[Paul Stamler]

Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we all know
what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive is going to be
used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

Peace,
Paul

[Peter Larsen]

Paul Stamler wrote:

Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work,
we all know what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache.

A high sustained transfer rate is needed. 8 megabytes is the size of a
virtual cylinder, and might offer some advantage, but I can't see it be
a major issue.

But if the drive is going to be used solely for archiving,
copying in (and, worst come to worst, out) without actually
working on the materials in real time, is there any reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

No. Do not just put it on a shelf, spin it regularly. I have had one 40
gigabyte drive die while in a desk drawer, probably capacitor failure.
Nothing on it, so I just discarded it instead of trying the mobo from
its sister drive.

Too much spec reading can confuse you unless you read the right spec,
one example from the period when 5400 rpm drives co-existed with 7200
rpm drives is that a good 5400 rpm drive with high data density could
have equal or larger throughput than a competing 7200 rpm drives. This
according to a german test of a Western Digital 5400 rpm drive model I
read back then.

Paul


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:30:13 GMT, "Paul Stamler"
wrote:

Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we all know
what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive is going to be
used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

Peace,
Paul


If all you are doing with this drive is archiving, there is no purpose
to the cache whatever.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Richard Crowley]

"Paul Stamler" wrote ...
Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we all
know
what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive is going to be
used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any
reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

A cache would not be any advantage in a drive used for archiving.

OTOH, caches as small as 8MB would be overrun within seconds
when working with any significant size (100s of MB, or several GB
in the case of video) typical media files. I'm not convinced that they
offer any substantial advantage at all?

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:05:51 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Paul Stamler" wrote ...
Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we all
know
what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive is going to be
used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any
reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

A cache would not be any advantage in a drive used for archiving.

OTOH, caches as small as 8MB would be overrun within seconds
when working with any significant size (100s of MB, or several GB
in the case of video) typical media files. I'm not convinced that they
offer any substantial advantage at all?


On the other hand, any archival machine does absolutely need to be
RAID. That is cheaper and easier now than it has ever been.

Also, as it is not being called on to do any work other than sit there
and accept files, it is an ideal candidate for Linux. I have a such a
machine doing exactly this job, and it hasn't needed a reboot in the
three years since I built it.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Richard Crowley]

"Don Pearce" wrote...

On the other hand, any archival machine does absolutely need to be
RAID. That is cheaper and easier now than it has ever been.

Assuming you mean one of the redundant types of RAID
(so that it can survive failure of a single drive, etc.) Which
type are you using?

Also, as it is not being called on to do any work other than sit there
and accept files, it is an ideal candidate for Linux. I have a such a
machine doing exactly this job, and it hasn't needed a reboot in the
three years since I built it.

If you've never rebooted, how do you know it would survive a
power failure, restart, etc? Have you ever tested its ability to
recover from a drive failure? In the immortal words of Ronald
Reagan: "Trust, but verify." :-)

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:29:30 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote...

On the other hand, any archival machine does absolutely need to be
RAID. That is cheaper and easier now than it has ever been.

Assuming you mean one of the redundant types of RAID
(so that it can survive failure of a single drive, etc.) Which
type are you using?

It is Raid 5, using four drives.

Also, as it is not being called on to do any work other than sit there
and accept files, it is an ideal candidate for Linux. I have a such a
machine doing exactly this job, and it hasn't needed a reboot in the
three years since I built it.

If you've never rebooted, how do you know it would survive a
power failure, restart, etc? Have you ever tested its ability to
recover from a drive failure? In the immortal words of Ronald
Reagan: "Trust, but verify." :-)


Suppose I should, really. Maybe later. Just had a look at it, and it
is only two years old, not three as I thought.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Laurence Payne]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:35:14 +0200, Peter Larsen
wrote:

Too much spec reading can confuse you unless you read the right spec,
one example from the period when 5400 rpm drives co-existed with 7200
rpm drives is that a good 5400 rpm drive with high data density could
have equal or larger throughput than a competing 7200 rpm drives. This
according to a german test of a Western Digital 5400 rpm drive model I
read back then.

Also remember that a lot of the numbers are about seek times and burst
data rate. We're more interested in steady streaming of large files.
Hard drive cache size has little to do with that.

[Paul Stamler]

"Chel van Gennip" wrote in message
...
Paul Stamler wrote:
Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we all
know
what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive is going to
be
used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any
reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

Because if you want 2MB cache you pay about $50 for 80GB and you can get
500GB for about $100, but with 16MB cache.

I'm seeing Seagate 120GB drives with 2MB caches for $34 each. The equivalent
w. 8MB cache is $50, and if I'm buying several I'd just as soon save a few
bucks. 120GB is about right for the storage I need. Thanks, folks.

Peace,
Paul

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 18, 2:30 pm, "Paul Stamler" wrote:

used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come to worst, out)
without actually working on the materials in real time, is there any reason
not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

There's no reason not to use one with a 2MB cache for real time
recording. I have several that I use with my Mackie HDR24/96. But
don't use a 2 MB cache drive that's 8 years old and worked OK in the
computer you upgraded. It's probably mostly worn out.

You can still buy new drives with 2 GB cache. I think I bought one
like that just a few months ago. Disks is disks unless you're doing a
huge number of tracks or working with video (the equivalent).

I have a couple of USB cases. I put a drive in one of those cases and
it's handy for archiving.

[Geoff]

Paul Stamler wrote:
Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we
all know what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive
is going to be used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come
to worst, out) without actually working on the materials in real
time, is there any reason not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

No, but for an extra $10 ??......

geoff

[Paul Stamler]

On the other hand, any archival machine does absolutely need to be
RAID. That is cheaper and easier now than it has ever been.

Why, perchance? I had visions of making duplicate hard drives and sending
one up to, say, Chicago, out of this earthquake zone. With luck, to someone
who'd spin it up on a regular basis.

Also, as it is not being called on to do any work other than sit there
and accept files, it is an ideal candidate for Linux. I have a such a
machine doing exactly this job, and it hasn't needed a reboot in the
three years since I built it.

Good thought.

Peace,
Paul

[Paul Stamler]

"Geoff" wrote in message
...
Paul Stamler wrote:
Hi folks:

Quick question. For a hard drive that will be used for DAW work, we
all know what's needed -- fast, with an 8MB cache. But if the drive
is going to be used solely for archiving, copying in (and, worst come
to worst, out) without actually working on the materials in real
time, is there any reason not to use a drive with a 2MB cache?

No, but for an extra $10 ??......

$15, x 4 or 6 drives = $60-80 difference, and if there's no improvement in
performance for this application why spend the money?

Here's the application: I do a radio program, and the main source material
for that program is a remarkably big stack of CDs I use. Many, perhaps most
of them are things I've put together, remastered 78s, cleaned-up LPs, stuff
that would be *very* hard to replace if something happened to the house.
Especially if it took the LPs and 78s along with the CDs. Without this stash
of CDs, my program would be impossible to do.

So I'm archiving the material to hard-drives as quickly as I have the
chance, storing as standard .wav files with jacket info. As I said in
another post, my intention is to store at least one copy of the drives out
of city, as I live in an earthquake zone.

Peace,
Paul

[Richard Crowley]

"Paul Stamler" wrote...
On the other hand, any archival machine does absolutely need to
be RAID. That is cheaper and easier now than it has ever been.

Why, perchance? I had visions of making duplicate hard drives and
sending one up to, say, Chicago, out of this earthquake zone. With
luck, to someone who'd spin it up on a regular basis.

I agree. Now that RAID is "cheaper and easier than it has ever
been", there are even more inappropriate applications of it.
There are very good reasons to use RAID, but most of us do
not encounter those conditions unless we are running huge,
multi-user, .999999 servers or doing NLE of HDTV, etc.