Hard disk performance

[Pahtcub]

I finally got my computer like two weeks ago, and was messing around with Cubase again to get back into the flow of things, but I noticed after about 16 audio tracks the CPU is fine but the DISK performance peaks, do I need a different hard drive?? Would another hard drive help? SCSI HD?? I have a 7200RPM HD right now. What does everyone else do?? And if SCSI is the answer could I get a small SCSI for recording and playback, but then move the files to the regular HD for storage?? How would I do this, cause Cubase VST HATES it when you move files without letting it know.

Pat

[fldrummer]

Maybe go get your self a raid 0 card and stick to drives in it and it will read them as one and is about 30-40% faster then normal drives.7200's should work fine.

[christiaan]

16 tracks? Any 7200rpm drive manufactured in the last 2 years or so should be able to handle that easily.
Mine does. Never pushed it further than 16 tracks @ 24/48 but I had no performance problems at all. So forget about scsi, raid0 and whatnot. Something else is wrong.
Is DMA mode enabled? Probably or your cpu would be peaking as well but still check that.

[fldrummer]

I have a 7200 and I've gone into the 20's track wise with no problems.

[charger]

Is it just on the meters, or do you hear problems, like dropouts, etc? If it's just the meters, and everything else seems to be fine, I wouldn't worry about it. I don't know anything about Cubase's performance meters, but it could be that it just shows a peak whenever it goes out and grabs a bunch of data from the disk all at one time...

[Pahtcub]

it's a brand new computer, the CPU is barely passing 30% but the hard drive peaks and gets cut outs, and clicks and all that. I need to go check DMA, but I belive it's on. I'm recording 24bit 96K so that might be the problem, but what can I do to fix it? I'll check DMA and let ya know.

Pat

[PeteHalo]

I think you answered the question yourself. By using 96kHz sample rate you're throwing out the performance while gaining practically nothing in terms of sound quality. Go back to 44.1 or 48 kHz and you'll be able to handle twice as many tracks simultaneously.

[Pahtcub]

But damn it I want to use 96K!!!!! Other people are doing it!!!

Pat

[charger]

If you're not doing audio for film or DVD-Audio, scrap the 96k. If you are, get a RAID setup, a faster computer, etc...

[Shakuan]

Get raid0.

[Pahtcub]

But man it just sounds so damn good!!!:-)

Pat

[JuSumPilgrim]

Defrag.

[charger]

Guess what? It sounds really damn good at 44.1k/24 bit too. Especially if you get to actually use some tracks and do some mixing.