Mirroring tracks to multiple hard drives

[btdigital]

Hey everybody!
Right now I split 32 inputs across 4 hard drives, 8 tracks per drive (250GB Glyph GT's)
My Question: is there any way to mirror all 32 inputs to a single drive (a single Glyph can handle up to 50 rec/pb), while still going to my other 4 drives.

The only thing I can think of doing, is creating another 32 tracks with the inputs mirrored from the first 32 tracks, and via the disk allocation dialog box send the first 32 to where they normally go (8 tracks per drive), then take tracks 33-64, and assign them to the single drive. I'm afraid of choking the system and the FW buss. Any thoughts?

Thank ya'll


867G4, X.3
D24+MIX Farm (hybrid)
2xADAT24

[Bentley Ferrari]

If this is legal, I guess I would look at an internal, non-system drive for tracks 33-64. (I didn't know you could mirror tracks in Pro Tools like this. Sounds kind of RAID-like, unless RAID is kosher now.)

If you don't have an available drive for doing the above, then you could always go 12, 12, 12 and 36 instead of 8, 8, 8 , 8 and nothing.

Another idea would be to look at one or two of the external SATA drive racks that are popping up now. They hook up to your MAC just like an internal SATA drive does--same cabling, just a different location. They usually involve a PCI card. No Firewire overload issues. I believe Glyph has equipment of this type. I think some individuals are using external SATA drives from FirmTek successfully as well. Search the DUC, but I think I've seen a reference or two.

[btdigital]

I don't know why it would be illegal. I don't think PT supports RAID, does it now?
All I'm really doing is multing a single input to two seperate tracks, 32 times. I want to do this so at the end of a live gig, I can hand the client his drive (which has to be an external FW) with all 32 tracks, and still have the session on my 3 or 4 GTkeys to take home and back the session up to AIT. This would save me from having to leave the system on and running to transfer the session from my drives to the client drive at the end of the performance. 35-40 Gigs can take well over an hour to transfer via FW400, and clients are usually ansy to get their tracks and go home. I just want to speed up the process.

The good news is that in the system usage window, the PCI buss, and CPU gauges are hardley even at 1/4 usage on a 32 track session, but I guess that doesn't tell me anything about the FW buss......

The SATA, if it involves a PCI card, can't be done either only because all my slots are filled (d24, MIX farm, 2xFarm). I guess I could pull a Farm. But how well does the SATA PCI cards behave with hybrid MIX systems. Everything is rock solid right now and I'm afraid to try new or different PCI cards. These are live gigs, and I can't afford to have the system crash.

[tech_head]

Why not just try it?????

[btdigital]

I'm gonna do just that

[trakbytes]

...I want to do this so at the end of a live gig, I can hand the client his drive (which has to be an external FW) with all 32 tracks, and still have the session on my 3 or 4 GTkeys to take home and back the session up to AIT...

Make sure you get paid up front!

Bob

[btdigital]

Always do bro! Deposits are a requirement. People tend to follow through when they have already put up half the cash.