[Ardour-Users] Which RAID is best?

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 02:38 -0500, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Chris Stranex wrote:
> 
> > Could someone give me insight as to which is best for audio work? I was
> > thinking either RAID0+1 or RAID 5 would be suitable but which one does
> > everyone recommend?
> 
> I think most RAID types will work fine for audio applications.  If you're 
> going to be working on projects with high track counts and high bit and 
> sample rates, you could overrun the performance capabilities of a single 
> drive, but for smaller projects, chances are that the drive will not be 
> the bottleneck as long as your OS is using it correctly.  I don't think 
> there are any particularly compelling arguments 0+1 over 5 or vice versa.
> RAID 0+1 requires 4 drives and RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 drives.

At least for software RAID this is what happens:

RAID5: pros: more usable disk space out of available disks (capacity is 
       size of disk * (number of disks - 1))
       cons: slower write speed
RAID10: pros: higher write speed
        cons: needs more disks for same capacity (capacity is size of
        disk * (number of disks / 2))

No clear winner, which to choose depends on what is more important to
you...
-- Fernando


> In either case, the extra reliability afforded by RAID 0+1, 1+0, or 5 is 
> definitely a win for keeping your projects intact when a disk dies, in 
> addition to backing projects up regularly, either to another drive or 
> other media (DVD, memory stick, etc).  Backing up large projects will be 
> even easier once Blu-Ray burners start to come down in price.
> 
> If possible, it's still a good idea to keep your system and other 
> non-audio partitions on separate disks or separate RAID sets.