Writing to 2 hard drives simultaneously?

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by rprecording

Does any one have, or know of, a reasonably priced setup that'll allow a laptop to write to 2 drives simultaneously?

I ask because I saw a video recently about some folks who were doing video recording (the video was from a post in this forum I think but cant locate it now). The post was about serious backup methods or something.

The video production had a system that allowed them to record to 2 seperate drives simultaneously.

Anyone used this for audio recording?

You can get an external RAID enclosure and set it up to write RAID 1. They usually come with the software and some even come with the disks. You might be able to find an expansion card for raid to fit you laptop. They make plenty of them for desktops.

[reynaud]

I believe SADiE offers mirror recording to hard disk and then a "delayed mirror" function to (for example) DVD-RAM in SADiE's MTR software.

cheers,
Reynaud

[rprecording]

Originally Posted by mixedupsteve

You can get an external RAID enclosure and set it up to write RAID 1. They usually come with the software and some even come with the disks. You might be able to find an expansion card for raid to fit you laptop. They make plenty of them for desktops.

Thats an interesting thought...cause one of the catches to it is that I only have 1 eSATA port on the laptop. Do have USB of course but not sure if it'd keep up with lots of tracks (regularly do 12 or more...often 16-20). Express card slot is taken by firewire card...might be an option...firewire???

External Raid 1 though, could do that with 1 eSATA connection...hhmmm

Thanks!

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by rprecording

External Raid 1 though, could do that with 1 eSATA connection...hhmmm

Thanks!

Sure, an external RAID drive looks just like any external drive except there's 2(or more) drives in there. The works are in the enclosure. There are firewire versions too.

[rumleymusic]

Glyph - Triplicator

[Dave Davis]

Well, the easy answer is to set up a mirrored RAID and write to that array. Done and done.

The other easy answer: Metric Halo's MIO line (including 2882, ULN2, ULN8 and LIO8) control software, known simply as Console, can mirror it's takes to any two drives, via any available connection (USB, SATA, FW, whatever you've got) out of the box. I use Console all the time for location recording. Beats any daw I have (which includes PT, Logic, sB, Soundtrack, Reaper) because it's simpler, audio-centric and variable-limited. Much less to go wrong when you ditch the plugs and 3rd party stuff that conventional daws require. Oh yeah, you get a killer monitor controller too!

-d-

[ptr]

I use one of those RAID 1 setups for my lightweight setup. (mostly for recording organ/solo piano/chamber music)
A Stardom SoHoRaid SR2 (Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB discs) linked via eSata to my Sony Vaio Laptop running W7.
Works like a charm! Haven't Crashed on me yet, I know it will! Using good quality discs lessens the crash factor!
I can't say it's dead silent, but 8 feet away on the floor it do not bother me much!

/ptr

[projektio]

I bought two identical SATA 1TB drives and Windows 7 has a built-in feature I used that does exactly that. Any audio that is recorded to one drive is also recorded to the second drive. I imagine that video would be handled in the same way, it's simply a different type of data.

Matt

[rprecording]

Originally Posted by projektio

I bought two identical SATA 1TB drives and Windows 7 has a built-in feature I used that does exactly that. Any audio that is recorded to one drive is also recorded to the second drive. I imagine that video would be handled in the same way, it's simply a different type of data.

Matt

I'm running Raid arrays in my deskside so I'm entirely familiar with them...just hadn't dawned on me that I was describing a "mirrored raid" array.

Matt, I am curious about this win 7 feature.Not familiar with that. Problem might still be that, since I have only a single eSATA port on the laptop, only 1 drive can hang off of it. Connecting it to an external raid enclosure (that would look like a single drive to the laptop but actually have both drives in it) sounds like the most viable possibility so far.

I'm running Cubase as my DAW. Have Reaper on the laptop as a backup methog but prefer to stay with Cubase. When I use the laptop for remote work, I just do a continuous recording in a single Cubase project to an external drive. Dont use any plugs or anything at that stage.

Back in the studio I connect the external drive to the deskside, open the project then save to a raid 0 array in the deskside for editing and mix.

Originally Posted by rumleymusic

Glyph - Triplicator

That's cool!

[rprecording]

Originally Posted by Pier

That's cool!

It sure is. I'll look into that!

Many thanks!

[cyrano]

Originally Posted by rprecording

Problem might still be that, since I have only a single eSATA port on the laptop, only 1 drive can hang off of it.

That's no problem. You can get plenty of external boxes with RAID, or a SATA port multiplier...

[philper]

I used 2 drives all the time with my laptop/Metacorder rigs (Metacorder will allow 2 drives + a DVDRAM drive if you want), on firewire. With Boom Recorder you can direct which ever tracks/channels you want to any drive the computer can see, in duplicate, triplicate etc up to the ability of the computer to write that many files at once. So far (5 yrs) I've just used regular FW400 drives in series.

phil p

[jglamar]

That metacorder option sounds cool.
You can also record to 2 drives at once if you're using MIO console.
Either or both of the drives could be a RAID array, providing yet another layer of protection if you like. A RAID array is nice but if something happens to interrupt recording to the device it's no help. Better to have 2 separate devices recording simultaneously IMO.

[philper]

Originally Posted by jglamar

That metacorder option sounds cool.
You can also record to 2 drives at once if you're using MIO console.
Either or both of the drives could be a RAID array, providing yet another layer of protection if you like. A RAID array is nice but if something happens to interrupt recording to the device it's no help. Better to have 2 separate devices recording simultaneously IMO.

I agree--I don't record onto 2 drives as a backup in the sense most posters here would think of it--it's more to insure data security after the recording, and allow the data to be immediately spread between two locations.

phil p

[Ozpeter]

Reaper too will write, per track, to primary drive, secondary drive, or both.

[recordinghopkins]

A quick and easy way to write to two drives at once is to duplicate your input tracks in your daw and change the disk allocation to write the duplicates to a different drive

[Thomas W. Bethe]

The technology has been around for some time. Just think about a CD duplicator where you are writing to multiple disks all at the same time. I am glad that someone did this for hard drives. Nice features set on the Glyph. I may have to look into it.

[recordinghopkins]

I emailed Glyph for more info as their website suggested and this is the response I got:



Thanks for your interest. It's quite a machine.

The Triplicator connects to either Mac or PC using either FireWire800, USB2.0, or eSATA. Your source drive would also connect to the same computer.

One would then connect up to three "empty" externals to the Triplicator, via eSATA ports.

The drives are initialized by the Triplicator with one button press. This is why you want to use drives with no data, or drives with data you are willing to "erase". It's design is to make complete copies.

The copies are made simultaneously, in one pass.

The Triplicator is now shipping.

There are only a few authorized Glyph dealers who have the first run.

Please contact Reza at Melrose Mac in L.A. by e-mail at: reza@melrosemac.com.

You can also call at

323.937.4600 ext 230.

Thanks again for the interest.

~Giovanni
Giovanni V. Diorio
Solution Sales Specialist
Glyph Technologies
3736 Kellogg Rd.
Cortland, NY 13045
PHONE: (800)335-0345 ext. 304
FAX: (607)275-9464

[audibell]

If you do allocate each track stream to duplicate drives, you double your virtual track count and come closer to the drop out/s t u t t er point, which I think for modest FW & Core Duo laptop scenarios is writing to not many more than 32 tracks, 48k24bit.

It's not a real backup - all it takes is someone to bump into your table/rack in the dark and nudge the FW cable 10 nanometres, the computer locks up and writes to neither drive. Far safer to take analog Ys or -10s out the back of the pres and into a dedicated recorder, or what I do, a second PC on a kvm.

Experiment and let us know how many tracks you could write to both drives before you started losing bits. I've used 8 sm58/57s clustered around a transistor radio, feeding 3-way splitters to check my CPU (for PPMs) and HD thruput, after any software changes/updates, PCI card changes etc. Let it record for 30 mins and playback for glitches/dropouts.
Good luck
WalterT

[Muser]

quoted Drive figures are usually completely out of whack with reality.

if you see an (Mbps) then divide it by 8 for the Megs.
if you see a Drive with an (MBps) in the hundreds, don't believe it.
instead, divide it by 8.

no drive delivers anywhere near 3Gbps.

external drive very often don't perform as fast as internals for various reasons.

take a look at.
Test Bench: Medea Firefly 2/240 FireWire Hard Drives

This was a while ago (2004) but the Firewire 400 and 800 protocol has been around since then.
though they are changing the chipsets and the way the computers buss integrates with these.
Also physical drive technology hasn't progressed massively since then either.

QUOTE:
Performance
The performance of these drives depends on how they are configured, individually, in a RAID 0 or in a RAID 1. As individual drives, we saw sustained data rates of over 210 Mbps across the entire drive. This exceeds the capture/print-to-tape needs of 25 Mbps for DV by almost a magnitude. A RAID 0 (striped array) should show some performance improvement in some applications, and transferring huge files (such a video) might be one of them. We say "might" since this improvement will only be apparent if there isn't a bottleneck in the data flow somewhere else. In the case of the FireFly, that bottleneck is going to be the FireWire interface, which is limited to 400 Mbps. In our tests, we hit average sustained data transfer rates of around 230 Mbps, which is only a 20 Mbps increase over a non-striped (individual) disk. As a comparison, a quick test of another computer in our office averaged 425 Mbps on an equivalent internal hard disk and an internal striped array sustained 650 Mbps.
END.

230 Mbps divided by 8 = 28.75 Megs per second

650 Mbps divided by 8 = 81.25 Megs per second

......

a high speed SATA internal drive in a laptop will outperform most external arrays unless these are top quality components which are striped.
external data bridges generally aren't up to the class of the internal bridge throughput on computers.. they are always upping the internal bus speeds on new computers. but what a physical drive can physically read from the head is always way way lower than that anyhow. Manufacturers stopped disclosing their sustained read and write speeds years ago. now they just quote the bus speed or the protocol and people think it's what the drive can read and write. not the case.

Good SSD drives look to be able to keep pace with ULTRA SCSI seagate velociraptors and that IS quick!

so, a small internal and fast SSD can fulfill specific needs, admirably. then having a simple backup and storage drive for the projects and one for sample libraries can prove very effective. if you have massive sample libraries though, then internal SSD's start to get out of whack in price performance terms.

Glyph are well respected Audio drive system manufacturers though. but just keep in mind what the physical drive itself is capable of in transfer and sustained read and write speeds.

you can Google.
bench tested drive transfer rates

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by recordinghopkins

I emailed Glyph for more info as their website suggested and this is the response I got:



Thanks for your interest. It's quite a machine.

The Triplicator connects to either Mac or PC using either FireWire800, USB2.0, or eSATA. Your source drive would also connect to the same computer.

One would then connect up to three "empty" externals to the Triplicator, via eSATA ports.

The drives are initialized by the Triplicator with one button press. This is why you want to use drives with no data, or drives with data you are willing to "erase". It's design is to make complete copies.

The copies are made simultaneously, in one pass.

The Triplicator is now shipping.

There are only a few authorized Glyph dealers who have the first run.

Please contact Reza at Melrose Mac in L.A. by e-mail at: reza@melrosemac.com.

You can also call at

323.937.4600 ext 230.

Thanks again for the interest.

~Giovanni
Giovanni V. Diorio
Solution Sales Specialist
Glyph Technologies
3736 Kellogg Rd.
Cortland, NY 13045
PHONE: (800)335-0345 ext. 304
FAX: (607)275-9464

I also emailed Glyph about using it to write to multiple drives at once. They told me it's really designed for copying existing data and not for writing new multiple copies. They didn't even know if it would do it. Keep in mind that if the computer stops or you stop the recording at any time you have to erase everything you have recorded up to that point when you start recording again.

[bblackstone]

Originally Posted by recordinghopkins

A quick and easy way to write to two drives at once is to duplicate your input tracks in your daw and change the disk allocation to write the duplicates to a different drive

Great tip!

[sonare]

See Data Management in the Digital Age

[edva]

Originally Posted by Dave Davis

Well, the easy answer is to set up a mirrored RAID and write to that array. Done and done.

The other easy answer: Metric Halo's MIO line (including 2882, ULN2, ULN8 and LIO8) control software, known simply as Console, can mirror it's takes to any two drives, via any available connection (USB, SATA, FW, whatever you've got) out of the box. I use Console all the time for location recording. Beats any daw I have (which includes PT, Logic, sB, Soundtrack, Reaper) because it's simpler, audio-centric and variable-limited. Much less to go wrong when you ditch the plugs and 3rd party stuff that conventional daws require. Oh yeah, you get a killer monitor controller too!

-d-

What is the procedure for setting this up in Console? thanks.