how can you write to a second hard drive

[tsphillips]

I installed a second hard drive, as most of my friends say you really need to be streaming your audio to a drive different from the one you are running the recording program on.

But Cakewalk 9 seems to insist on writing to a Data file in the Cakewalk folders on C:

When I went in and redirected the writing to my new D drive, in a folder set up just for it, it seems to record fine.

BUT, the next time I go into the project all data is gone and I end up with blank tracks.

So I have gone back to the default settings.

But I would prefer to write to my new, empty 40 gig hard drive I put in just to hold music files

Any idea if and how I can go about doing this?

[AlChuck]

It's in the Help system and the manual. There are file directory settings you can make that tell Cakewalk where to write its audio data, picture data (the images it draws of the waveforms), etc. If you set the audio data directory (or whatever it's called -- sorry, I don't have it in front of me here) to your D drive, that's where it will go.

[tsphillips]

yes I did that, and it DID write to those files.

But the next time you open the project it tells you data is missing and that they tracks will be replaced with empty space, and they are.

So even though I go in and redirect, it redirects but then dumps the data for some reason.

[johnhoe]

I would suggest this might be a hardware problem since the files are being written and data is reported as missing.

1)Maybe your second drive hasn't got DMA switched on
2) or it is an old drive and not up to the first drive spec for hi speed disc writes.
3) The second drive is using UDMA 33 or you havent got the correct IDE lead for it. (ATA100/66 etc require different IDE leads on motherboard)

Good Luck!

[Torpid-x]

What version of cakewalk are you using ?, Sonar 2 handles files and data a little different than earlier versions.

[Ethan Winer]

TS,

> my friends say you really need to be streaming your audio to a drive different from the one you are running the recording program on. <

That's not really true unless you have so little memory in your computer that the program has to load and reload DLLs from the drive while you're recording. And that's not likely. What's much more important is which drive is faster. That said...

> When I went in and redirected the writing to my new D drive ... the next time I go into the project all data is gone and I end up with blank tracks. <

You need to 1) tell Sonar (1.x) the new location for your files, and then 2) you have to move all the WAV files to there!

--Ethan

[crosstudio]

i saw in another post that TS is using Cake9, but he should be able to follow the same instructions.

that's why i dig Sonar2 so much. having the audio files for each song in its own sub-directory is the best thing since sliced bread.

i do believe that TS has enough memory but his CPU speed isn't so hot. i would recommend the second hard drive. you don't want your I/O contributing to the problem.

make sure your 2nd hard drive is 7200rpm or better.

[neirbo]

Sounds like you might have a problem with you aud.ini file. This is where all your settings for Cakewalk are kept. Try changing the name of this file (you can always change it back). When Cakewalk looks for the file and doesn't find it, it will act like a new installation and profile your sound card etc. Then, go to the "global" menu (under OPtions I think) and set your data and picture directories. This might clear up the problem. If you still have trouble, you can read the aud.ini file in Notepad or any text editor and see if anything looks funny (the text is pretty straightforward), or post it here so we can take a look.

The aud.ini file can be found in the cakewalk folder (usually c:/program files/cakewalk/aud.ini)

[neirbo]

Sounds like you might have a problem with you aud.ini file. This is where all your settings for Cakewalk are kept. Try changing the name of this file (you can always change it back). When Cakewalk looks for the file and doesn't find it, it will act like a new installation and profile your sound card etc. Then, go to the "global" menu (under OPtions I think) and set your data and picture directories. This might clear up the problem. If you still have trouble, you can read the aud.ini file in Notepad or any text editor and see if anything looks funny (the text is pretty straightforward), or post it here so we can take a look. The aud.ini file can be found in the cakewalk folder (usually c:/program files/cakewalk/aud.ini).

As for the missing files, they are most likely being written in the wrong location, but not gone forever. You can find the files and use Explorer to move them to the right directory.