Thunderbolt Drives, disable RAID?

[RTASW]

Hi folks,

I'm running a HD Native system with the following stuff

Pro Tools HD Native Thunderbolt
Lacie Little Big Disc External 1 TB RAID Storage
HD IO 8X8X8
Pro Tools HD 10.3.0
Lacie Little Big Disc External 1 TB RAID Storage
Apple Mac Mini
Processor 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
Software OS X 10.8.2 (12C2034
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 768 MB
Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR

Theres not much info out there about recording to Thunderbolt drives but I am currently and wondered about optimising my settings.

Most info states you should disable RAID but when I go intoDisc Utility there isn't an option to do this.

Also should the drive be journaled or not? I have 3 options in the from down:

Mac OSX Extended (Journaled)
Mac OSX Extended (Case sensitive,Journaled)
MS DOT FAT

Also there are 3 options in RAID type, which should it be?

Mirrored RAID set
Striped RAID set
Concatenated Disk Set

Lastly in Options there is a menu to change the RAID Block Size, currently set to 32K but can be increased up to 256K, again which is best?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, i keep my relationship with IT on a need to know basis . . .well I try LOL.

[musicman691]

I just went through this so I may be able to offer some help. I have the Lacie 2big Thunderbolt 4 terabyte drive (2 2 terabyte drives in one case). As far as RAID it depends on what you need it to do. Mirrored writes the same data to both drives (security), striped writes alternately to one drive and then the other (speed) and concatenated (sometimes called JBOD for just a bunch of drives) makes the two drives seem like one big drive which in your case would be 2 terabytes.

If you want to just drop the RAID and address the two drives separately as 2 1 terabyte drives then you just format the drive as it stands now; LaCie ships them formatted for RAID 0. I wanted to address my drives separately so I formatted the RAID 0 as it came from LaCie and both drives showed up separately to OSX. Then just to be on the safe side I then formatted each drive separately using one of the secure format options. That way it would blow out anything left on the drives that shouldn't be there and it also would mark any bad sectors so OSX wouldn't try and write over them - all drives will have bad sectors.

As far as formatting use the default Mac OSX extended journaled.

The nice thing with Apple's software RAID setup is you can set it up however you want (within reason) without needing the drive manufacturer's software like Glyph makes you use.

One thing I'm curious about is why did you get this particular drive? The drives inside are only 5400 RPM and NOT recommended for recording. You really should have 7200 RPM drives.

[RTASW]

Cool thanks for the info, I'll give it a go.

The drives BTW are 7200 rpm, they stopped making them in 7200 a while ago . . . and then stopped making them on 5400rpm too.

I have 2 little big discs, one to record to and the other to pull up samples for superior drummer and sample tank.

I took a look and noticed that the record drive was set to mirrored so I've changed them both to striped and will test again later.

Thanks again.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by RTASW

Cool thanks for the info, I'll give it a go.

The drives BTW are 7200 rpm, they stopped making them in 7200 a while ago . . . and then stopped making them on 5400rpm too.

I have 2 little big discs, one to record to and the other to pull up samples for superior drummer and sample tank.

I took a look and noticed that the record drive was set to mirrored so I've changed them both to striped and will test again later.

Thanks again.

I got the rpm info right from Lacie's site - that's what the current drives for your model are spec'ed at. 5400 for the 2 terabyte drives and ssd's for the lower caacity drives.

I dropped the RAID on mine because I wanted to have the two drives as separate running off my Imac's second Thunderbolt port. One drive for samples and one drive for PT to record to. Wicked fast on both accounts. Right now I'm running speed tests using real world PT sessions with the LaCie Thunderbolt setup versus what is in my sig file with the 2 separate FW800 drives on separate data paths - one from the FW800 port and the other Glyph via a Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter. My iMac has two Thunderbolt ports and those are separate from each other stream wise. The way I have the system setup I can switch between the two setups completely or mix and match a Thunderbolt drive and a Firewire 800 drive. Seems like the fastest right now is the all Thunderbolt setup with the Lacie drive. When I get it finally evaluated one system will be my every day usage and the other will be the backup.

[JFreak]

Guys,

The real problem with high-capacity external drives is that we have zero control over how it's made up. Whether there is RAID or not, whether there are slow or fast drives, whether they spin or not, we do not really know. And that is why IMHO those should be used for storage and backup purposes but not for "real work".

Think about this for a minute. You have three goals; high performance, large capacity, and low price. Anyone can sell you one. You never get all three in one box. The way you should look at it is try to get two goals and be happy about a great deal.

High capacity and low price sadly means low performance. Good for storage, bad for audio work.

The way I've done this for +10 years is that I have one not-so-large drive for audio work and I don't care what it costs. Then I have several low-cost relatively large storage drives and I don't care how they perform. That is how I have got my storage optimized for all three goals. But not in one box, mind you...

[RTASW]

Thanks for the thoughts guys.

musicman691, you might have to walk me through this!

I've only recorded one session to the Thunderbolt Drive So . . .Can I back this up onto my Mac's HD, reformat the Thunderbolt Drive/s (I assume I can drop Raid as part of this process?) and then copy the session back to the Thunderbolt Drives?

Many Thanks.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by RTASW

Thanks for the thoughts guys.

musicman691, you might have to walk me through this!

I've only recorded one session to the Thunderbolt Drive So . . .Can I back this up onto my Mac's HD, reformat the Thunderbolt Drive/s (I assume I can drop Raid as part of this process?) and then copy the session back to the Thunderbolt Drives?

Many Thanks.

Exactly as you outlined. What I would do as a safety is to run the session from your Mac's drive (disconnect the external drive after you copy the session to the internal drive) to make sure you have everything you need and then do the reformat.

As to what jfreak said he's only partly right. If you do your research on what's in the external drive you DO have some control over what you get. You may not be able to control per se what's in the drive but you sure as heck can control what you buy and make sure you're getting what you need and want. I did a TON of research into drives before I bought what I did. You CAN get a combo of fast, inexpensive and large capacity if you do the proper checks first. A lot depends on what you exactly call fast, inexpensive and large capacity. It's relative to a certain extent. Price is the last thing I look at. Size and speed are my determining factors.

All the above being said I am something of a computer nerd/tech geek (EE who used to work in aerospace) so tech stuff comes easy for me. Glad to help anytime I can and if you want to take this off forum don't hesitate to email or pm me.

[RTASW]

Hi, thanks for that.

Okay, so I've reformatted each drive, transferred everything back and it's working fine.

Weird thing is though the drive I'm using to record to is showing as one volume (of just under 1 Tb) and the second drive is showing (as I would've expected for both as 2 volumes of half a Tb each.

How did that happen? Have I deleted a partition in the record drive or something?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by RTASW

Hi, thanks for that.

Okay, so I've reformatted each drive, transferred everything back and it's working fine.

Weird thing is though the drive I'm using to record to is showing as one volume (of just under 1 Tb) and the second drive is showing (as I would've expected for both as 2 volumes of half a Tb each.

How did that happen? Have I deleted a partition in the record drive or something?

These drives are the two drives in the LaCie enclosure right? If you deleted the RAID and reformatted you should have or would have 2 drives with 1 terabyte capacity each. Unless you partitioned one of those 1 terabyte drives and there's no need to do that these days.

[RTASW]

2 LaCie enclosures, 1 used for recording and the other for samples.

So given that each enclosure has 2 disks I was expecting to see 4 volumes in total?

I DO see 2 volumes for the LaCie enclosure which I'm using for samples but only 1 volume for the 2nd LaCie enclosure which I am recording to.

It's working fine, are you saying that I should only see 1 volume for each enclosure (ie I must've inadvertently partitioned the enclosure I'm using for samples hence it's showing 2 volumes of 50% memory rather than 1 of a 100% ??