.

Devon

japut_99 · Post by **japut_99** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:21 am

That is correct about the southbridge being the connection on most newer mobo but a quick question to Funkybot. Did disabling SATA in the bios solve the problem with your soundcard? Does the drive have an ide connect? DId you use it, disable sata in the bios, and did that solve your problem? Whoa too many questions, just trying to solve a little problem of my own with some of this assistance.

ambe · Post by **ambe** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 11:33 pm

a bit OT but SATA is a thing for the future and is only really useful at the moment for the smaller cables, and lower power consumption. The data rate of 150Mbps is nowhere near touched by todays drives. The older ATA100 (100Mbps) isn't touched by todays drives either. Max you will get from todays drives is 72Mbps (according to seagate).

Pouckypluysch · Post by **Pouckypluysch** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 9:39 pm

To be specific: I have SATALink installed on my computer. I want to get rid of it, but my pc-dealer says I have to be careful, and I should back up my data before trying. I surely wpould do that, but I could really use a step-by-step-manual... Any suggestions?

SATA Raid worth using?