Hard Drive RPMs... - TranceAddict Forums

TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Production Studio
-- Hard Drive RPMs...

Posted by Zombie0729 on Jul-10-2009 19:18:

Hard Drive RPMs...

has anyone upgraded from a 7200 RPM drive to 10000 and seen a world of difference? the price points on these drives are staggering... a 7200 rpm 1TB drive is $80 where as a 250gig 10000 RPM drive is $180.

my computer is constantly hitting disk overload on my projects now and i need to be able to work with heavy audio filled projects.

Posted by wood0292 on Jul-10-2009 19:48:

I have both (two old 10000RPM 75GB raptors and one 500GB 7200 RPM WD which is my new primary HD) and I don't really notice any performance difference, but I haven't really run any benchmarks and I don't think any difference would be easy enough to tell without them. My 7200 RPM drive is much quieter though. I would go with a 7200RPM drive, as I really don't think there is a big enough performance gain to justify the cost and lack of space. I usually have all my samples loaded in RAM anyway.

Posted by floyd741 on Jul-10-2009 20:08:

Just buy 7200 RPM, it really doesn't make sense to spend so much when the difference is not all that important. If you're looking to buy a 1TB drive, I recommend THIS. I bought one a little while ago and have yet to be disappointed. It's nice and quiet for it's size, it's no louder than my WD 250GB drive.

Posted by Cryogen on Jul-10-2009 20:34:

I used to run a 36GB WD Raptor and can't say I noticed much difference. Then again, I wasn't producing music on it so you might notice a difference.

SCSI goes up to 15k if you want really fast drives

Posted by DigiNut on Jul-10-2009 20:39:

On your system (boot) drive, it makes a pretty big difference with respect to boot times. But if you're going to shell out extra cash, probably better to get an SSD instead.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on Jul-10-2009 21:01:

I went from RAID5 to RAID0 on some 7200RPM drives.

RAID0 fliiiiieeeees.... dangerous though.

I dont keep anything on that computer besides games though.

Posted by Zak McKracken on Jul-10-2009 23:44:

whats raid5?? only heard about raid0,1,01 and 10 and the last two are infact the same and requeries 4 disks? (doubling size and speed with two disks, mirrors the two with another two with double speed and size?)

Posted by DJ RANN on Jul-11-2009 00:55:

I was speaking to a mac tech (third party), and at least for mac, the faster RPM drives aren't worth the performance increase. Other things become more important when you're getting bottlenecking. I know from first hand experience that PTHD rigs get no amazing boost from faster native drives.

Posted by echosystm on Jul-11-2009 01:09:

You won't notice much different for producing. However, your system will boot up a fair bit faster. Go to storagereviews.com and look at the benchmarks, then decide if it is worth it. Velociraptors are pretty quick, but there are some 7200rpm drives that come relatively close.

I wouldn't get an SSD yet. Among other things, XP/Vista don't support the TRIM command and you need to run a trimming tool manually. Too much hassle, IMO. I would wait until SLC drives become affordable and Windows 7 is RTM.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on Jul-11-2009 01:12:

quote:
Originally posted by palm
whats raid5?? only heard about raid0,1,01 and 10 and the last two are infact the same and requeries 4 disks? (doubling size and speed with two disks, mirrors the two with another two with double speed and size?)

raid 5 a stripped parity setup requiring 3+ disks.

The size is (x-1)*s where x is the number of disks and s is the individual size.

One disk is used for parity.

You can lose any disk in the array and it will still function.

Posted by kitphillips on Jul-11-2009 08:56:

I'd say run RAID rather than getting the pricier disks... You'll hit bottlenecks elsewhere though. How many audio tracks are we talking about running here?

Posted by Icone on Jul-17-2009 18:03:

Perhaps wait until the prices on SSDs become 'acceptable'.

Posted by wrzonance on Jul-17-2009 18:23:

Having a nice fast hard drive is really great.

We tracked 16 channels of 96kHz 24bit on one of our 10,000RPM Raptors. No hiccups.

While not entirely necessary, having drives with fast RPM is really great for multi-track recording, and for fast project load times.

My next build will have (2) 150GB Raptors in RAID-0, and (4) 1TB drives in RAID-5.

EDIT:

Also let's just compare approximately sized 10,000RPM vs SSD... just look at the price difference. Stick with spindle HDs for a while:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233087 330 bucks

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296 180 bucks

Posted by cl0ckw3rk on Jul-17-2009 20:47:

Hi, one of the things I do at my job is testing the 10kRPM WD Raptors versus 7200RPM drives on various platforms with various processors. I can tell you that though 10k is faster, you are paying a huge premium for not that much better performance (I'd disclose numbers, but that would get me fired ) If you're concerned with performance, wait for solid-state drives to really kick in to gear.

Posted by DJ RANN on Jul-18-2009 00:24:

I don't get the fascination with raid and it's kind of redundant in a studio environment. Raid will only help with data safeguarding not really performance (in the traditional speed sense) it just means that the data has an extra level of protection. In any studio I've even been to the drives are immediately backed up following a session and most back up to another drive, as well as tape.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on Jul-18-2009 00:36:

quote:
Originally posted by DJ RANN
I don't get the fascination with raid and it's kind of redundant in a studio environment. Raid will only help with data safeguarding not really performance (in the traditional speed sense) it just means that the data has an extra level of protection. In any studio I've even been to the drives are immediately backed up following a session and most back up to another drive, as well as tape.

Yea, remember people RAID IS NOT BACKUP

Its for up time and to make sure there is no immediate and total failure of data.

Posted by MERiDiAN5i2 on Jul-29-2009 04:43:

If you are having disk bandwidth issues in projects, adding more disks will help.

You then split your project across the drives; some tracks on drive 1, others on drive 2, etc.

Yes, RAID0 or RAID0+1 is likely to increase disk bandwidth, possibly enough to satisfy your needs, but adds complication... and in the case of RAID0, a level of disaster danger.

Simply adding more disks and splitting your tracks across the disks is fairly foolproof and easy enough to do in most DAW applications.

Some DAW applications also allow you to configure a seperate "scratch" drive; the drive the application uses to store temporary data. This disk will get hit during bounce or audio processing/modification operations, depending on your work style and project goal. Remember that mixing read and write operations, especially to different files (IE: writing to a temporary file while reading some other file) drastically reduces the throughput of your disk. This is also important to remember when you are configuring your project; try to keep tracks that will be written to often on different disks, while keeping "read only" material on other disks. This is, of course, very much dependent on your work style and project goal. If it all possible, configure your software to use a completely separate "scratch" disk. If you are doing things that pound a scratch disk on a regular basis, you might consider using either a software or hardware ramdisk. In some situations, this can make a significant difference, although this seems to be more prominent on video editing workloads than with audio production/processing.

... Just a few thoughts.