Hard drive for recording, set up

J

J Wah

New member
I just got a 40 Gig HD for recording. The existing drive in my computer is 7 Gig. What would be the best way to partition the 40 gig drive? Also, I should keep Win98 on the 7 Gig drive right? But what about recording software: n-tracks, plug-ins, goldwave, etc. Should they be on the small drive and the 40 Gig only used for recording or can I put them on one partition of the 40 Gig and record to another partition?

Thanks
 
I wouldn't partition it at all. Install your recording software to your 7GB. Record audio data on your 40GB. Is it a 7200RPM 40GB?
 
I don't see any advantages to partitioning a drive dedicated to audio files. For organization, root folders are easier.

Also, I would not want to get a 'out of disk space' error message halfway through a brilliant drum take... that would be a drag.

Treat it like a big roll of tape.
 
Partitioning it will help. Data transfers from the "outer" partition faster than the "inner".

Queue
 
That's true, but it is a fact that partitioning a large drive increases access time in a pretty big way. I'm not suggesting partitioning it into 12 small drives, but doing 4 10 gig partitions would make a very noticible difference. 10 gigs still give you plenty of space to play with, and you end up with much better performance.
 
It is not necessary to partition a 7200RPM drive for extra performance because the drive itself will be able to handle data transfers well above what the rest of your system will be able to handle. But if it makes you feel better, you will see better performance on paper if you use the outer partition for audio.

I partitioned my 30GB drive into two 15GB partitions. One I use for current audio projects, the other I use for scratch (temp stuff, quick backups, etc). This keeps the fragmentation down on the audio partition and makes it faster for me to find what I want (which is really just a personal thing).

I agree with Emeric though, the hard drive tweeks from the past are no longer necessary.

Slackmaster 2000
 
OK,
I'll concede that it is unnecessary. But for the same reasons Slack pointed out, my 30 gig drive is split into 2 partitions. The outer partition is where my audio projects are (cuz it has potential to be faster :D), and I defrag it regularly. The inner is backups, junk, etc.

Queue
 
I was thinking of at least a 10 gig partition on the inner disk for storage of completed files and any mp3s. I thought this may save on fragmentation if they are accessed and also keep the outer drive available for work in progress. Does this make sense?

Yeah, its a 7200 drive
 
brzilian -

Dedicated audio HD recorders don't partition drives, why should you?
Click to expand...

The answer is the same as the question "Why do dogs lick themselves?"


Cuz they can.... :D :D :D


Queue
 
I still disagree with y'all (I can be a stubborn little prick). Check with hard drive manufacturers. The 10,000 RPM 23 gig drive I have at work recommends partitioning if possible to increase transfer rates. If you've got a fast CPU and enough RAM, the hard drive will most likely be the bottleneck, not the rest of the system.
 
My personal choise is smaller high speed drives for recording, then transfer to bigger drive for editing, I also recommend data dump to a cdrw prior to any significant operation. If youve ever had a error on a hardrive where its no longer accessible, meaning a sector "0" error, youll appreciate the anal approach to this madness. The military and commercial companies always run triple redundacy set ups as a minimum for their computer based systems for avionics. It should be a clue huh!

2 gig 7200 to 10,000 rpm record drive
20 gig 7200 to 10,000 rpm store edit drive
cdrw storage and back up.

p.s. most manufacturers could careless about your data loss.


Peace, Dennis
 
Seanmorse79,

I won't disagree that an outer partition will perform better, in fact that was never really the issue.

You are mistaken that the drive itself is the bottleneck. This hasn't been the case for years. A 7200RPM hard drive will typically produce sustained transfer of multiple large file numbers at around 20-30MB/sec. 32 24/96 tracks only require roughy 10MB/sec sustained. That's a lot of data, and most systems will puke out well before that due to bus congestion, poor IDE controller/driver implementation, cpu overload, software inadequacy, soundcard hardware/driver inadequacy (esp low latency drivers), and so on.

I typically work with 24 24bit/44.1khz tracks and I have never had a single dropout due to the hard drive. In fact the hard drive doesn't even come close to a thrashing state.

As was stated above, none of the standalone hard disk recorders require partitioning schemes for performance, and the reason is that 7200RPM ATA drives are quite competent right out of the box.

It's of little benefit to discuss raw benchmark numbers when they are all well above the critical point. I remember when we were all so excited about IDE RAID. 40MB/sec sustained with two drives, sweet! What did we see in real life though? The system choking at the exact same spot it always did, because the single 7200RPM drive was handling the load just fine all along. Sure was fun to look at those huge numbers though.

I agree that two drives is a great way to go, and three is even better. I use my 15GB drive for OS & applications, and my 30GB for audio and scratch. To be honest I never have to think about it.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Just my two cents...

I finally broke down and bought a larger, faster drive. 80gb 7200.
Without partitions I'm running '98 and Ntrack. I let Norton's handle the defrag chores. I've done up to twelve tracks with FX thus far and haven't seen a performance hit yet.

My milage may vary!
But I hope not.
:D
 
Slackmaster2k,

Point taken. I guess I'm just a bit surprised that nobody would have HD speed problems recording 24 bit. I remember the Cubasis days (with a much cheesier system at the time) with a CPU and a HD meter, and running out of HD resources well before I ran out of CPU resources. And yes, I'd definately agree that 2 physical drives would be the best way to fly.

josesequeira,
You can get a hold of countless shareware benchmark programs from any shareware site (ZDnet, TUCOWS, etc..). Although, looking at Slack's previous post, keep in mind that a benchmark isn't necessarily going to reflect your performance for recording apps.
 
Alright...

I dunno if this is the place to ask... but it's close to topic, so here goes...

I have a 40GB IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM drive.. and I swear.. it's a piece of crap... :p When I try to empty the recycle bin, it just sits there for what I swear has gotta be 20 seconds and finally does it... When I record,.. I get this delay right before the metronome starts which screws up the sync... etc. etc... the speed of my puter is nowhere close to what I expected it to be when I got it (Athlon 1.4GHZ DDR, 256MB DDR RAM) and I seriously do think it has something to do with the HDD.

I have it partitioned like 5 times... a 4 GB for Windows, 8GB for programs 10GIG for music and a few storage partitions... so anyway... what am I doing wrong here...? Should I be partitioning like that? Is there a Windows setting that will tweak this..? Should I just wipe the drive and start over...? or should I go get myself a new drive...? I'm thinking that I'd like a new drive... same thing 40GB, 7200 RPM.. so... in that case... what's a good drive to get? I searched for a "what's the best HDD" thread but couldn't find it.. so maybe someone here will enlighten me. Thanks.

WATYF
 
Make sure DMA is enabled for the drive in contol panel/system/device manager/properties.

Aside from that I'm clueless :confused:
 
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