Hey All!!

So, I have a quick question for those of you who, like myself, have a separate HDD where you install your VST effects, instruments, and sound files.

Right now, I am running a RAID 0 (striped RAID) with two 1TB drives giving me a very fast 2TB drive recognized by the OS.  So far, everything runs immaculately in X2a since Sonar scans this other location for the VST effects.

My problem is, I'm ACTUALLY running out of room, thanks mostly in part to ridiculously large sound files from EWQL libraries,  and many other massive sound files that I've amassed over the years.

I need to upgrade the RAID and have two 2TB drives on order which will take me from a total of 2TB to 4TB.

Can I just copy all the files from the old RAID to the new one (so long as the drive letter and name is the same as before on the destination drive) without Sonar X2 complaining?

It seems to reason that all those .dll files and sound libraries are just being called up and so it shouldn't make a difference if I upgrade the size of the destination drive.

Anyone have any experience with this?  Some advice would be greatly appreciated!  Thanks!!

Hi Beeej21,

As long as the drive letter remains the same (and thus the paths that Sonar is looking for), you should be good.  You can set the paths for VST's in the plugin manager or preferences, and the paths for the audio files and projects in preferences, should you need to change them.

SF_Green


Hi Beeej21,

As long as the drive letter remains the same (and thus the paths that Sonar is looking for), you should be good.  You can set the paths for VST's in the plugin manager or preferences, and the paths for the audio files and projects in preferences, should you need to change them.

Thanks for the verfication SF_Green!  This is what I suspected, but I just needed to be sure before I go in and start changing stuff.  Much appreciated!

No problem.  I would open up preferences if I were you and familiarize yourself with the locations for everything before you start, just so you know exactly what's where, and you are aware of any potential impact from your RAID upgrade.

Cheers!

SF_Green


No problem.  I would open up preferences if I were you and familiarize yourself with the locations for everything before you start, just so you know exactly what's where, and you are aware of any potential impact from your RAID upgrade.

Cheers!

Thanks again!  Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the preferences and locations settings since I set that up manually the first time around with the original RAID drives.  Crossing my fingers... tonight the new HDD drives will be installed and I'm hoping for a seamless/issue-free upgrade.

Beeej, Do you use the RAID for recording and streaming audio, then? (eg. for project folders.) I wondered if the double saving of the redundant array would negatively impact performance. (Wow, that sounds techno-babbly!) d

Darryl H


Beeej, Do you use the RAID for recording and streaming audio, then? (eg. for project folders.) I wondered if the double saving of the redundant array would negatively impact performance. (Wow, that sounds techno-babbly!) d

Hi Darryl!  My RAID is set to "0" not "1" so it is a striped setup for speed instead of a mirror setup (redundant backup).  My performance is crazy quick (compared to years ago when I wasn't using RAID or even a separate HDD to load my instruments, sounds, and effects.  My system is so much more efficient now that I have nothing cluttering my C: drive other than OS files and program installs.

I use another 300GB velociraptor 10KRPM HDD to save my project files to.  So the recording takes place on that drive, which happens to also be identical to my OS (C:) drive.  I only use the RAID 0 drive to store my vast amounts of sound libraries, effects plug-ins, etc.

***UPDATE***

I opened up my case tonight and swapped out the two 1TB drives for two 2TB drives.  Before doing that, I had copied all the contents in their entirety to an external USB 3.0 drive.

Fingers crossed, and sweating like crazy, I recreated my RAID 0 set in the DOS RAID Utility during the bootup process.  Launched into the OS, created a simple volume, formatted it (GPT not MBR because I was now exceeding 2TB in total), and named it.  It immediately showed up in my Disk Management as a single 4TB drive!!  Nice.

I then proceeded to copy all the files from the external USB 3.0 drive onto the new RAID partition.  It took about 4 hours to completely copy the nearly 2TB of sound libraries, VST, VSTi, and other effects (mostly .dll files).  Believe it or not, this is still much faster than reinstalling all the plug-ins manually one by one.

Because I had named the new RAID partition the exact same as the previous one and assigned the same drive letter as before, when I launched Sonar X2 for the first time after all the files and been copied back over, Sonar began to scan the drive/VST folders automatically.  A few short minutes later, I was in Sonar and it was like nothing had changed (except now I have double the space on a blazingly fast drive).  Everything loads fine.. we are good to go!!

I plan on always keeping a backup of the RAID 0 partition on a separate external HDD (and stored carefully) in the event I ever upgrade again or if one or both of the drives ever fail down the road.  It's just good to now know that I can toss in a couple new drives, stripe them together, and then copy the files back on them and be up and running without a hiccup.

Sweet - good job!  On your third or fourth beer at this point? 

I made basically the same upgrade on my system with no issues.  I had an Acronis backup of my C drive and reinstalled off that and it went smoothly!
Hope yours went as smooth ; )