live recording and amount of hd's

[Rockpolice]

Hi,

I've recorded hundreds of 40 to 64 track shows and rehearsals during the last 5 years with a Mac Pro with audio allocated to 2 internal sata drives for audio only with no hickups. Now I have a project where we'll fly a Thunderbolt HD native system and a HDX-system in a Magma tb- expansion box connected to 2 separate macbook pro's to record 64 tracks (2 pcs of about 1 hour runs on an evening for 3 evenings) from monitor- and foh- consoles. So my question is, should I have 2 external (TB/FW) hd's for each of the systems and allocate the audios 50/50 to to each or would 1 hd be enough?

Thanks in advance, Ilkka

[Davoetta]

1st question - is this possible to record on 2 HDDs at a time - or do i misunderstand ur question?

[Kristo Kotkas]

Originally Posted by Davoetta

1st question - is this possible to record on 2 HDDs at a time - or do i misunderstand ur question?

With disk allocation you can assign what tracks go to what HDD, this gives your drives more headroom to manage the data transfer. Some people don't like to live on the edge so they assign 32 tracks to go to drive A and 32 tracks go to drive B.

If I was in Ilkkas shoes I would dest drive the HDD's first for couple of hours to see how they behave, keep the System Usage window open. Also make sure you always have the drives empty when you start, writing at the beginning of the disk seems to be considerably faster plus fragmentation does not help either. Try to keep the vibration at minimum as well. I think you should go USB3 HDD's, my humble tests have shown me they outperform FW800 and eSATA drives that I have been using before.

[Brent Lind]

Just anecdotal, but I've been doing 64 tracks a night at about 2 hrs writing to an internal SSD drive without a hitch all year. Different DAW though and a USB3 interface.

[Kristo Kotkas]

Originally Posted by Brent Lind

Just anecdotal, but I've been doing 64 tracks a night at about 2 hrs writing to an internal SSD drive without a hitch all year. Different DAW though and a USB3 interface.

Sure SSD drives are even way faster!

[Brent Lind]

My record computer is a Mac mini with 2 SSDs, a 120gb for system and and 240gb for record. Even at 64 tracks, I can still so 3 or so shows before dumping to the archive array. Works well while SSDs are still expensive.

[xcx]

Originally Posted by Brent Lind

My record computer is a Mac mini with 2 SSDs, a 120gb for system and and 240gb for record. Even at 64 tracks, I can still so 3 or so shows before dumping to the archive array. Works well while SSDs are still expensive.

hi brent,

how did you manage to get two ssds in the mini working correctly? i cant get it done.. some how the second drive is not recognized properly when booting from the internal ssd, when booting from an external (usb dock) system source it works fine...

[Brent Lind]

Hmm, not sure. I didn't really do anything special. Mine are both internal, like in the server models. Both connected via Sata connection. I formatted the system drive in an external enclosure and cloned the OS from the original HDD before installing it, and the storage drive was simply formatted as "Mac OS Extended Journaled". The system drive is 6Gb/s and the storage drive is 3Gb/s, which are the max speeds of the internal SATA busses.

I don't think there was much else to it, for what its worth I used the "Data Doubler" Kit from Other World Computing (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIYIMM11D2/) which is basically just a bracket and a cable for adding the second drive, but they also have very detailed instruction videos for installation, so you might look into that. I followed their instruction to the letter and have had no problems. I've done the same on my Macbook Pro, swapping the optical drive for a second hard drive.

[xcx]

i use the same type of double data kit by ifixit. cables and drives work but i guess there is something about my late 2012 mini that makes it difficult to have both drives as an SSD.

I'm struggling to get both working, usually i'm a nerd on this - but i'm facing a demon here. i guess you did it right by accident, as osx somehow seems to think about two ssds in a mini as a broken fusion drive and disables the second SATA (upper drive). there is very rare documentation about this but most people have succeeded like you did. clone the internat HDD to a SSD in a usb dock and then put the drives in.

but as far as i am concerned. you have a running system there, don't touch it and do not go to the disk utility in recovery or usb stick installer mode. this seems to mess everything up as disk util in osx is fine once it worked for me but diskutil in recovery mode shuts SATA 2 (upper) down as it sees a broken fusion drive again.

once i have it running (stable) i will post a step by step here in how to get it working. but i am preparing my mind to have on SSD internal (boot), one HDD internal (backup/storage) and one SSD in a USB3 or thunderbolt housing to record on... sucks but will work too.

[Rockpolice]

Originally Posted by xcx

i use the same type of double data kit by ifixit. cables and drives work but i guess there is something about my late 2012 mini that makes it difficult to have both drives as an SSD.

I'm struggling to get both working, usually i'm a nerd on this - but i'm facing a demon here. i guess you did it right by accident, as osx somehow seems to think about two ssds in a mini as a broken fusion drive and disables the second SATA (upper drive). there is very rare documentation about this but most people have succeeded like you did. clone the internat HDD to a SSD in a usb dock and then put the drives in.

but as far as i am concerned. you have a running system there, don't touch it and do not go to the disk utility in recovery or usb stick installer mode. this seems to mess everything up as disk util in osx is fine once it worked for me but diskutil in recovery mode shuts SATA 2 (upper) down as it sees a broken fusion drive again.

once i have it running (stable) i will post a step by step here in how to get it working. but i am preparing my mind to have on SSD internal (boot), one HDD internal (backup/storage) and one SSD in a USB3 or thunderbolt housing to record on... sucks but will work too.

Hey guys,

I found a perfect (it may be a bit overkill though) system for my Samsung 840 Pro. I happen to have a Magma EB3T pci-e chassis, so I bought one of these http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html and installed the drive on that. Sadly they didn't have the double drive cards on stock, but I did a test recording of 128 tracks (with about 90 separate inputs from a madi hd, hd i/o and omni) for 15 minutes (only silence if it matters) without a problem. I actually bought for test also couple of different cheap USB3 enclosures (actually 2 of the other brand) and the pair had different writing speeds (maybe there was something wrong on the other) and the better had half of the writing speed than the Sonnetech card.

Ilkka