Supported Recording Volume Specs

[thekrynn]

I've looked through the boards, asked all my professional colleagues and done quit a bit of googling and never found a clear cut answer to this for over a year and it's driven me nuts. Simply put:

What are the basic specs of what qualifies as a recording volume?

I run 2 studios. One runs a PT HD1 on a dual 2.5 G5 rig running off a xserve raid (4 drive raid 5, 750GB Volume) and is the best mixing volume I have... 40 tracks, and doesn't bat an eye. Drive usage bar is at like 5%. The other I have is PT LE 003R running on a macpro off an internal SATA drive. At around 30 or so tracks, it starts to choke when doing random scrubbing and the drive usage is typically always over 75% when i have more than 24 tracks. I'd love to run on a better volume, but of course 90% of the time, nothing works... here's my experience in the matter:

Any OS X software raid: won't show up as record enabled volume
Hardware raids (external firewire, SAS or fibre) all show up, however, mixed results. Nearly all my RAIDs are 2TB or larger, so here's what I've noticed:

Make a volume on any of my RAIDs, larger than 2TB. Shows up as record enabled. Go to play back anything off it and immediately get a DAE error. After googling, found some info from Glyph saying that 2TB+ volumes will stop throwing DAE errors if erased as intel guid partition format. Tried that, could play back but just get white noise on any tracks I play back.

All digi has to say on the matter is:
- Hardware RAIDs arent supported (BS since it works fine off my xserve RAID)
- Partition anything over 2TB to less than 2TB (kinda half assed, since I do use my RAIDs for video as well, and have no interest in partitioning my video volumes)

Any thoughts?
Thanks!

[BScout]

Originally Posted by thekrynn

The other I have is PT LE 003R running on a macpro off an internal SATA drive. At around 30 or so tracks, it starts to choke when doing random scrubbing and the drive usage is typically always over 75% when i have more than 24 tracks.

I assume the internal SATA drive is not the same as your System Drive?! If it's a separate drive, something is seriously wrong with your system. I can do 120+ mono tracks at 48k 24bit easily off of one drive. Standard procedure is to round robin to 3 drives (installed internally - 4th spot being the system drive) and there's no way PT can max the system on playback or record with Complete Toolkit's limits.

Heck, I can get 90+ on eSATA off of one drive. You might need to do a reinstall of the whole system.

[ultrasonic]

Any disk over 2TB is going to cause a problem, even if you partition it into volumes that are less than 2TB.

You'll find better performance if you slice off a couple 250GB LUNs on your Xserve to be used as PT volumes. Leave the remaining storage as a large chunk for video. But, Xserve RAID hardware has never been very good for Pro Tools. The current Promise stuff is better, but the older versions have always been pretty lame. They work better for video, but the optimization just isn't very kind to audio.

As a contrast, with other Fibre Channel RAID enclosures I can usually get full track count on a 4 disk RAID5, when properly configured.

Regarding your LE system on the internal SATA--
What are your DAE Playback Buffer Level settings?
Is the SATA drive separate from your system drive?
What size is it and how much free space is on it?

[thekrynn]

Thanks for the replies guys.

The HD system with the xServe RAID works beautifully. I'd love a newer faster raid, but don't have the $$$, so it'll have to do, but I won't complain. It's even a old dual g5 tower too, so shows that it can go a long way.

For the LE system here in the other studio, since its a small space and I don't have the option to run fibre to a different room, the storage has to be in the same room so a decked out RAID obviously is out of the question due to noise. But, with that said, I'm open to any suggestions... here's my current setup to answer you guys in more detail:

Machine: Mac Pro Octa 2.26, 16 GB Ram
Internal Bays 1-3: 3x WD Caviar Blue, 640GB SATA 16MB 7200RPM - Raid0 as OS (we use the machine for a lot of other uses that need a super fast OS volume)
Internal Bay 4: WD Caviar Blue, 640GB SATA 16MB 7200RPM as PT Drive
3 External storage, but all over 2TB

Have tried all the different H/W Buffer Sizes and DAE playback. Larger DAE seems to help but the problem always come back fairly quickly. The drive is 95% free, recently wiped.

The error that always comes up is:
DAE can't get audio from the drive(s) fast enough.
Your drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load (-9073)

[Craig F]

Black over Blue or better yet VelociRaptors
for a fast OS look at SSDs

I had that error on a Seagate, swapped it for a Black and have never looked back

[thekrynn]

Wonderful responses guys.
Many thanks!

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by ultrasonic

As a contrast, with other Fibre Channel RAID enclosures I can usually get full track count on a 4 disk RAID5, when properly configured.

Here, here! We use four Studio Network Solutions X4s (4 drives, RAID 10) here at the studio through Gigabit ethernet (using Cat6 cable). I get full track counts at 96KHz/24bit without any hiccups or sluggishness. And we have 3 PTHD systems and 6 LE Systems (MBox2PRO) connected to the switch. iSCSI is pretty cool!!!

[ultrasonic]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

Here, here! We use four Studio Network Solutions X4s
...
iSCSI is pretty cool!!!

Hi Derek! Glad it's working for you.

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by ultrasonic

Hi Derek! Glad it's working for you.

Why, is it not working for you?

[ultrasonic]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

Why, is it not working for you?

Ha! It's all working great for me!


(This is Steve from SNS.)