Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

I loathe the word "support". "Digidesign does not support RAID technology."

What the heck does that mean? Does it mean "We're not going to give you tech support on that there bub." or does it mean "We decided not to qualify that because our margins are too thin to make it worth it." or does it mean "We got some bug reports that all included RAID systems so we have the impression it's flakey" or does it mean "We do low-level filesystem interfacing to squeeze performance out of these boxes that will most certainly NOT EVER work with RAID systems until we decide to fix it at some undetermined point in the future, that is, if we decide to."???

It could and has meant any or all of these things just with this one company. Can someone tell me if they have succeeded in using PTLE on Mac (intel...I have a Mac Pro) on RAID drives anyway?

Anyone who robotically repeats "Digidesign doesn't support RAID" will get a bronx cheer. I would like a "It seems to work fine for me" or a "It DOES NOT work. PERIOD." along with any supporting information you have at hand. Thank you.

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

You are right. There is not much explanation. One I found from Digi:

Disabling RAID:

RAID is a type of array configuration for your hard drives that can save files between discs or mirror the file to a backup. Unfortunately, this causes erratic and often catastrophic errors with Pro Tools. To disable this feature, find the RAID controller option - it's usually found under the 'Advanced' menu.

I read that an HD user said he was getting 80 tracks from one FW 800 drive so there seems to be little need for a RAID to increase throughput.

However, Glyph says:

Our in-house testing has shown that, in an audio environment, the highest track count can be achieved in JBOD mode. In JBOD mode, using our 48 KHz/24-bit test sessions, the GT 062 supported 80 tracks at edit level 1. At 192 KHz/24-bit, either mode was able to handle 36 tracks at edit level 1. 36 is the max track count we can test using our Pro Tools|HD 2 system.

Above tests were done using Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz, OS 10.4.8, Pro Tools 7.1, HD|2 Accel, GT 062 connected via FireWire 800.

So how come this works for Glyph???

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

Thanks Park for that info.

I posted this in the LE forum thinking most likely there is a difference in filesystem interfacing between TDM and LE (think about how it will go out on the bus for instance). I wouldn't be at all surprised if things worked on LE and not TDM.

Digi probably is afraid of getting in trouble making any indication beyond "We don't support it." But they could just say "We have reports that it has worked and hasn't worked for people, so if you choose to enable it, it's at your own risk."

Anyway I decided to disable it for now. But I figure with simultaneous streaming samplers etc. it would be beneficial to have it. I wonder if Pro Tools plays nice with RAID on other drives it itself isn't in charge of accessing. Although I'm not sure if RTAS encapsulates filesystem access for virtual instruments as well...I would guess it doesn't.

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

Perhaps you could try the Round Robin recording option. That is "sudo-RAID" since it does spread the audio over several disks.

RAID works well for video. The only difference I see is the file sizes are much smaller for audio. It may be hard to re-assemble those "little bits" for RAID playback.

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

I'm reviving an older post here because adding to this discussion seems like a better idea than starting a new one...

To assume that people are using RAID arrays specifically for throughput is missing the target a bit, in my opinion. Redundancy of data is an essential to the modern work flow. Backing up after recording is like pulling out as a form of contraception. Use of Mirrored RAID arrays, or ideally RAID 5 (combo of redundancy, speed, and efficient use of drive space) is the NORM in professional environments for every other creative digital field. There's a common phrase used at a place i work: "You either have your data in 2 places or you have it in 0".

If the concern is bogging down the processors, it's a non-issue with dedicated hardware RAID systems. Latency shouldn't be a problem as long as the device has a large enough cache and you're going over SCSI or Fiberchannel to connect to the PT system. There's no issue with taxing the drive that the protools system is on, because we're all recording to a secondary drive right? Is it the session file itself, not the raw AIFF's that is causing the problem?

So what's the dealy, yo?
RAID is supported and encouraged with Logic (just like faster than real-time bounce, but that dead horse has too many bruises already). Too bad logic aint my cup of tea. Why does DIGI yell "RAID?!?!?!?!?" like a bunch of cockroaches on my tv?
I just really hate the idea that an entire session has to live on it's own until i can make a copy manually.

</rant>

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

I personally don't care what their support stance is since I don't need to call their support line since I can get everything working fine myself. I have a 1TB Western Digital MyBook setup which is configured in Raid 0. Guess what? Works just FINE with 32 tracks running with maxed out plug ins....

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

I'm not a MAC or LE user. I run M-powered on Quad-core PC, but I was searching posts about RAID with Pro tools. They cleary say that they don't support RAID of any sorts regardless of the platform.

But the company I bought my PC from says it's perfectly fine to have RAID-0 (though not real RAID in a true sense, but striping- it won't help you keep a back up) and that will provide better throughput.


I have two 250 GB harddrives and they're striped as a single 500 GB audio drive. I don't know about MAC-OS, but WIndows at least won't see that those two drives are physically seperate when RAID-0 is enabled.

So far I don't notice any problem. I tried 40 tracks at once, but no problem. I originally use the configuration to get the highest track counts on Cubase I got, but at least It's not causing a noticable problem. With 32/48 tracks on Pro tools M-powered,too. I don't know it will make a noticable improvement, either, though.

Tash

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

That's because a RAID 0 (striped array) becomes a single volume to the OS.

The first problem with a striped array is if one drive has any kind of problem that breaks the volume all your data on that volume is lost. There is no recovery.

The second problem with a striped array is the increase in seek time due to splitting reads/writes between 2 or more drives. This is detrimental to audio work especially if you have a lot of edits across lots of tracks.

RAID 0 just doesn't make any sense for audio work so I can understand why Digi doesn't support it.

They don't support third-party CPU upgrades either, but mine works just fine thank you.

If you want to use a striped array for audio knock yourself out, but you're really not gaining anything over a JBOD which is a lot less trouble/risk.

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

That's basically what I said.


Yes. You still do need to make a back-up every day with RAID-0. But,a non-RAID harddrive needs a back-up, too.. And that's why I said it's not a RAID in a true sense.

I see the difference using the striped harddrives, though. RAID 1 is slower in either writing or reading(I don't remeber which), but RAID 0 is actually a bit faster than a single drive of the same kind from my experience.

But then I'm talking about my other DAW. Truthfully, it works fine with Pro tools, too, but I don't know if it's worth getting if you don't already have such a setting especially just for 32/48 tracks.

Re: Authoritative on RAID usage?
 

Hi Everyone,

Well I'm not a raid expert, but I have configured raid arrays before (I'm in IT). Someone mentioned JBOD. That's just a bunch of disks (not really raid). JBOD - 'Just a bunch of Disks'.

I could see why Digi would not support software based raid, but hardware based raid (mirrored drives or raid-5) I think would work as the O/S only see a big disk. However, unless you try it, you'll never now and hardware based raid controllers (or external raid arrays) can be costly.

I don't think Raid would give a performance increase (at least not with raid systems you could afford). Read speeds may be faster (depending on how the array is setup), but write performance will likely be slower than JBOD (again assuming you don't have $50K lying around ata minimum).

The only minor advantage would be for recovery from a disk failure. In which case, you can simply use some software to create an image backup of your drive each night.

Cheers