Multiple drives and the new Mac Pro

Gone To Lunch · Post by **Gone To Lunch** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:06 am

At the moment I am using a pre-intel G5 PPC Quad and am planning my upgrade to some sort of Mac Pro.

I have a question about multiple drives. in my Quad, I have DP and OS on a System drive (A) DP Projects on a Projects drive (B) and my libraries on library drives 1 2 and 3 which are fitted in a caddy.

So my question is, in the latest tube Mac Pros, which only have two internal drives, are they fast enough such that I do not need to spread my read/write traffic across multiple drives as in the Quad ? And if not, will I need to budget for external drives to do so ?

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:22 am

If you're going to be using spinning drives, the speeds haven't changed much in the past 5 years, so you'll probably need to keep doing what you've been doing. If you use a solid-state drive, the bottleneck will be in the connections, which have advanced quite a lot in the last 5 years or so. You may be able to get by on fewer drives with SSDs.

It really depends on what you do, how you work, and what software you use to do it. If you only use, say, an instance or two of Kontakt, loaded with Garritan instruments, then you may not need much bandwidth. If, however, you're using a full orchestra with VSL's Dimension Strings, then you're going to need all the bandwidth you can muster. For big jobs, consider getting a Thunderbolt-connected drive bay that holds several drives. Seek help finding the best ones, because that's a minefield of poor design. There are some good ones, but I don't know which.

Or you can just use a Firewire 800 or SATA adapter and connect a chain of fast drives to your cylindrical Mac. That should work, too.

Shooshie

hamburski · Post by **hamburski** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:37 am

I'm at the point of updating as well, as my first-gen Mac Pro cannot be upgraded beyond Snow Leopard. I've been using multiple internal drives, for sessions, samples, etc.

Shooshie, is that model of separate drives for separate functions now obsolete? That is, if you had the Thunderbolt connectivity of the new Mac Pro, could you just use one multi-drive, RAID-configured unit for both samples and sessions, or would you still want to have two separate, dedicated drives, one for samples, one for sessions? I'm assuming that either way, you'd still want yet another drive just as a backup/redundancy of your session data.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:15 am

hamburski wrote:I'm at the point of updating as well, as my first-gen Mac Pro cannot be upgraded beyond Snow Leopard. I've been using multiple internal drives, for sessions, samples, etc.

Shooshie, is that model of separate drives for separate functions now obsolete? That is, if you had the Thunderbolt connectivity of the new Mac Pro, could you just use one multi-drive, RAID-configured unit for both samples and sessions, or would you still want to have two separate, dedicated drives, one for samples, one for sessions? I'm assuming that either way, you'd still want yet another drive just as a backup/redundancy of your session data.

The truth is that for most of the things we all do in DP, even a single drive can handle it. I do small projects on a laptop sometimes. Where it becomes a problem is when you're working with large libraries and templates every day. First, if the drive is having to read samples for streaming 80 instruments at once, it can slow things down. Set your buffer to 1000 or more, and you can get by with a single drive, or two.

The problems come in the form of reliability and wear. Hard Drives are mechanical devices with a rocker arm that has to locate and read every single byte of every single sample. Once that arm is in the vicinity of a particular library's samples, it doesn't have to move much to find different notes, but if it's having to read several libraries, plus any other duties required of it (audio, system, file, plugins, other apps), then that arm is working to the extreme, often traversing its entire range hundreds of times per second. Using other drives takes an enormous load off each drive in the chain. Overused drives simply don't last as long as pampered ones. I've seen overused drives die within a year or two. Pampered drives may last over a decade. I've got a couple that are now a decade and a half, still working, but I don't use them in production, just ancient storage.

Solid State drives, however, have no moving parts and don't mind divulging their contents as often as asked. With a fast enough connection, they can eliminate most of the problems associated with even multiple hard drives. Still, you must always have at least one backup, and preferably two on separate drives.

As for your own situation, you'll have to be the judge. I'm just trying to describe the changes in the playing field.

Shooshie

hamburski · Post by **hamburski** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:30 am

That's actually immensely helpful, thank you. I'm kind of in the middle as far as sample library usage, which is making me wonder if one feasible scenario might be upgrading to the 512 SSD with the new Mac and putting the majority of my samples there.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:26 pm

hamburski wrote:That's actually immensely helpful, thank you. I'm kind of in the middle as far as sample library usage, which is making me wonder if one feasible scenario might be upgrading to the 512 SSD with the new Mac and putting the majority of my samples there.

I'd suggest you get the 1TB internal PCIe storage if going MP 6,1 and keep EVERYTHING there. It should be plenty fast to service all your needs.

Be sure to backup to external USB3 spinners (hard drives), preferably in at least duplicate. I copy each project to two (internal on my 4,1 Mac Pro) spinners when I close for the day and have another pair of Time Machine drives I rotate on and off site periodically for insurance against disaster.

I've heard it said you don't really own your data unless it resides in at least three places, and have taken this to heart.

hamburski · Post by **hamburski** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:54 pm

HC, I'll take a look at that option. I do like the idea of everything streaming as fast as possible from within the machine, just hung up on the older model of dedicated drives for each function and trying to sort out where to go now.

As to backup, I'm with ya - I keep a 3TB external drive at the studio and carry a second one back and forth each day. Both get the latest work backed up on them before I shut everything down for the day.

jloeb · Post by **jloeb** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 1:41 pm

+1 on everything above, and would add anecdotally that on a single internal SSD (1TB Samsung on an eSATA bus in a 2012-spec Mac Pro) I can play autodivisi chords in LASS- as in, the whole LASS loaded at once, triggering hundreds of notes per chord - and nothing at all appears in Kontakt's Drive use indicator. I can just barely imagine what sort of orchestral template it would take to put a strain on this drive.

The bandwidth is SSD-Land is huge - not at all comparable to what we're used to from the platter drive world. So the simple answer to 'can we exist with a single good SSD for samples' is: absolutely.

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 1:44 pm

And, I've seen TB to eSata adapters you can use to connect external eSata equipped enclosures and docks to your new MP.

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:40 pm

If you go with a new MP, (which BTW, have only 1 blade for an internal drive, not two), you are going to want to look @ TB RAID enclosures. I went with a Pegasus R2. I put in 4 fast spinning drives, but it can also take SSDs - I may do that for an upgrade down the track by getting another matching enclosure.

I found it much cheaper to buy the R2 from an OWC reseller (best option here in Oz), then I got my platters from one of the many discount computer stores that are around.

I have followed the practice of using my system drive for apps and my TB enclosure for all my other data, and that has worked well for me. I have the 512Gb internal SSD, and given how fast that has filled up, I would think that is about as low a capacity internal drive that makes sense.

The speed of the R2 (set up in a RAID array) is plenty snappy for all my libraries and projects.

hamburski · Post by **hamburski** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:48 pm

Ah yes, I've been looking at that Pegasus as well. Internet chatter suggested that maybe RAID-style configurations would put a damper on speed, even with TB connectivity. I'm glad to hear that has not been your experience. I do like the idea of having plenty of room to spare, which is my main concern with even a 1TB internal drive. Though I suppose you could still add external to that as needed.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:08 pm

All TB-PCIe racks and external housings support RAID if they hold more than one drive. There are many flavors of RAID and different devices support different types. Do your homework.

A few multi-drive TB externals also support JBOD (just a bunch of drives). Configured JBOD, each drive will show up on your desktop individually. You can generally configure a few as a RAID assembly and others as JBOD if you have a rack that supports enough drives.

TRIM allows SSDs to manage their disk space after files have been deleted. It works over Thunderbolt on PCIe extension racks. It's not an issue with spinners (mechanical hard drives). It does not work over USB 3 (but should via TB-eSATA). Current SandBridge (many brands), Crucial and Sanyo SSDs support Trim. While APPLE only supports it with Apple SSDs, an easy Terminal hack or some inexpensive utilities allow it to support others.

eSATA, USB 3 and Thunderbolt (in that order) are all faster than the fastest spinner. Currently, RAID is the only way to get the 10G speed of Thunderbolt or 20FG speed of TB2.

Does RAID put a damper on speed? Yes it can–depends on the flavor–or it can be a lot faster. This is true for spinners or SSDs.

Does it matter? For most, no - at least not with audio.

If ordering an nMP, I'd get the largest internal available, currently 1T. 1T SSDs are now available under $500. I favor TB-PCIe racks that support JBOD so that you have the most flexibility. You could use a couple 3T hard drives to make a 6G Time Machine with RAID or two 3G units via JBOD while using an SSD or two for your libraries.

Time Machine works just fine over ethernet, too, although slower.

Does it matter? No.

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 7:53 pm

mikehalloran wrote: Does RAID put a damper on speed? Yes it can–depends on the flavor–or it can be a lot faster. This is true for spinners or SSDs.

I defer to your greater knowledge, but my understanding is that a RAID array (depending on flavor) can be faster, both on write and retrieve, because the disk I/O is spread across a bunch of platters, all busily reading/writing simultaneously.

jloeb · Post by **jloeb** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:23 pm

This is a positively eldritch topic - search the site for discussions.

The short answer is that a raid 0 array is great for video (huge throughput from a small number of files), while useless to slightly disadvantageous for DAW/VI work (high throughput from a huge number of files). Seek time is the bottleneck and is not improved by splitting an already huge number of files into even more smaller files - even taking into account the multiple drives doing the work.

And in any case, with SSDs at least, you'd be solving a problem that no longer exists at the cost of losing the whole volume if one physical disk fails. Unless you plan to do full def video work on the same array, JBOD is best.

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:11 pm

jloeb wrote:Unless you plan to do full def video work on the same array, JBOD is best.

I do, and I guess that is what has led me to my Pegasus R2 enclosure.

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