Anyone using SATA hdd?

[matsa]

I'm running out of disk space and it's time to get something bigger than my current 18gig and 80gig set up.
And I can't stand those goddamn wide ribbon cables clogging up my computer too!
So, serial ata. Are any of you using it? How many hard drives are you running? I'll get at least 2, but is there any advantage to running 3 or more concurrently?

Cheers

[ten]

Ive got 7 sata drives in my main DAW and 2 in my internet machine.

The daw has 5 Western Digital Raptors, (4x 73gigs, 1x 36 gigs) and 2x Maxtor maxline III 300gig drives.

The 36gig raptor is the main OS boot drive with winxp32 and winxp64 in dual boot config. Nothing else will ever go on this drive apart from the OS's.

The other 4 raptors are raided in 2 by 2 config raid 0. One array is for audio programs, projects, audio scratch, vstis, vsties and the other array is for samples, romplers and libraries.

The two 300gig maxtor drives are for backup and misc storage. Routinely every week I have ghost automatically take drive images of all of the 5 raptor drives onto these maxtors for backup purposes.

I used to have a nice set of Maxtor atlas II u320 scsi drives in a couple of raid arrays which was VERY nice for audio. I decided to sell them and goto SATA as SAS is just around the corner (SAS is like a SATA version of SCSI.) The SATA setup I have atm is very nice, but SCSI was noticabley faster in single and raid config, so I plan on moving to SAS later down the line.

But, SATA drives are great, very cheap, easy to raid together. Deffo worth getting a couple for audio and raiding them

ten

[matsa]

Top reply, just what I was after. Cheers mate.
Your configuration looks way hot and I might just go for it.
What raid controller you got mate?

[Doc Jones]

matsa, I also run sata drives and they runs great. But Ten's system is my dream system, so if you are going to mirror someone's setup . . . his would be it!

[Drammy]

I second Ten's reply and Doc Jones'.

I use SATA HDs and wouldn't change them - especially the raptors!

Ten's reply says it all really nothing more to add, and Doc Jones' reply was spot on as well - Ten does have a fantastic set-up...


Drammy

[Tomer=Trance]

my freshly arrived pc has 2 westren digital sata drives.

its dead silent 8O cant even hear the harddrives nor the 4 cooling fans.
and i thought this will be the end of "recording using condenser in the same room my computer is".

[ten]

Most new motherboards come with sata raid as standard now, but if you are looking for a controller I recommend LSI...

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/meg...ta_300_8x.html

This one is the ultimate, but is probably overkill for what you want todo and it costs a bomb

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/meg...ata_150_4.html

This is a nice 4 port version that has raid and will do you fine for 4 drives.

LSI make very good cards, solid drivers and fairly easy to setup once you have a play with the menu options.

Other than LSI you have Adaptec, Promise or Atto.

ten

[Timo]

Currently got 2 x sata-150 drives (albeit 5400rpm) in raid config on my laptop. Well, tell a lie, they're in standard/individual mode at the moment as I was contemplating the heat aspect before I commit to raiding them, also as doing so will require an OS re-install. They're only 60Gb each, so if I raid #1 them, AND set up a dual boot system (for music, and general/internet/games), that's bye bye to 40Gb between them, so might stripe them instead (raid #0), as I don't ultimately need applications to load up that fast, and audio storage is via a dedicated external 7200rpm firewire drive anyway, although it'll be handy to record/playback full, multi-channel mixdowns on the internal drives.

[rigamortis]

yeah i do, my pc's a heap of shit and blue screens of death at me every 5 minutes though.

[Drammy]

Not necessarily anything to do with SATA though!