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NAS drive for samples?

Time is getting close where I'll have to build myself a new DAW and i'm pondering the idea of using an Ethernet NAS drive(s) for sample data, backups and project audio. The main DAW itself will just have an SSD for OS and applications.

I'm thinking with a suitable switcher the NAS should be accessible from a 2nd DAW should I decide to keep the old one active for a while longer.

Doable?

Should be very doable. There are a plethora of open source OS'es geared towards NAS like FreeNAS and Openfiler, if you're building it yourself.

But yeah, make your own DAW? tells more nao.
What OS will you be developing it for and what will be some of it's key features?

quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi Should be very doable. There are a plethora of open source OS'es geared towards NAS like FreeNAS and Openfiler, if you're building it yourself. But yeah, make your own DAW? tells more nao. What OS will you be developing it for and what will be some of it's key features?

Nooooo

What I mean is i'll be building just a PC, as in Windows 7/64 and then using a NAS drive for storage instead of internal drives. The idea is that I could share sample and project data between machines, and have something that sits there all self sufficient and secure.

Lol ok, in that case, maybe not. The lower end NAS'es are often equipped with pretty slow hard drives, and for samples that's a big no-no. If you'd be building your own NAS as well, then I'd say go for it, if you're planning on buying one, and you haven't M4B's credit card, then I think a solid internal hard drive would suit you far better.

Why NAS? This is old technology that has almost been totally replaced by SATA. IMO, I would build a server system that uses "hot-swap" SATA drives and hook up a crossover CAT6 cable from it to your computer. If you had a Mac, I would have recommended using a Thunderbolt-based storage system, buuuttttt....

NAS drives for what you're trying to do would be the right way to go.

So called hot swap drives are not smart especially as the bridges always burn out on them, if no the actual drive, Not fun when you have a couple of TB's of samples on them.

The only problem with NAS drives is latency - you can't expect to stream off that in abundance and get away with it. You could preview sounds etc, but the moment you're woking on a local host which is attempting to pull several tracks of samples off a NAS drive, shit will dodgy. You'd have to copy audio files to local directory etc, but I do that on my projects anyway.

NAS can be a bit of a headache though in terms of setting up but it's the only option that lets you share content between two discrete platforms at the same time.....

Unless, you were to get something like a mac mini and use Lion 10.7 server to make it storage center with Raid0 drives. Mmmmmmm, tasty and way faster than a standard NAS drive, not to menttion it would be a sly way of getting you to join the darkside

Seriously, NAS is the way to go, just make sure you do your homework as to which one has the least bottlenecking.

Why not just a storage system over USB 3?

quote:

Originally posted by Anakratis Why not just a storage system over USB 3?

Because USB is a single master to slave relationship and he wants two computers to access them whenever he wants.

It gets pretty tiresome having to plug cables in every time you switch computers, especially when there is a solution that doesn't need it.

Why don't you just set up a shared folder on one computer, then mount it as a network drive?

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Because USB is a single master to slave relationship and he wants two computers to access them whenever he wants. It gets pretty tiresome having to plug cables in every time you switch computers, especially when there is a solution that doesn't need it.

I swear I spotted a shared drive that had two USB3 ports. Nevermind then.

If you have the patience, I would wait for a PC-friendly Thunderbolt PCI Card to connect a Thunderbolt-powered storage system. Apple has allowed Intel to recreate the Thunderbolt system, so PC-friendly Thunderbolt stuff should be coming in shortly.

take note that if you use SSD's you need to do daily backups. They are not as reliable and when they crash. They crash. There is no pre warning. Great but not as reliable. I back my stuff twice a day. I use intel SSDs as well which are supposed to be more reliable but still. Data recovery with SSD 's from what i've been told is non existent.

everyone will say it is more reliable in theory , but it doesn't seem to be working that way with people in audio anyways.

L4C, as far as backups go, what do professionals use for this sort of thing in the audio space?

I work in video games and we use Perforce servers to manage all our code/content. I've always wanted to set-up a P4 server at home for my music production projects as I can see some serious value in having a proper versioning system for tracks I'm working on as opposed to just a bunch of arbitrarily named .alp files.

quote:

Originally posted by Anakratis I swear I spotted a shared drive that had two USB3 ports. Nevermind then. If you have the patience, I would wait for a PC-friendly Thunderbolt PCI Card to connect a Thunderbolt-powered storage system. Apple has allowed Intel to recreate the Thunderbolt system, so PC-friendly Thunderbolt stuff should be coming in shortly.

You can get USB switches, like the kingston ShareCentral, which allows you switch usb routing by pressing a button, but the drive has to mount every time (increasing risk of controller/bridge burnout on the drive) and the content is not mapped as such to both computers simultaneously.

There's a few misconceptions about thunderbolt:

Firstly, and thunderbolt drive, is just a normal 5400 or 7200 drive or SSD with a thunderbolt bridge on it. And , yep, that means the speed is limited to the slowest point, namely that bridge - It's going to be at least a year if not two, before anyone puts out a drive that is even close to 50% of the full potential data speed of Thunderbolt as a protocol. No point waiting right now.

You could mount a folder as a shared drive but that has it's own set of limitations, like the fact that the setup, hardware and platform will greatly affect the speed and the accessibility of that "drive", not to mention that if that computer has a problem at any point, that folder/drive could be compromised.

L4C is right about SSD's - recovery of an SSD failure is in it's infancy, and you'll be lucky to get anything back unless your brother works for the FBI and spends several days piecing together.

Intels are the best of the bunch and failure rate is no worse than any normal HDD now so you should back up in the same way you would with a normal HDD.

Finally every studio I've ever worked at uses tape (data archive) backup. Once you've finished the project, the master session files are copied from the local HD, to a FW drive which is then backed up to at least one tape. Then, and only then, is the local version allowed to be deleted.

Great info here, thanks.

About the SSD drives, I'm only planning on installing OS and applications on there so even if it does fail it's not the end of the world. Saying that I do plan regular backups.

I think I need to investigate the NAS drives a bit further as i've discovered the CPU in them can greatly effect the speed that data is transferred, and I suspect that the cost of a decent unit may be prohibitive. Saying that, I plan on at least 16GB of RAM so I doubt that I'll need to actually stream any audio from the drive at all.

I also don't plan to do any hot swapping either. The idea is that I'll have a 4TB (2x2TB) unit that'll be set up so it backs itself up on a regular basis, and i'll also buy a 1TB USB drive for secondary backup, once the price drops back down to a normal level again!

As for joining the dark side....well. Perhaps a Thunderbolt/MBP setup will work out to be a similar cost so who knows!

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Great info here, thanks. About the SSD drives, I'm only planning on installing OS and applications on there so even if it does fail it's not the end of the world. Saying that I do plan regular backups. I think I need to investigate the NAS drives a bit further as i've discovered the CPU in them can greatly effect the speed that data is transferred, and I suspect that the cost of a decent unit may be prohibitive. Saying that, I plan on at least 16GB of RAM so I doubt that I'll need to actually stream any audio from the drive at all. I also don't plan to do any hot swapping either. The idea is that I'll have a 4TB (2x2TB) unit that'll be set up so it backs itself up on a regular basis, and i'll also buy a 1TB USB drive for secondary backup, once the price drops back down to a normal level again! As for joining the dark side....well. Perhaps a Thunderbolt/MBP setup will work out to be a similar cost so who knows!

I think I've got the soltuion for you!

Get the Lacie 2big network 2. for the 2tb (2 x 1tb) version it's going to be about 300 quid. There's also a 4tb (2 x 2tb)

It can do either raid0 (no backup but full size data usage and very fast data) or raid1 (slightly slower, 50% data usage but completely protected in case one drive fails.
Here the great thing about it though - aside from it being one of the fastest non server based NAS drives (60mb/s - fast enough to work from for medium size projects) is also has a USB connection, meaning that for the primary computer, you have a dedicated full bandwidth connection, and can still use the gigabit ethernet connection for the other computer when needed.

It also has full DNS/IP protocol so if you ever need to access it from someone else studio and they have a good broadband connection, you can just tap in to it.

I don't think there's another solution this cheap that let's you do all this, and the fact you can get 60mb/s over the ethernet connection is basically enough to produce with if you really don't want to copy project samples to the working project folder on the local drive. It's also compatible with all of the major backup programs.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10477

Or just, like build one yourself for fifty bucks.

But yeah, I was actually checking out another one of the Lacie's the other day, but decided I'd rather wait till after Xmas to decide anything.

Got a Synology 2-bay networked storage myself. Sets you back 400E but it's reasonably safe and highly configurable for the simpler tasks. I'm happy.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN I think I've got the soltuion for you! Get the Lacie 2big network 2. for the 2tb (2 x 1tb) version it's going to be about 300 quid. There's also a 4tb (2 x 2tb) It can do either raid0 (no backup but full size data usage and very fast data) or raid1 (slightly slower, 50% data usage but completely protected in case one drive fails. Here the great thing about it though - aside from it being one of the fastest non server based NAS drives (60mb/s - fast enough to work from for medium size projects) is also has a USB connection, meaning that for the primary computer, you have a dedicated full bandwidth connection, and can still use the gigabit ethernet connection for the other computer when needed. It also has full DNS/IP protocol so if you ever need to access it from someone else studio and they have a good broadband connection, you can just tap in to it. I don't think there's another solution this cheap that let's you do all this, and the fact you can get 60mb/s over the ethernet connection is basically enough to produce with if you really don't want to copy project samples to the working project folder on the local drive. It's also compatible with all of the major backup programs. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10477

Apart from the fact that i've heard that some Lacie drives can be a little ropey........BINGO!

I think we may have a winner there

As for sample importing, I generally do import all audio into a working project file, using the Cubase audio pool. I'll also get into the habit of switching off DFD in Kontakt and I might just throw in 24 or 32GB or RAM as it's so cheap, there should be no streaming whatsoever in that case!

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Apart from the fact that i've heard that some Lacie drives can be a little ropey........BINGO! I think we may have a winner there As for sample importing, I generally do import all audio into a working project file, using the Cubase audio pool. I'll also get into the habit of switching off DFD in Kontakt and I might just throw in 24 or 32GB or RAM as it's so cheap, there should be no streaming whatsoever in that case!

Sounds like a plan! But I've never come across a pro studio that didn't use LaCie as the majority of their drives. If anything, they probably have the best rep, and lowest failure rate out there.

We were using 40 odd LaCie drives on rotation for about 3 years, and those poor things took a pounding, yet only two of them failed, and even then, that was just the FW bridges burning out from over abusive hotswapping - the actual drives and data inside were fine so we just popped them in to another enclosure (supplied for free by LaCie) and we're back in business.

Can't comment that specific model, but for crucial data, it's only G-raid or LaCie I buy.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Sounds like a plan! But I've never come across a pro studio that didn't use LaCie as the majority of their drives. If anything, they probably have the best rep, and lowest failure rate out there. We were using 40 odd LaCie drives on rotation for about 3 years, and those poor things took a pounding, yet only two of them failed, and even then, that was just the FW bridges burning out from over abusive hotswapping - the actual drives and data inside were fine so we just popped them in to another enclosure (supplied for free by LaCie) and we're back in business. Can't comment that specific model, but for crucial data, it's only G-raid or LaCie I buy.

Ok fair enough, I may well have been thinking of another brand, i've been looking at a lot of articles on these things lately

The �900 Thunderbolt drive can kiss my ass!

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Ok fair enough, I may well have been thinking of another brand, i've been looking at a lot of articles on these things lately The �900 Thunderbolt drive can kiss my ass!

Fuck me, that's a lot of money for a drive

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Fuck me, that's a lot of money for a drive

I lied, �869!

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H...node=MTY1NDA0Nw

quote:

Originally posted by Sean Walsh L4C, as far as backups go, what do professionals use for this sort of thing in the audio space? I work in video games and we use Perforce servers to manage all our code/content. I've always wanted to set-up a P4 server at home for my music production projects as I can see some serious value in having a proper versioning system for tracks I'm working on as opposed to just a bunch of arbitrarily named .alp files.

well there is a historical component to it. Tape drives were really the only solution for a long time. 50 years or so in shielded storage rooms. IT also depends on the extent of the work and the company doing it. Alot of guys that work as contractors don't really have a bullet proof system, they will back up every couple days, but they don't take into account theft, fire. So what you need is local temp backup. Mid level backup. And long term.

I think as technology improves, tape drives will be replaced with systems with rediculous multi location redundancy. The thing is that people invested alot of money in tape drives so they still use them and they still are very reliable.

my own system involves 8 3TB drives in a layered raid configuration. These drives are stored in a bathroom I don't use connected via lan. I also have 8 other drives as intermediate backups. I tend to back up stuff that changes often twice a day so root drives on 3 computers and the audio drives as well. The samples are all the same on each computer so i just make a back up of that every week. And then everything is backed up to the bathroom drives every week as well.

I had a drive crash once. When it happens, you just get silly paranoid. I lost about 400 of the hottest teen pre teen porn pics around.

DVDs are not a backup solution. They have a life expectancy of about 2-5 years. Cds are a little better. Hard

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney I had a drive crash once. When it happens, you just get silly paranoid. I lost about 400 of the hottest teen pre teen porn pics around.

You know that's how Gary Glitter got convicted of pedophilia?

His drive was corrupted, and he took the Laptop in to PC world to get it fixed. They found a treasure trove of kiddie fiddling greatest hits.

So he ran away to Cambodia, but he got extreme and after a couple of years of child buggery they kicked him out - shit, you know you're a deviant when Cambodia asks you to leave their country.

Gary glitter goes after people that use samples. lol. ironic. I mean , you would think, you raped some kids, i used your samples, we cool ? but no. Yes i know the label is the one but funny still.

Speaking of pedophealia. My girldfriend catsitted for this conductor. World class. Now I never liked him. I just got that pervy vibe from the beginning. No wife, not gay or out and goes to "thailand" but uses excuses like oh they are running an opera there I would like to see.

So one day, I took the keys. Went thru his computer. Copied his drives. And found well lets just say alot of gay shit. But there were a few pictures that were questionable. I was really torn as to what to do. I mean he didn't have anything blatent. Just 4 pictures that really stood out. So i went thru his journal and basically had to find out what kind of guy he was. And in the end, i decided not to call the police. What i did do however was break his lock. Make it look like people were on his computer. Stole his oxys.didn't have to do that but why not. Basically make it look like people where on his computer and hopefully scare him.

Then I made a document and set it as his screen saver. basically giving him the impression that some organized crime group is not liking his extra caricular activities and that "we" will be watching.

So the next few months, he like had a nervous breakdown, started seing a shrink .....

Honestly, I wasn't going to ruin someone's life unless i had like evidenced with him and some little kid which i could not find.

But man it was really hard to go thru all that shit. I mean think of like 50 year olds guy orgies. man. But i needed to know if he was doing stuff that was well , the type of person that should be in prison.

I made like a robbery plan. HAd latex gloves then leather gloves, a plan of attack. Went thru everything. And made sure he knew that I went thru everything. I also stole some out of print scores. lol. I mean i wasn't being paid so i figured it was fair.

The value of the scores ? about 3000$. lol fuck i do funny shit sometimes. The funny thing is that he never called the police. He was just fucking scared that the police were going to arrive early in the morning.

It takes alot of soul searching to know what to do in these kinds of situations. I think i did the right thing.

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