Raid and Vegas

ACE5 wrote on 9/16/2001, 1:53 PM
Hi

I have been thinking about upgrading my system with a raid controller or another IDEcontroller and a software raidcontroller. Right now I am using a IBM 7200 rpm ata 66 harddrive and i am able to playback 20 tracks with my diskmeter going to 30-40 percent and that is ok for most of the stuff I am doing. But how does Vegas work with RAID? Has anyone tried and have good experience with it.


thanx

Comments

jboy wrote on 9/16/2001, 2:25 PM
No problem. I've used Promise Fastrak and HighPoint onboard RAID controllers without incident. One of the nice things that people seem not to do when using RAID, is utilizing slower less expensive 5400 rpm drives. I have two WD 5400 45gb drives on a RAID card and my read and write thruput speed tests out to from between 45-55mb/ sec. Slower drives are quieter too..
nlamartina wrote on 9/16/2001, 2:26 PM
Ace,

That depends on what you want to focus on, reading or writing data to the disk. I haven't personal experience with the subject, but I have corresponded with Peter Snell from Sound Chaser, and according to their test data, strait IDE is the best method of reading and writing multi-track data. He noted the RAID arrays will yield better read times, ie, playback of your project, but they won't out perfrom standard IDE controllers when recording audio. Finally, he let me know that a standard IDE controller will record 24 tracks of 48kHz of 24 bit audio flawlessly (presuming you're using something above ATA 66). However, if you'd like the same number of tracks but as 96kHz 24 bit audio, you then need to consider a Media RAID system, as the write performance needs to be considerably higher.

Therefore, if you're looking to use Vegas as your editing/mastering app, or you need to record around 24 tracks of 24/48 audio, then stick with standard IDE. However, if you're looking for some monstrous bandwidth to grab 24 tracks of 24/96 audio, think about Media RAID. If you'd like to contact Peter or anyone else at Sound Chaser, please visit their site at:

http://www.soundchaser.com/

They're very knowledgable and cooperative folks that know lots and lots about high performance DAW's, so if you're looking for something new, it's a great place to start.

Hope this helps,
Nick LaMartina
PipelineAudio wrote on 9/16/2001, 3:07 PM
I have been using win2k in softraid using two softraided drives for quite a while now. Its very convenient, and seems to have less skipping and stutterin. I recently saw the Tom's Hardware link posted on here and was surprised by the speed increases of using more drives and more channels.
Im going to give 5 drives/ 3 channels a try and see what happens.
This at least is a good cheap way to see if software raid can be any true help, on UDMA 100 drives.