Drive solutions for G5 Quad PPC

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Billyrock
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Drive solutions for G5 Quad PPC

Post by Billyrock »

i have two internal drives rpm 7200. audio and DP 5.1 files on a 3 partition 500 gig and apps (including DP5.1) on upper/boot drive.
my current profect contains aprox 50 tracks 24/48 all audio on 1 partion of lower drive. my DP file crashes sometimes - i'm wondering if track count (assuming all else good) is sweating the drive. soliciting solutions for drive bays, raid cards etc.
appreciate any advice.
thanks UNICORNATION
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Post by jlaudon »

I just bought a Weibetech PCIe card with G5JamExpress (for about $170 total) which seems to work great with the Quad G5, a UAD-1e card installed, the MOTUmkII, MTP/AV MIDI interface. It gives me 2 more internal drives which I have put my samples on. For audio, RAID doesn't seem to be that crucial, esp with the SATA drives, and esp. with the 10000rpm ones.

One note - the SATA card (as well as my MTP/AV) clashes with the M-audio Projectmix (it's unusable for me until the driver is updated, as I need at least 3 hard drives more than the Promix).

Cheers
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Post by Frodo »

Anyone have any insights on the G-Tech eSATAs on a PCI host?

More expensive than necessary?

Reliability?

To raid or not to raid?

My issue is that I've got a G5 2.5 Dual. Slots 2-3 share a bus. I've got a UAD-1 card in slot 4, but a PCI host would have to share a bus since I've also got a PCI-424 card in slot 2.

Such trade offs here.. not sure which way to go.
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Post by giles117 »

My G5 Dual was upped to that kind of situation, But after a couole months the drives stopped mounting. I assume the PSU couldnt handle the load....

Otherwise, when it worked it was pure D Heaven. So I moved the drives to my magma chassis, used 39" esata cables and a sIIg sata card and life was good.


Frodo wrote:Anyone have any insights on the G-Tech eSATAs on a PCI host?

More expensive than necessary?

Reliability?

To raid or not to raid?

My issue is that I've got a G5 2.5 Dual. Slots 2-3 share a bus. I've got a UAD-1 card in slot 4, but a PCI host would have to share a bus since I've also got a PCI-424 card in slot 2.

Such trade offs here.. not sure which way to go.
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Post by Frodo »

Magma, eh?

Saw this:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86370

Granted, PB performance for DAW work is less crucial, but a chassis for $2k?

Tell me more about your setup. A lot more...

The G-Techs wouldn't mount? What were you running in the way of data? Audio? VI's? How much of each or of either? Inquiring Hobbits want to know.

Did you use individual drives or a Raid config?

For the price, is it not better to invest in a MacPro and go iSATA? Would that be $4k+ spent more wisely than $2k+ on a fossilizing PPC?
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Post by giles117 »

Detail

My G5 system that still shows in my signature... as of this posting date...

The hard drives (SATA) were PHYSICALLY located in my magma and that is where I had success.

Inside my G5 using the G5 Drive solution, temp didnt change much (you should search I posted a lot of detail on this.)

Procs went up 2 degrees from normal.

Anyway, the PSU couldnt handle the extra drain of the hard drives so after 30 days they would randomly dismount.

It drove me nuts, so I moved the 3 additional drives from the g5 into the magma chassi. the SATA card I was using stayed inside the g5 and I routed 39" SATA cables from the SATA card to the Hard Drives in the magma Chassis for operation. Thus I had all 5 drives idling away....

250 GB Main Hard Drive. Inside g5
250 GB Audio Playback Drive Inside g5
250 GB Sample Drive 1 Inside Magma running off SATA card INSIDE G5
250 GB Sample Drive 2 Inside Magma running off SATA card INSIDE G5
250 GB Sample Drive 3 Inside Magma running off SATA card INSIDE G5


That was my setup.

With this MacPro coming, I am going to up my sample drives to a pair of 500GB puppies. Use my existing Audio Drive and replace the main drive with one of my 250GB SATA drives
(I customized my MacPro Order with the 160GB main Drive)

Hope that is detailed enuff


I did run a RAID 0 config at one time, but did an OSX Update and lost my RAID and all the data. Had to downgrade my OS so I could see my raid and pull the data off. If I do it again, I will Definitely do a Hardware RAID instead of a software RAID. One good thing about the raid. I had data throughput of about 100MB per second. Perfect for EXTREMELY LARGE projects.... also the Perf meter driopped about 25% when streaming data from the RAID vs a single drive...

One interesting bite is an Express/34 Magma card to work with my existing magma chassis.
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Post by Frodo »

Oh, that's plenty detailed enough. I really need to do some rethinking for streaming VIs, and it seems that the solutions ain't gonna be cheap.

Thanks, G.
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Post by giles117 »

The VI's is why I split my samples between 3 drives....

a RAID situation should work well for you. Especially if all you have on the drives are your samples.No big deal if they go down cuz you have back ups ;)
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Post by Frodo »

Just one of my VIs is over 550GB. I'd love to split that out onto three different drives alone.

Raid, you say? I was thinking that streaming so much data at once would work better if the drives were in parallel on independent cables-- but then again, I'm also being told that I really need to get a second computer and start a dedicated VI farm.

Hmm...

Confutatis!
Maledictis!


Whatever the case, I'm going to need a happy paycheck to even begin my search.
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Post by giles117 »

What is a raid but independant drives on individual cables streaming a piece of a whole...

So if one can send it's pc at 50MB/sec and the other 2 the same you have effective throughput of 150MB/sec

In effect a raid is similar to what you are after, but the computer sees it as one drive verses the FACT that it is actually 3 drives....

with my 3 drives, I have had ZERO issues streaming VSL Pro Sample Sets.. I split the instruments over drives. Especially the hoggish String Sets....
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Post by Frodo »

giles117 wrote:with my 3 drives, I have had ZERO issues streaming VSL Pro Sample Sets.. I split the instruments over drives. Especially the hoggish String Sets....
Well now, G-- you said the magic word: VSL. Didn't know (or didn't remember) you had them in your collection.

Which ones do you have? Just curious, from one VSL user to another....
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Post by HCMarkus »

I don't have the big symphonic sample sets you guys do, but I still run an external SATA enclosure (from OWC $80.00) with two 76 gb Raptors. I use a HiPoint Rocket Raid 2310 card, http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2310.htm which ran a little under $150. The card provides no external ports, but I overcame this problem by adding a little internal to external adaptor in one of the PCI slot openings on my G5. The 2310 card supports hardware RAID, but I have yet to try it.

It would seem that a RAID setup would be most efficient... if all the sample data is striped across your RAID, you gain the speed benefit no matter how your sample use is distributed. On the other hand, if one drive in a striped RAID array crashes, the whole array's worth of data will have to be re-installed, right?

Ivory and BFD were both problematic for me before installing the data on the Raptors. Now, I have yet to see any disc access warnings, even when using very high polyphony with release samples. This setup has been stable on my Quad, and very cost-effective. I can also add a couple of big SATA drives to a second OWC enclosure when needs dictate.
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Post by Frodo »

Thanks HC

When you say that "RAID would be most efficient", do you mean that it would be "efficient enough" in the British sense, or do you mean that it would be "the most efficient of available options" in the American sense?

Thanks for the info on the pocket raid card. I'd just seen some info on Barefeets about the new Sonnet card...

http://www.barefeats.com/hard45.html

Regardless of the card, would it be fine sharing a bus with my PCI 424? I'd hate to take the UAD-1 off of the last slot-- it's working so well.

Darn the G5 slots!!
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Post by giles117 »

Frodo wrote:
giles117 wrote:with my 3 drives, I have had ZERO issues streaming VSL Pro Sample Sets.. I split the instruments over drives. Especially the hoggish String Sets....
Well now, G-- you said the magic word: VSL. Didn't know (or didn't remember) you had them in your collection.

Which ones do you have? Just curious, from one VSL user to another....
I have the PRO. AFter I MacProl it I am runing to the Vienna Instruments Collection. Starting with..... Orchestral Strings. LOL....

VSL is why I bought Logic......

And use with your UAD. No Big deal. I had my magma hook into slot 3 of my G5, SATA card in Slot 2 and PCI 424 in Slot 1

Never a bandwidth issue.....
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Post by Frodo »

giles117 wrote:I have the PRO. AFter I MacProl it I am runing to the Vienna Instruments Collection. Starting with..... Orchestral Strings. LOL....
You're gonna LOVE it... "Once you go 'Cube', you never go back".
giles117 wrote: VSL is why I bought Logic......
Same here. See what kinds of sacrifices we make? Logic! LOL! It was worth it, tho.
giles117 wrote: And use with your UAD. No Big deal. I had my magma hook into slot 3 of my G5, SATA card in Slot 2 and PCI 424 in Slot 1

Never a bandwidth issue.....
That's very good news-- the missing link, really. Maybe because I hadn't heard of any issues, no news has indeed been good news. I just didn't know it until now.

Hey! I'm going to be in business sooner than I thought!

Cheers..
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