Logic Pro 9 Disk too Slow

[geohanson]

Hi all, hope I've posted this in the right place, currently having a bit of trouble with music technology students and extremely large file sizes of projects. We run a Server-Client based system off a Mac Mini Server, with everything stored on the server itself. This was set up over the summer as locally backing everything up was a nightmare (Ended up with around 6TB of data from less than 40 machines). The system on paper works perfectly, however, all students music recordings are stored on the server and we are getting 'Disk to Slow' error messages when trying to play back in Logic 9. The connection between the server and clients is only 100mbps, but whether upgrading this to gigabit will make any difference I don't know. I would have thought it wouldn't though.

Originally the machines were all set up as standalone machines, but it ended up with students messing around with other people work, people copying their entire iTunes library off their iPod onto the macs etc....

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[3s-gtech]

We have the same setup, with Logic 9 and Pro Tools. Short answer is no, it won't work. We now have local logons for the Music Tech students, and they drag and drop their files across to work on then save them back onto the server at the end. The network just cannot support the huge amount of data transfer of one, let alone multiple, sessions.

My favoured idea was Firewire 800 (so duplex capable transfer) external HDDs for each student, as this is much cheaper than one of the awesome iSCSI superfast solutions developed for commercial use. USB sticks should work, but USB 2.0 is simplex in transfer, and don't think any Macs have USB 3.0 yet. Thunderbolt can do it, but not found any external TB discs yet.

[geohanson]

We have the same setup, with Logic 9 and Pro Tools. Short answer is no, it won't work. We now have local logons for the Music Tech students, and they drag and drop their files across to work on then save them back onto the server at the end. The network just cannot support the huge amount of data transfer of one, let alone multiple, sessions.

My favoured idea was Firewire 800 (so duplex capable transfer) external HDDs for each student, as this is much cheaper than one of the awesome iSCSI superfast solutions developed for commercial use. USB sticks should work, but USB 2.0 is simplex in transfer, and don't think any Macs have USB 3.0 yet. Thunderbolt can do it, but not found any external TB discs yet.

Thanks for the reply, confirming what I thought. External drives would be nice and fine for the A-Level Music Tech students, but when you consider our Year 8's (All 200 of them) are now also doing some film projects in Logic......

Ill have to try and partition the internal drive, allowing the data to be copied onto that, then copied back to the server. Although that would take a while over 100mbps ethernet as well......

[ZeroHour]

100MB is too slow for one, I would get the server up to 1GB to the core network at least.
One option (if network speed was okay) would be to stick USB hd drives into the mac mini and share each out to each individual pupil. It means they cant drop them etc and you can back them up but also means they dont trash each others IO.
If you went external drives its worth a try first before actually handing them out to be used locally if it didnt work.

[DMcCoy]

100MB is too slow for one, I would get the server up to 1GB to the core network at least.
One option (if network speed was okay) would be to stick USB hd drives into the mac mini and share each out to each individual pupil. It means they cant drop them etc and you can back them up but also means they dont trash each others IO.
If you went external drives its worth a try first before actually handing them out to be used locally if it didnt work.

480Mb/s for USB 2.0 is shared by all devices on the controller (probably two ports per controller on the server). Although you're unlikely to see more than 30MB/s anyway. Thunderbolt would be the only interface that could do anything reaonsable, but then you would be limited by network speed again.

[mdench]

we have ours set up with a central storage and then partioned disks that the kids can drag their projects too and then copy them back after they have finished working

[ZeroHour]

480Mb/s for USB 2.0 is shared by all devices on the controller (probably two ports per controller on the server). Although you're unlikely to see more than 30MB/s anyway. Thunderbolt would be the only interface that could do anything reaonsable, but then you would be limited by network speed again.

Yes I suppose it would still present an issue, it depends on your typical class size x number of class at the same time to see if the math worked. It was more a thought if you bought some drives anyway to try it before handing them out.

[morganw]

It depends on the Logic project as well. The audio engine is fairly trip happy if you are reading or writing files during playback, even on local storage. If people aren't using any third party plugins and you have 4GB+ of RAM it may be worth setting Logic to launch as a 64bit application so that more audio data can be cached.

[Arthur]

don't think any Macs have USB 3.0 yet.

The mid-2012 MacBook Pro's and MacBook Air's all have USB 3.0, although you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at them because the ports aren't blue (for aesthetic reasons).

Thunderbolt can do it, but not found any external TB disks yet.

There are tons of external Thunderbolt drives. Here are just a few...

• Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt (USB 3.0 & TB) - Review
• Elgato Thunderbolt SSD
• G-Technology G-RAID with Thunderbolt
• LaCie Rugged SSD (USB 3.0 & TB)
• LaCie Little Big Disk
• LaCie eSATA Thunderbolt Hub (TB to eSATA)
• Promise Pegasus J2 (Review)
• Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive + Thunderbolt Adapter
• Seagate GoFlex Desk + Thunderbolt Adapter
• Seagate GoFlex for Mac
• Sound Devices PixDock
• Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo
• Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo - Review
• Drobo 5D
• ATTO ThunderLink SH 1068
• Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock - Enables you to connect upto three USB 3.0 HDDs to your Mac's Thunderbolt port. Also has a FW800, eSATA and Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The Buffalo MiniStation is probably the cheapest at £144.97.

[geohanson]

Thanks for all the replies so far, the Server to the Switch is a 1GB link, but the Clients are only on 100MB. I thought about a thunderbolt drive, but you've still got the same problem of moving the data over the network. The best solution would probably be to copy the projects from the server onto local storage (perhaps partition the internal HD) then copy them back to the server when finished. Upgrading to a 1GB link would probably speed this up quite a bit and make it fairly useable.
Thanks

[3s-gtech]

The mid-2012 MacBook Pro's and MacBook Air's all have USB 3.0, although you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at them because the ports aren't blue (for aesthetic reasons).


There are tons of external Thunderbolt drives. Here are just a few...

That's pretty cool - I admit I haven't looked since well before Summer so didn't know how much they'd updated things. A Thunderbolt drive would be my preference then, but the cost per GB is high ATM it seems. Still reckon it'd be cheaper to have one per Music Tech student than almost any other solution - depending on class size!