Hardrive's file system ?

[Rusty K]

Hello,

I've had some performance problems and I may have discovered why.

I have two HD's, D drive (fat32) slaved to C drive (NTFS). They should both be the same right?

What should I do to correct this problem.?

Rusty K

[Michael Jones]

What O/S are you running?

You can always convert FAT32 to NTFS, but you can't convert NTFS to FAT32.
You siad "Slave and Master" so if they are seperate drives I'm not sure that would be causing the problem.

[Rusty K]

michael,

I'm running XP. My programs are on the C drive and I use the D drive to store my audio file.

Thanks,

Rusty K

[jake-owa]

No, they should not be the same. If it works leave it alone.

XP works on a new type of file system and your secondary drive is formatted to fat 32. Don't mess with it.

Keep looking the problem is with something else.

[Michael Jones]

Well, I just switched over to XP myself.
I also run a master and slave HD system.
Both of my HD's are formatted to NTFS, and I have super performance from my system!

I"ll have to agree with jake though, I doubt the different file structures are the problem.

remember the golden rule of computers:
- Never change a working computer system, unless you have a really, really good reason to do so.

What sort of degredation in performance are you seeing, and when is it most prevailent?

[Rusty K]

Hey guys,

Thanks for your input.

My only problem really is with my multitrac program....a lot of "stuttering" and a couple of other little qirky things. I'd checked everything and then began to tweak XP with help. I believe things are smoothing out a bit. We'll see but it's good to know that the different file formats aren't part of the problem.

Thanks again,
Rusty K

[Michael Jones]

If you're getting "stutter" or "jitter" on play-back look at lowering the latency of your card and/or adjusting the audio buffers on your card.

There's a happy medium in there somewhere, you just need to find it.

[Rusty K]

Hey Michael,

Yes I had been messing with the buffer settings and such with not to much success.

I just noticed that we are posting from the same place. Nice to meet you (kind of) and thanks for the help.

If you don't mind a couple of questions?

Who works on your computer, assuming you don't do all your own repairs and upgrades? I haven't found the right help here in A. In fact I'm a bit shocked and humbled that here in this so called hightech Mecca there seem to be very few making the audio link. Maybe I just don't know where to look. Obviously I'm pretty much a newbie with computers. I know just enough to get myself in trouble.

Anyway, since we live in the same area....well I thought we might be able to exchange some useful information.

Thanks,

Rusty K

[Michael Jones]

Originally posted by Rusty K
Hey Michael,

Yes I had been messing with the buffer settings and such with not to much success.

I just noticed that we are posting from the same place. Nice to meet you (kind of) and thanks for the help.

If you don't mind a couple of questions?

Who works on your computer, assuming you don't do all your own repairs and upgrades? I haven't found the right help here in A. In fact I'm a bit shocked and humbled that here in this so called hightech Mecca there seem to be very few making the audio link. Maybe I just don't know where to look. Obviously I'm pretty much a newbie with computers. I know just enough to get myself in trouble.

Anyway, since we live in the same area....well I thought we might be able to exchange some useful information.

Thanks,

Rusty K

Rusty-
Hey, nice to "meet" you too!
I pretty much do all my own computer work. The system I have now I built by myself. It's a 1.6gig intel processor with an ASUS 4 mother board. I run 2 HD's (master and slave) for a total of 180 gigs of HD space. The system has 1gig of ram, and operates on WinXP pro. I have a separate 80 gig firewire HD for back-ups, and use dual monitors. This is a dedicated DAW machine and has only those programs necessary for that on it.

I've had "computer nerds" do some things for me in the past, but they are expensive!
There used to be a place in town calles "AES Computers" that I had do all of my stuff, but they got bought out.
Other than that it is pretty slim pickens for computer repair.

[knightfly]

http://www.musicxp.net/

http://www.bobhug.com/OptimizingXPforAudio.html

http://www.opusaudioprojects.net/WinXp.htm

These sites will either cure or kill you - before making ANY changes in your system, check the help files on the system restore utility that comes with XP. I would recommend enabling that feature until you're done making changes. However, that utility does extract some performance, since it watches everything you do and keeps track. Probably the best way to handle that is to enable system restore, make all the changes you intend to make in that session, take a snapshot of the system as it is, note the date/time, then DISABLE system restore to check performance.

Before you do ANY of this, go into system properties and make sure DMA is enabled on all drives. This is not always a default condition. Also, setting your swap file so that both min and max values are the same, keeps windows from continually re-sizing the swap file and further fragmenting your drives.


Sometimes you can get better performance on an audio drive by putting your CD-rom on the same IDE channel/cable with your boot drive (yeah, it'll probably slow THAT HDD down a little) and putting the audio drive on its own separate IDE cable. That way the audio drive is on its own cable, interrupt, and IDE controller.

Make sure you have ATA100 CABLES, they look smoother than the 40 pin older ones because they have separate ground/shield wires. They still plug into the same kind of connectors, but the older ones will slow down and possibly corrupt DATA flow.


Good luck... Steve

[Rusty K]

Michael,

Yup very slim pickins! When asked they all claim knowledge of audio questions. I've found a place that's pretty cheap and their turnaround time is 2 days usually, VICOM.

Your rig sounds great you must be a professional. I wish I could devote mine solely to audio...maybe someday. Are you using Pro Tools or?


Knightfly,

Actually I've already done a bit of tweaking to XP and things have smoothed out. I've also downloaded an updated version of my multitrac software and most of my symptoms have dissappeared.

I'll check out the links you were kind enough to post.

Thanks,
Rusty K