XXHighEnd

Peter is it possible to have one Root for 3 different hard drives on one computer? If so how?I have 3 different Hard drives because I have so much music. They are D, F and G. How can I make one root to work for them all without changing the root each time I wish to play music from a different Drive? How can I play 1 song on my playlist from Drive D than another song on the playlist from Drive F and then Drive G and so on? Thankyou

Hi there Keith,

First off, get yourself a fast SSD (something which reads 550MB/sec is good enough). Assemble that in the Music Server PC (the PC where the music is attached to - your drive D:, F: and G:).

Format that SSD with the smallest cluster size (512 bytes).
You can give it a Drive Letter of Z: (others are allowed just the same, if you only don't use D: or X: in combination with the RAM-OS Disk (in your Audio PC - Stealth III in your case).

On the SSD, in the root, create a folder with a nice name, e.g. \Galleries.

Take very good care that you have the organization of your "Original Music Data" in the way XXHighEnd prescribes it. I'm saying this because after this post it will not as easy to change folder structures as prior to reading it. :) Main rule : have a main root folder in each of your music drives (like MyMusic).

Now go to one of your music drives, select the Library Area (via the [ L ] button in the top of XXHighEnd) and select a few albums for a test. Right click on one of the now selected albums and choose Add to Gallery :

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot01.png)
When you click Select you will see a screen similar to this :

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot02.png)
... with the notice that in my case the Z: drive as a see it from the Audio PC (Stealth) refers to a C: drive in the Music Server PC (\\ST02 in my case) which in your case will be Z: as well (because that's what your new SSD will be named as per the above instructions).

Done ? then from here on you could set your Music Root in Settings like this :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot03.png)
and when you now refresh the Library Area, you will see appear the few test albums you just put to the \Gallery folder. Notice that the [ M ] button at the mouse pointer below, selects the Music Root.

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot04.png)
Watch out : I assume no further structure in your music folders and which is not necessary either. However, you woould have the chance "today" to apply this structure, by making e.g. a subfolder in your Z:\Galleries : \Folk. Above you see that I did that. Now you could select per genre in your pile of music, and put it in a Folk folder. And Rock. And Classical and ... everything. Here :

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot05.png)
which you'll find back in the left pane of XXHighEnd (Library Area active) :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot06.png)
Now, NOT assumed that you are going to do this, this will be your further procedure :

1. Make a complete volume (Drive) with music data appear in the Library Area;
2. Select all the Items in there;
3. Put them to your Z:\Gallery\ Gallery Folder;
4. Undoubtedly be hopelessly confronted with many things wrong in yout folder structure (the system will give messages BUT ALSO observe your XX Log File with errors !!); work through it until no errors appear and you'l have all nicely organized after it, meanwhile.
5. Back to #1 for the next volume/drive with music.

Notice that #3 can be re-done for a same selection when needed (it may be tough to find where you were at the hassle with #4).

When all has been worked through, you will have all your music accessible under one Music Root.

Watch out once more before you start :
It will be very good behavior when you make this general root like e.g. this :
Z:\Galleries\General\
why ? well, because later you WILL be using way more facilities with sub Gallery Folders. Like Demo and Nice Stuff which is where the other Root Buttons are for.

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot07.png)
with here a glimps of a new feature in the next version, which is very cool and which makes all super-fast accessible ... *if* you define a few more things ...

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot08.png)
... but then of course your must have the Gallery Structure a kind of structured and have a structure like (e.g.)
Z:\Galleries\General\
Z:\Galleries\AIF\
Z:\Galleries\Ambient\
Z:\Galleries\Audio Tests\
and not at the same level as where the latter 3 are, also all your music. Read : keep your Gallery Root clean.

Take good care with trying this all out and know that all can be manipulated back and forth but only through XXHighEnd. E.g.:

(http://www.stordiau.nl/xxhighend/oneroot09.png)
IOW, doing things behind the back of XXHighEnd and you will destroy the "database" (whle there isn't any) and things will mix up hopelessly (I myself would not be able to repair it).

Eh, have fun ?
Peter

Hi Peter,

This is all quite timely Peter, as I was about to start rearranging things in my MusicServer.  However, as I've never used XXHE Galleries I was going to go a different way by either combining volumes (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-one-large-volume-using-multiple-hard-drives-windows-10)  or creating a storage space (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-storage-spaces-windows-10) which are two tools available in W10 for effectively combining multiple drives.  To be honest I had not looked too far into which way I was going to go but now you have these Gallery instructions and I am not sure.

Have you seen those two W10 features before Peter and would you recommend them at all in the name of simplification or should I just forget about it?


Cheers,

Anthony

PS:  You've been quiet lately...I bet you are up to something new...haha.

Hey Anthony,

Storage Spaces (Direct) might do similar for twice the amount of disks/SSDs. At the same time (but in the end its objective) it is RAID-1 (mirror) or (IIRC) RAID-4 (RAID-1 with parity, that requiring more disks/SSDs again but never mind this).

Storage Spaces (Direct - which is from WS2019) is cool in the sense of that it really works under the hood for safety (say that it is 100% transparent to you, the user) and is all software based (like normal Mirroring via Manage - Disk Manager). Storage Spaces Direct goes way further because of how it exploits ReFS (but it can use NTFS just the same), how fast it is (I don't really notice write latency) and how it can utilize storage media of any type and size or format at the same time, unlike normal mirorring (normal RAID-1).

The only thing Storage Spaces provides for you (apart from safety in general) would be the one logical drive (which you can make afterwards on to / over your current disks - combine e.g. G: and H: (and more) into one S:), but you will lack all of the other Gallery functions (eh, obviously). Also, working with the meta data (which is what XXHighEnd's Galleries are) allows you to put that on a fast SSD (up to ultra fast like with NVMe) that in itself providing super speed for everything, because really everything works on Galleries, except for loading the real tracks after search/selection and copying Original Music Data (because these obviously require the real music data). A derived example would be that where I use my "fast SSD" for 10 years or so by now, today I could replace it with 5 times faster NVMe (or 10 times or 20 times when I'd arrange that in an array of SSDs with striping etc.) and all it requires is copying the (in my case) 120 GB of mata data and happily continue one hour later, now at super speed.

The latter does have an example in Storage Spaces because if I would be able to add the extra storage required for it (double the original size you have, see beginning of this post), you a. just add the disk(s) (which Storage spaces will fill for you from the ones you added as the original half) and b. Storage Spaces will always use the fastest means at retrieval - which will be your newly added modern disks. Additionally (but it would be the same thing) if you in 10 years of time replace your old original slow disks with again faster means (just take out the old and put in the new with some definition changes), Storage Spaces (or Windows if you want) will start to use that, automatically.

On a side note, I would never use a Spanned or Striped volume (which exists since ancient history) for critical data, because which you lose one disk, you'll lose them all right away (with Spanned you may survive the remaining one(s)). This is asking for trouble. But then I also never used more than RAID-1 in my life, just because it is slower up to ultra-more slower on the write times. This reflects my objection against NASes as well. RAID-1 is faster, especially with the proper (RAID) hardware. Storage Spaces Direct is also faster for the same reasons, especially if you'd apply a Three-Way mirror (now you need 6 disks instead of your original 1).

There's really fun in exploring this all in the realm of SSDs instead of HDDs because of a. no "Elevator Seeking" applies to SSDs (which is why we'd "duplex" HDD's) while SSDs really allow for parallel access if the Controller allows for it OR when the data lines to the CPU are direct (not via e.g. C600 chip set) and each processor core/thread deals with it in parallel (totally useless with HDDs).

I recall this (performance stuff) is my specialty and actually my life. :) And regarding this I may tell that XXHighEnd not using a database whatsoever (serving my 54K albums) has been deliberate right from the start (see if I could do it).
And of course ... very first ERP system on networked PC's ... (1987, 12MHz XTs (120 of them for the first implementation) on two 33MHz AT File Servers).
OK, I better stop. :fishy:

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thanks for all this information, I really appreciate it.  It will be processed shortly when I get a bit of time, but it looks like a good time to jump into galleries considering the next XXHE version snippet that you showed.

Regards,

Anthony

Hi Peter,

A quick question that hopefully you are able to answer just as quickly.

So, I have made my Storage Spaces to hold my music, one consists of 4TB SSD's and the other 6TB HDD's.  I am not sure at this stage if I will use the HDD Storage Space to act as a backup to the SSD Storage Space, or if they will each be configured as two way mirrors.  The HDD's are slow to spin up when searching which is why I have gone with SSD's to store most of my music.

I have 9TB of music, growing all the time.  How much SSD room do I require to hold the Galleries?  I was thinking of adding a M2 SSD just for the Galleries assuming they do not require anywhere near as much room as the music files themselves, and M2 drives are very fast.

Regards,

Anthony   

Hi Anthony,

Below you see my SSD used space for ~24tB of music. The Galleries imply some redundancy in them, but by far most is in there only one time.

Best regards,
Peter

Sweet.  Thanks Peter.