# Blackmagic Multidock to raid or not to raid???



## samphony (Nov 5, 2015)

hey chaps. 

Any of you use the Blackmagic Multidock with SSDs in raid0? I just use it as separate drives but consider another one as raid.


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## synthpunk (Nov 6, 2015)

What would you be looking to do with Raid ? I really cannot think of any reason to setup Raid on a MD other than for video capacity. I use my MD bays individually, 3 Samsung Evo850 drives for samples and one Crucial for audio.


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## samphony (Nov 7, 2015)

@aesthete To speed up kontakts loading process even further. Especially when hosting kontakt inside the daw with a lot of instances. I use the MD2 since its release as individual bays.


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## synthpunk (Nov 7, 2015)

samphony said:


> @aesthete To speed up kontakts loading process even further. Especially when hosting kontakt inside the daw with a lot of instances. I use the MD2 since its release as individual bays.



Admittedly beyond my knowledge, sorry I cannot help. But I always try to keep things as simple as possible.


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## samphony (Nov 7, 2015)

aesthete said:


> Admittedly beyond my knowledge, sorry I cannot help. But I always try to keep things as simple as possible.


me too!!!!


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## chimuelo (Nov 7, 2015)

Try booting from another drive instead of the external array.
RAID 0 is fine for streaming for extra voices but for booting up and loading up RAM that's an OS+Apps chore.
Those 128GB M.2 devices are perfect for such chores.
Recently installed a new i7 5775C CPU.
That combined with an M.2 is fast enough to use live.


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## samphony (Nov 7, 2015)

@chimuelo my main drive is a fast ssd blade in the Mac Pro Vader helmet. The multidocks are exclusively for sample streaming.


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## Astronaut FX (Nov 7, 2015)

The research I did determined that if using the Multidock solely for the purposes of sample streaming, there was nothing to be gained by using Raid. Can't recall now where I found that, but based on that, I've been running mine straight as separate drives.


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## babylonwaves (Nov 8, 2015)

a RAID of two SSDs would make sense, for 4 SSDs, the controller in the multidock isn't fast enough. with the newer multidock hardware you apparently get 800MB/s read speed. in theory you could get around 1.3Gb/s
i have a raid of 4 x 1TB SSDs in an OWC thunderbay 2 enclosure. IMO it is totally worth it when you work with large libraries. the thunderbay delivers 1.3GB/s btw.


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## samphony (Nov 8, 2015)

As far as I know the MD2 uses thunderbolt 2 and a different controller than MD1 with thunderbolt 1.


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## playz123 (Nov 12, 2015)

samphony said:


> hey chaps.
> 
> Any of you use the Blackmagic Multidock with SSDs in raid0? I just use it as separate drives but consider another one as raid.


Did all kinds of reading about this when I went that route, and ended up sticking with a non raid configuration. Now run 5 SSDs in Blackmagic Multidocks (II), and everything works well, exactly as it should. As @Tone Deaf mentioned "The research I did determined that if using the Multidock solely for the purposes of sample streaming, there was nothing to be gained by using Raid."


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## babylonwaves (Nov 13, 2015)

samphony said:


> As far as I know the MD2 uses thunderbolt 2 and a different controller than MD1 with thunderbolt 1.


have a look here: http://www.storagereview.com/blackmagic_multidock_review - according to this review, the MD2 delivers about 800mb/s instead of the possible 1.3GB/s.


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## samphony (Nov 13, 2015)

babylonwaves said:


> have a look here: http://www.storagereview.com/blackmagic_multidock_review - according to this review, the MD2 delivers about 800mb/s instead of the possible 1.3GB/s.


Thanks. Time for a PC


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## chimuelo (Nov 13, 2015)

samphony said:


> @chimuelo my main drive is a fast ssd blade in the Mac Pro Vader helmet. The multidocks are exclusively for sample streaming.


Then you are a wise man.
The very finest motherboard for PC with Thunderbolt is ASRocks Extreme 11s.
They have the LSI 3008 SAS controller built in.
Their TBolt 2 strategy is equally impressive with dual ports.
Might be some newer versions available. But even the older (cheap now) X79 is a monster audio device.

Let us know what you settle with.
PCs really seem to be great low noise low heat streamers.
Sure have come a long way since 15k Cheetah SCSI drives.


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## mc_deli (Nov 20, 2015)

Anyone daisy chaining their MD through a TB hub or other device-do you still get 800mb/s ?


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