26 Mar
2003
26 Mar
'03
6:04 p.m.
Bryan,
Actually, it's an interesting issue. I've looked just a little bit at
this. I think it depends a lot on how you do it. RAID *can* improve raw
throughput, but it *almost* *always* has longer latency, or at least the
one's that I've set up. It has seemed that in audio work latency makes at
least as big a difference as throughput, maybe more, and RAID didn't work
well for me.
Keep in mind that a 24-bit, 44.1KHz signal is only using a bit over
120KB/S, and my current EIDE hard drive under Linux is providing nearly
45MB/S, implying the ability to supply more than 200 stereo channels.
(Assuming no seek issues, etc., which will happen.)
However, I agree that if you have a good RAID controller that can do
speculative look-ahead operations and has lots of caching on board the
controller, it seems like it should help.
Personally, I get 32 channels today from a single 1394 hard drive which
suits my purposes very well. I haven't had the need to push further, but do
this it would be interesting to try.
Cheers,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: linux-audio-user-admin(a)music.columbia.edu
[mailto:linux-audio-user-admin@music.columbia.edu]On Behalf Of Bryan
Koschmann - GKT
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 1:19 PM
To: Linux Audio Users
Subject: [linux-audio-user] Raid setup (kinda OT)
Hello,
While I know this is specfically an audio group, I'm thinking this is
still related, but I apologize if it is too far off topic.
I was wondering if anyone here has setup an IDE raid, either via hardware
or software. I ask because I know it usually would speed up disk access
which is good for realtime audio work (I had to work on a scsi system with
a layla for a customer of mine). I was looking at doing a striped raid
with 2 80 gigs (or maybe 2 120s).
I tried to setup a striping (then later a mirror) on my other machine
running slack 8.0 but had absolutely no luck whatsoever. Neither the
hardware on my motherboard (HPT370 on abit VP6) or just a simple software
raid worked. I will probably be using the same board for audio recording
unless someone has a better suggestion (looking at asus).
So, if anyone can give me any recommendations or hints/tips I would be
quite happy. :)
Thanks in advance,
Bryan