Velociraptor worth it?

[papayoyo]

I'm building a music making rig and was wondering if it's worth splashing out on a velociraptor HD. I may be recording up to 36 tracks of hi-def audio and need a fast HD.

[Azzin]

I'm building a music making rig and was wondering if it's worth splashing out on a velociraptor HD. I may be recording up to 36 tracks of hi-def audio and need a fast HD.

I've used 2 x 'Raptors in RAID the past on a gaming rig and whilst the performance gain was blinding, I feel personally using them for audio (HD or otherwise) is overkill.

For example, I use my PS3 (in the living room) to stream HD movies via my server in the garage without any performance/stuttering issues at all.

The server is a fairly modest machine, with an Athlon 64 running WinXP with standard SATA2 hard drives.

HTH.

[schmunk]

If you're recording with Mic's you may wish to consider that 'raptors are significantly louder than standard HDDs, so may not be ideal.

SSDs seem to be the way forward for this kind of usage.

[kalniel]

I'm building a music making rig and was wondering if it's worth splashing out on a velociraptor HD. I may be recording up to 36 tracks of hi-def audio and need a fast HD.

Generally not any more. If price is a concern then a high platter density drive is better value. If price isn't a concern then SSDs give much better performance.

[GheeTsar]

+1 for SSD. Velociraptors aren't that much faster than the high density, large volume drives now and are noisy.

[this_is_gav]

Velociraptors aren't that much faster than the high density, large volume drives now and are noisy.

Velociraptors are quieter than the 150gb Raptors, which in turn are far, far quieter than the old 76gb Raptors, which were quieter than the 36gb ones. Even in a quiet environment they're not at all bad. Unless you've got the mic next to the case, I doubt they'd be picked up at all.

SSDs generally aren't anything special when it comes to sequential transfers. They shine at random transfers, which is why they're great for the OS. When it comes to uncompressed video and audio, the mechanical drive is generally still the choice, and especially so in a RAID array.

[Bugbait]

SSDs generally aren't anything special when it comes to sequential transfers. They shine at random transfers, which is why they're great for the OS. When it comes to uncompressed video and audio, the mechanical drive is generally still the choice, and especially so in a RAID array.

I disagree. An Indilinx or Intel based SSD has a sequential (2MB) read of 241-262MB/s. A WD VelociRaptor manages 121MB/s, with the Seagate Momemtus clocking only 78MB/s (figures taken from Anandtech's review). That's measuring the SSD's in a used state as well.

For sequential writes the VelociRaptor maintains 120MB/s with the Indilinx ranging from 136-190MB/s. Once you look at random reads and writes SSD's completely destroy the performance of mechanical drives. RAID? Have you seen the RAID test on YouTube? SSD's in RAID make mechanical drives look like floppy disks. Remember, SSD's don't suffer from fragmentation issues and with TRIM, the new versus used performance degradation is arguably insignificant.

A mechanical drive is better than a SSD in one main area only, price or bang for buck. If you do any kind of multitasking then the (much) faster random read/write from SSD's will be VERY noticeable. So it all comes down to whether the additional performance offered by a SSD is worth it for the OP.

[Syllopsium]

I'm building a music making rig and was wondering if it's worth splashing out on a velociraptor HD. I may be recording up to 36 tracks of hi-def audio and need a fast HD.

I'd recommend looking at a decent 1TB hard drive first. In most cases they'll have a minimum transfer rate sufficient for your purposes.

What transfer rate do you need?

PK

[this_is_gav]

I disagree. An Indilinx or Intel based SSD has a sequential (2MB) read of 241-262MB/s. A WD VelociRaptor manages 121MB/s, with the Seagate Momemtus clocking only 78MB/s (figures taken from Anandtech's review). That's measuring the SSD's in a used state as well.

For sequential writes the VelociRaptor maintains 120MB/s with the Indilinx ranging from 136-190MB/s.

While it might indicate the trend, a 2MB file represents zero use to any media producer.

RAID? Have you seen the RAID test on YouTube? SSD's in RAID make mechanical drives look like floppy disks.

You mean that one with something like 26 SSDs? Yeah, because mechanical drives wouldn't speed up with 26 HDDs in RAID0.

A mechanical drive is better than a SSD in one main area only, price or bang for buck. If you do any kind of multitasking then the (much) faster random read/write from SSD's will be VERY noticeable. So it all comes down to whether the additional performance offered by a SSD is worth it for the OP.

Which is where the original poster clearly needs a bit of assistance, as he was asking if the Velociraptor was worth the extra. A 300gb VR costs £160. A Vertex Turbo, which isn't the fastest for sequential transfers, is £450 for less than half the capacity.

Don't get me wrong, I love SSDs, and they generally are faster for everything, but when it comes to large uncompressed media, then they offer relatively little benefit while being something like 8 or 9 times more expensive than a Velociraptor. Whether the Velociraptor itself is worth it is another matter, and largely depends on how long you're waiting for the hard drive.

[papayoyo]

Thanks for all the fascinating info. From what I gather then, SSDs are the future for random access intensive applications like OS's and will soon make anything else obsolete performance-wise. For sequential read/write applications such as audio recording it would seem that regular mechanical drives still provide enough speed and vast amounts of space at the best price. Looks like the raptors are somewhat surplus to anyone's requirements. Thanks again.

[Bugbait]

While it might indicate the trend, a 2MB file represents zero use to any media producer.

A 2MB sequential write in this scenario is a test of "large" block writes. The figure is fairly indicative of 2MB or 300MB writes. It's not just a single "2MB write".

You mean that one with something like 26 SSDs? Yeah, because mechanical drives wouldn't speed up with 26 HDDs in RAID0.

Yeah, that one . Sure, mechanicals will get faster too but still won't be competitive (ignoring price and storage maximums).

Rereading the OP's requirements I would agree that unless he had vast amounts of cash to spend/blow then a mechanical HDD set up in RAID would suit his needs.

[this_is_gav]

A 2MB sequential write in this scenario is a test of "large" block writes. The figure is fairly indicative of 2MB or 300MB writes. It's not just a single "2MB write".

Yes, I realised it was repeated thanks.

Given the nature of that test, wouldn't cache would play a role in it?

[jim]

Which is where the original poster clearly needs a bit of assistance, as he was asking if the Velociraptor was worth the extra. A 300gb VR costs £160. A Vertex Turbo, which isn't the fastest for sequential transfers, is £450 for less than half the capacity.

Sorry, but that's not the best example to pick - a Vertex Turbo is severely overpriced. If we're talking about a competitor, how about the Intel G2, £340 for just over half the capacity of the Velociraptor.

It's a much more reasonable comparison - we're talking twice the price for half the capacity then, which in certain circumstances might be the correct decision.

[Bugbait]

Yes, I realised it was repeated thanks.

Given the nature of that test, wouldn't cache would play a role in it?

Sorry for stating the obvious . For a sustained read or write the cache on the SSD and mechanical HDD would become saturated over time and thus plateau any measurements. The numbers I quoted were averages I believe, so spikes have probably been taken into account. In theory a heavily fragmented HDD would perform worse as would a relatively full SDD with TRIM status pending.

EDIT: Removed a line that didn't make much sense.

[this_is_gav]

Sorry, but that's not the best example to pick - a Vertex Turbo is severely overpriced. If we're talking about a competitor, how about the Intel G2, £340 for just over half the capacity of the Velociraptor.

It's a much more reasonable comparison - we're talking twice the price for half the capacity then, which in certain circumstances might be the correct decision.

The G2 is slower than a Velociraptor at sequential writes. I picked the Vertex Turbo as it seemed fairly even in both reads and writes without being at the top of the class (in that test, the Vertex EX is top (other than the Intel X25e 64gb drive)).

[MSIC]

I'm a little late to the thread on this one, but reading all the posts, i'm with this_is_gav on this one.

I may be recording up to 36 tracks of hi-def audio

I dont know enough about professional audio recording any more, so can you tell me - I assume this is to create a master? So we're not compressing to CD standards, for example?
Even so, the data rate from what i recall is going to be less than for example video encoding (in real time), which is a few megbits per second.

36 tracks - unless you are wanting to record 36 tracks simultaneously (are you?) then any modern hard drive is fine, even 2.5" 'laptop' type drives.

Probably a good rule of thumb however, as was always the case in the past, is have one drive for your OS, and a second drive to record your data, just to prevent any mis-haps. We used to recommend the second drive going on a seperate IDE channel, however SATA connections are all individual, so you're quite safe there.