Need help deciding what to put on external HD (Raid 0) for recording
Hi,
I've never used an external HD before and I just picked up a 1.5 TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual Bay Raid 0 with FW 800 for use in my home recording studio. I just have some questions regarding what would be the best way to configure it as opposed having everything on my Macbook Pro.
I have an M-Audio Axiom 61 midi controller and all of my software synths and programs are currently on my Macbook Pro (2.4Ghz, 4GB Ram, 250GB HD). They include the following:
Spectrasonics Omnisphere (42 GB)
Spectrasonics RMX Expanded (38 GB)
Spectrasonics Trilian Bass (40 GB)
NI Kore Player with 2 extra libraries (12 GB)
NI Kontakt 4 with extra libraries (8 GB)
Ministry of Rock (44 GB)
Just over 60 GB of audio loop content
I also run Recycle and Ableton Live 8 for recording.
My questions are....Should I be putting everything on the external drive? Or just the sound and loop libraries and keep the programs themselves on the laptop? Or put everything on the external except the recording and editing software (Ableton Live 8 & Recycle)?
I appreciate any help you can give. Any composers/producers out there who have a similar setup and want to share what their setup is like if they use an external drive? Any and all feedback is welcome!!
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend.
-Ryan
I've never used an external HD before and I just picked up a 1.5 TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual Bay Raid 0 with FW 800 for use in my home recording studio. I just have some questions regarding what would be the best way to configure it as opposed having everything on my Macbook Pro.
I have an M-Audio Axiom 61 midi controller and all of my software synths and programs are currently on my Macbook Pro (2.4Ghz, 4GB Ram, 250GB HD). They include the following:
Spectrasonics Omnisphere (42 GB)
Spectrasonics RMX Expanded (38 GB)
Spectrasonics Trilian Bass (40 GB)
NI Kore Player with 2 extra libraries (12 GB)
NI Kontakt 4 with extra libraries (8 GB)
Ministry of Rock (44 GB)
Just over 60 GB of audio loop content
I also run Recycle and Ableton Live 8 for recording.
My questions are....Should I be putting everything on the external drive? Or just the sound and loop libraries and keep the programs themselves on the laptop? Or put everything on the external except the recording and editing software (Ableton Live 8 & Recycle)?
I appreciate any help you can give. Any composers/producers out there who have a similar setup and want to share what their setup is like if they use an external drive? Any and all feedback is welcome!!
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend.
-Ryan
Comments
Hi,
I've never used an external HD before and I just picked up a 1.5 TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual Bay Raid 0 with FW 800 for use in my home recording studio. I just have some questions regarding what would be the best way to configure it as opposed having everything on my Macbook Pro.
I have an M-Audio Axiom 61 midi controller and all of my software synths and programs are currently on my Macbook Pro (2.4Ghz, 4GB Ram, 250GB HD). They include the following:
Spectrasonics Omnisphere (42 GB)
Spectrasonics RMX Expanded (38 GB)
Spectrasonics Trilian Bass (40 GB)
NI Kore Player with 2 extra libraries (12 GB)
NI Kontakt 4 with extra libraries (8 GB)
Ministry of Rock (44 GB)
Just over 60 GB of audio loop content
I also run Recycle and Ableton Live 8 for recording.
My questions are....Should I be putting everything on the external drive? Or just the sound and loop libraries and keep the programs themselves on the laptop? Or put everything on the external except the recording and editing software (Ableton Live 8 & Recycle)?
I appreciate any help you can give. Any composers/producers out there who have a similar setup and want to share what their setup is like if they use an external drive? Any and all feedback is welcome!!
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend.
-Ryan
Oh jesus where to begin?
First off a RAID 0 "set" is very dangerous to the life of the data that you put on it.
RAID 0 consists of two or more drives (in one enclosure or not) where the data stream is divided amongst all the drives. It does this by taking bit #1 and placing it on one drive and bit #2 and placing it another drive and so forth. The dividing can occur in OS X before data goes out the cables to two separate drives or in the situation of a RAID 0 enclosure like yours, it's done in the external hardware itself, (which can fail). It gives incredible speed as the more drives, the less each drive has to work and less bottlenecks for your data to flow.
The danger lies is if anything happens to any drive or the software or hardware dividing the data stream (or recompiling it) , you lose data ON ALL DRIVES!!! The more drives you have with your precious data, the larger the hardware failure increases. Perhaps not even the hardware, a software or driver issue, bad sector or power issue could also ruin your data.
So placing anything permanent on a RAID 0 is a NO NO! You can have backup, this can be automated with software and should run everyday after work is completed. Another backup should be done manually once in awhile and kept disconnected just in case the auto-backup backs up bad data.
Some people, even myself once, have had a RAID 0 as a boot drive in their Mac Pro's, this is fine as long as one routinely clones their entire drive to a single drive regularly and then has a another clone of their boot drive which they cloned onto the RAID 0 set to begin with. (The original basically.) Files can be copied and even some applications, but a entire OS X drive in nearly perfect condition needs to be "cloned" using something like the free (donationware) Carbon Copy Cloner, this way it's hold option bootable.
Well lets say your not intending to run a external RAID 0 clone of your boot drive via Firewire 800. Rather your trying to increase performance of your software/computer.
The best thing you can do is increase the RAM to the max and keeping your memory use below your available RAM. You can see this in Activity Monitor. If your using files in your programs that exceed the available RAM or memory, the program "pages" or" swaps" out the needed memory to your boot drive. If your boot drive is nearly full or even more than half full, this will severely affect performance the more it's past 50% filled.. Even if it's not more than 50% filled, a drive is slower than memory (RAM).
So what some programs allow you to do it set the EXTERNAL DRIVE AS THE MEMORY SWAP DRIVE.
If it's a RAID 0, naturally it's going to be faster than your boot drive and thus more performance, but still not faster than RAM memory.
Of course the more the RAID 0 is filled, the slower it gets like any other drive. So the best performance as a swap drive is to have nothing else on it. Unless your clever and can place a swap partition at the beginning of the drive and another partition for other data for the rest of the drive, but one shouldn't keep anything permanent on a RAID 0 anyway.
Your running a MacBook Pro when you should have a Mac Pro, it's the device more capable of extreme performance.
1: Lots of room for RAM, large memory is the best performance, no paging out to anything, more programs running with more files open
2: More internal hard drives, to mess around with and exchange at a whim.
3: No heat issues, MacBook Pro's are laptops and if you overwork them they will slow performance to keep the processors cool. There is no solution, despite anything you do with RAID 0 etc..
A RAID 0 drive will get your data to your processors and into memory faster than a regular drive, but your processors can't be hobbled by heat controls and a crippled BUS to take advantage of it.
IN CONCLUSION:
So unless your program(s) allow you to use the RAID 0 drive as a temporary memory swap disk, it's practically worthless and your taking a huge change placing anything permanent on the drive set.
If your RAID 0 set fails, and you don't have any other backup, your looking at HUGE, SEVERAL THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for drive recovery fee's, if they can do it or not.
If you do got a backup, it has to be big enough to handle all the room of the RAID 0, thus a RAID 0 of two 1TB drives needs a 2TB external drive for backup.
Also even though the RAID 0 is fast, if the other drive is slow(er) then that's the speed you get transferring data.
What some people do is use the RAID 0 as a working disk and then software automatically backs up all the data to a regular drive overnight. This "time shifting" method works, but one has to plan on something bad happening to the RAID 0 AND THE BACKUP while the backup is occurring. Thus switching of drives nightly so one only loses one day of work instead of all of it.
A last tip: Always Disk Utility Erase with Zero any new drive before placing data on it to map off any potential bad sectors.
You need to learn a bit more how computers work, it's no biggie, plenty of info on line.
Good luck, hope this helps.
Oh jesus where to begin?
I just want to say thanks so much for taking the time to respond with such a detailed and informative post. It's made me realize the huge mistake I've made in not researching this better. I went on an assumption and didn't realize I might be creating a bigger problem. I do however, still need a solution so I'm going to try and break this down better to show my train of thought.
Well lets say your not intending to run a external RAID 0 clone of your boot drive via Firewire 800. Rather your trying to increase performance of your software/computer.
I'm not trying to do either of these things. I know you mentioned getting a Mac Pro and I agree, but I can't afford it. Maybe next year. Maybe.
My problem is simple. I have a Macbook Pro with a 250 GB internal hard drive. I am running various software packages that with their combined libraries equal around 240 GB. Obviously I can't house them on my Macbook Pro because it would slow to a crawl.
So what I need is an external solution to my problem. I thought a 1.5 TB Raid 0 would make sense because it has the large capacity for my needs and future expansion, and the extra speed to makeup for the transfer slowdown. Clearly I was wrong as I didn't realize that they are prone to failure.
The extra ram might help with speed because obviously my programs won't be accessing the entire library (only the patches needed for each individual track), however I still have the problem of where to store the total 240 GB of data.
So placing anything permanent on a RAID 0 is a NO NO!
What about using an external drive set to RAID 1 or RAID 5? Would this be a more stable solution? (RAID 1 offering total redundancy with less speed and RAID 5 offering an equal mix of both)
Or can I just buy a high capacity external drive (with no RAID) and expect that to solve the problem?
As I see it, the problem is not just the capacity to store such a large library but also the transfer speeds going from my laptop to the external and back again without high latency.
How about an external drive with a faster spin (10,000 rpm / 15,000 rpm)?
Would switching to an iMac be of any help? I could get a 2 TB internal drive and 8 GB of Ram.
Basically I need some kind of solution here. It can't be an extremely expensive solution (like the Mac Pro) either. This is not a professional recording studio and I don't use it to make money. The average song I create is usually between 30-75 tracks. Usually around 10 audio tracks and the rest are Midi, plus full effects processing.
I can return the RAID 0 drive but I'd rather be trading it towards something else. All thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
-Ryan
P.S. The heat that my laptop produces even after long periods of time is not so much of an issue. It sits on top of a laptop cooler with internal fans that suck the heat away from the bottom of the laptop and I also have a mini fan that blows air into the laptop through the slot just under the display. Combined, it keeps it pretty cool.
I contacted OWC where I bought the RAID 0 drive and explained the situation to one of their tech reps and he suggests that the best, most immediate action I can take is to simply buy a USB 1.5TB external like their OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro for 167.99 USD to backup the RAID 0 drive. This way I keep the speed but have the comfort in knowing all that data is being backed up daily in case of failure.
I understand it is his job to upsell to me in such situations but if this solves the problem, it's not that expensive a fix. I do wish to get comments from other members here. Problems, alternative suggestions, etc.
Thanks for your time!
-Ryan
Raid is perfectly fine, I've used it for years. It's fast as hell. But, as was mentioned, -always back it up-
keep your raid, enjoy the speed, by a backup drive.
Keep in mind your port allocation, since speed isn't essential as it has all night, slower ports can be used.
But in case your needs change, it's good to have a drive that can do USB and FW 800.400. Do make sure it's a single spindle drive, some makers put two drives in a enclosure and name it something and it looks like one drive, but is two and increases your hardware failure rate.
Also investigate how to move the programs temporary swap file to the RAID 0, so when you load a clip into your program it pages it to the RAID 0 instead of your boot drive.
The way I would do it is create a two partitions on the RAID 0, which should be able to be done via OS X because OS X would see your external RAID 0 as one drive. Create a partition at the beginning to house the programs temp swap file, so the size of that depends upon the size of the clips you work with. Being first gets the fastest space on the drive, the outer edges of the platters where the sectors are longest.
The the rest of the drive space make the second partition to house the 240GB plus libraries and auto-clone/backup/update only that partition to the other slower external drive. No need to backup the temp swap file partition as it's deleted when you quit the program.