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Spenzer4Hire
Posts: 4
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 Posted - Fri Aug 08, 2003 1:26 pm |
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First, my setup.
Abit KT7-max2 mobo
Athlon XP 2000
2 60 Gig ata 100 hd's on onboard Highpoint raid striping for audio files only (I created the array using 64 k sectors, which was the default)
1 4 Gig ata 33? hd for all else
512 mb ddr 2100
onboard sound disabled
Aark Q10
Windows XP Pro Sp-1 Standard PC (no ACPI)
Now, the 4 Gig hd is older, only ata 33 i believe, probably 5400 rpm. windows, by default, sets its swap file here. although the raid will be much faster, all my audio is coming from there. My real question is, how smart is Windows XP? if i set it to manage the swap file on both drives, will it favor the 4 gig for the swap file when it notices high cool edit traffic from the raid? Or should i set the swap to only one of the drives, and which?
On a side note, I'm having some pci bus problems. Audio, in general, comes slowly from the raid, 24 tracks of mono 24/44.1 cant background mix fast enough, and the processor isnt reaching 100% usage, so i assume it is the pci bus which the raid goes through. Any ideas on optimizing this? Ive already installed some third party via drivers which cleaned up the pci bus a bit, and ive optimized cool edit 2.1 to the best settings i can find. Would messing with the raid sector thingys be useful? from your guys' experience, should i be able to playback 24 tracks without any effects? Thanks in advance.
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jonrose
Location: USA
Posts: 2901
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| Posted - Sat Aug 09, 2003 12:08 am |
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Chances are, you'll have to play around with this.... Some people here have RAID arrays working just fine, but the majority of posts I've seen here are asking for help with the same kinds of performance issues that you are - If you do a search on these forums, you'll find several discussions about this. It may be hardware-dependent. Some people have concluded that certain systems won't do audio off a RAID any better (and sometimes, worse) than straight off the a given system's normal primary/secondary EIDE channels.
Best of luck with it!  -Jon
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arela
Location: Norway
Posts: 5
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| Posted - Sat Aug 09, 2003 3:26 am |
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Your soundcard should be the only user of your PCI bus.
The only "good" RAID for DAW's is Motherboards with own processors for Raid (like som new MB's for S-ATA RAID / SCSI RAID)
You should also set swapfile to fastest disc (XP and CE too).
If you use more than 1MB RAM, swapfile could be dissabled in XP.
24 tracks of audio is no problem with a fast IDE disc.
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Spenzer4Hire
Posts: 4
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| Posted - Sat Aug 09, 2003 10:39 am |
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| arela wrote: | Your soundcard should be the only user of your PCI bus...
If you use more than 1MB RAM, swapfile could be dissabled in XP.
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Thanks for the reply. I'm pretty sure the onboard Highpoint Controller is south of the south bridge. Wouldn't it then be affected by a pci bottleneck? Also, arela, what did you mean about using more than 1MB RAM? Did you mean 1 GB of RAM? With my current setup Windows uses the swap file on a regular basis. Should it not?
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arela
Location: Norway
Posts: 5
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| Posted - Mon Aug 11, 2003 10:54 am |
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About your RAID setup (and MB), i am not shure,
but if it works, keep it.
I could not find better info about swapfile than this:
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=9979&forum=19
Since i only have 512MB RAM, i haven't tested this,
but i will, be shure 8)
.....and use your fastest HD for the swapfile
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Spenzer4Hire
Posts: 4
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 12:47 pm |
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Well, I've tried some things and the problem is still there. Kinda a side question here, Seeing as I only have 512 mb of ram, what would happen if i disable the swap all together? Will it work? I know a Gb would be better, but what about 512?
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arela
Location: Norway
Posts: 5
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| Posted - Tue Aug 12, 2003 2:19 pm |
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Depends on usage of your RAM, you might get a bluescreen.
(Just restart in safe mode and enable swapfile again).
Anyway 1024MB seems to be min. If that is thru with none DSP soundcards is another question.....
In DSP soundcards (like my Creamware Pulsar) fx / mixing /synths is processed on the card itself. (and use less PC power cpu/ram)
My advice is to use fastest disc for XP and audio.
Some XP tweaks can be found at www.musicxp.net
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