“striped Raid” Set Up For Sample Libraries Options

[Milca]

Hey guys
I’m planning to buy dual bay “hot-swap” enclosure SeriTek/1EN2
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1en2 with PCI - X card
SeriTek/1VE2+2

and I want to try to take an advantage of raid 0 set up( two internal SATA HD - probably maxtor or hitachi around 200 GB) and with this issue I’m posting those questions - hopefully there is somebody with answers - otherwise I will have to research that stuff forever.

1) Let’s say that I have Kontakt 2 library on one hand and and couple of sample libraries on the other - would it be better to use
a) Kontakt 2 on one hard drive ( of my two bay enclosure) and other
libraries on the other HD. or
b) Strip my libraries libraries across two drives ?(maybe with us of partitions)

2)This question is more of a general kind about stripped RAID

I know that lot of people take advantage of stripped RAID set up but this particular article
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.ph...gleDriveVsRaid0

has made some doubts whether I should even bother with this set up .
Anybody has some experience with using RAID 0?

3) For those who supports this set up where would be smarter to use it ( if you have a one choice)
a) On two sample libraries drives ?
b) On two audio drives ?
c) Or on two boot drives ?

If you guys have any experience with that i would really appreciate your answers,Hopefully other people find it useful as well.
Thanks for your time
Milan

[lepetitmartien]

on my own, I'd go Seagate NS35 drives, seagate are quiet, and the NS35 are the server versions (and it's the same price as the others at least where I am).

1) I'd take option b, best average for whole banks, it'd be a bit stupid to have the possibility of a RAID and not use it that way. Now partitions would be better (faster seek times) but I have no experience with partitons on RAID systems…

2) Stripped RAID are just twice as fast, but are only as secure as the first drive to die. If one drive makes it, you're stuck. That's why high MTBF drive build with servers in mind are maybe better.

3) The most strains will always be on the audio drives and the samples drives, then it depends of what you do. If you rely heavily on samples but use small amounts of tracks raid the samples, if you have numerous tracks playing/recording and are not sample nut, I'd go the other way. Now, it depends too on the way the sampler works, the size of samples, your way of recording. You may be a better judge on what to do with these in mind. If you're not recording 60 tracks then I'd try first the samples on RAID and a good drive for audio only.

Boot drives are fine on RAID 0 (provided the security is kept in mind) but RAID 0 will always be the best for the most strenuous jobs (here recording and samples)

I wouldn't mix partition for audio and partition for samples anyway if you mind

[Milca]

Thanks a lot again
Your answers make a lot of sence.I ( as well ) kind of thought that depends on the kind and style of production - as you've mentioned - how much samples and audio will I have.

Anyways after long long time of researching I was gonna finally make purchase and finalize my up which
int. 1 - boot drive - Raptor 150 GB
int. 2 - audio - Seagate Barracuda 320 GB
ext. 1,2 - samples - 2 bay “hot-swap” enclosure SeriTek/2N2 with two SATA drives
ext .3 - maxtor 300 GB for back up ( which I already have )
I was pretty sure about this purchase but after spending about an hour on phone with Firmtek tech support I was again at point zero and had to rethink my purchase.
Very frustrating.
Since I’m posting this in the separate post since this is a new issue.
http://en.440forums.com/forums/?site440=ma...showtopic=34841
Hopefully this is all right forum rules.I pretty sure other guys might be interested in that too.
Anyways once again
Thanks for your opinion .
Milan

[lepetitmartien]

It is, there's no better moderation than self moderation

One question, the most possibly restrictive, one thread, and everything is clearer. Thumbs up, you rock!

To get back on your set up, it's a viable one.