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Topic: Hard discs: no error correction required? (Read 27667 times) previous topic - next topic
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Hard discs: no error correction required?

Reply #25 –
Don't professional recorders report the amount of errors after the recording ?

Hard discs: no error correction required?

Reply #26 –
Quote from: spockep on
That's why a lot of professionals still use Digital Reels.


They could as well use RAIDed hard drives, if speed is of importance; but I am 100% certain that same music file from normal hard drive and optimized one sounds the same provided it is decoded and reproduced through the same equipment. Modern HDDs are more than capable enough for reproducing ANY audio format, even uncompressed. Well, maybe not these 7.1 ch 32bit 192kbit streams, but if you need high bandwidth, you use RAIDs. And I seriously doubt that much speed is gained with disabled caching.
TAPE LOADING ERROR

Hard discs: no error correction required?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: digital on
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What an odd discussion thread...

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I have to agree: odd indeed!

As a a IT guy also, I have to say that, for the purposes of this discussion, there really is no practical difference between flash disks and hard disks in terms of quality and reliability of the digital data that they store. IT folks get quite upset if the storage media drops even one bit (as in a binary 1 or 0) of data. That sort of thing can corrupt a bank's database. So any digital media is very good at error correction and recovery.

If you are storing streaming media especially video, then the key issue is the speed at which data can be read from the disk. But in this regard, disks running at 7200 rpm on a high speed (personal computer) data bus can easily deliver data fast enough for most home use purposes. USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 is generally good enough for most streaming purposes at home. Hollywood studios running massive graphics rendering systems have very different requirements of course.

Audio data, including lossless formats like flac, don't have any difficulty with data streaming problems though. If you watch the activity light on any HDD, including USB external drives, you will see that they only just flicker from time to time. Basically, player software reads a chunk of data, stores it in memory, decodes it and passes the data to the DAC chip for us to hear. It then reads another chunk of data, and decodes it. The larger the memory available, the bigger the chunk of data that can be cached, the less often that the HDD needs to be read, and the less the need for high-speed disk storage. In fact, most mp3 tracks can be read from disk in one read operation and the whole track cached for processing. Ipods, in effect, send the HDD to sleep between read operations. This is very different from the way that DVDs and CDs work of course.

If you are recording a/v data, the write operation will be slower depending on speed of data coming from the a/v device (eg a digital video camera or DVD). So, when you plug your camera into your home computer to store the a/v data onto your HDD, you generally want to make sure that you have not other apps running and competing for the HDD or using CPU or memory resources. Same if you are ripping a CD or (especially) a DVD to disk. DVDs store a lot more data than CDs that needs to be processed quickly: so faster CPUs, lots more memory, 7200 rpm HDDs, and USB2.0 and Firewire 400 & 800 have quickly entered the home computer market to cater for this.


Anyway, I hope this this helps. 

Hard discs: no error correction required?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: hlloyge on
But when dealing with audio recording, IF this happens during recording, there is possibility that when using these "optimised" hard drives we couldn't be sure the reproduction will be flawless, because HDD would, in theory, write the data on possibly corrupted part of a drive, and just keep recording on, and later on there will be problems with reading the same exact data...?
Not really. A failing sector on a HD is not a 'catastrophic' (i.e. sudden) event. It degrades over time. During reading, the drive's circuitry will detect the degradation, perform error correction, and move the physical sector to another physical sector on the same track. The OS keeps accessing the same logical sector, unaware that the logical sector has been mapped by the firmware to a different physical sector.

Problem happens if there is no more unused sector on the same track. But before this happens, SMART should indicate that the drive is in dire need of replacement.

Hard discs: no error correction required?

Reply #29 –
Quote from: pepoluan on
Quote from: hlloyge on
But when dealing with audio recording, IF this happens during recording, there is possibility that when using these "optimised" hard drives we couldn't be sure the reproduction will be flawless, because HDD would, in theory, write the data on possibly corrupted part of a drive, and just keep recording on, and later on there will be problems with reading the same exact data...?
Not really. A failing sector on a HD is not a 'catastrophic' (i.e. sudden) event. It degrades over time. During reading, the drive's circuitry will detect the degradation, perform error correction, and move the physical sector to another physical sector on the same track. The OS keeps accessing the same logical sector, unaware that the logical sector has been mapped by the firmware to a different physical sector.

Problem happens if there is no more unused sector on the same track. But before this happens, SMART should indicate that the drive is in dire need of replacement.

Amen!

This thread should go in Recycle Bin...
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P