Hard Drives? 5400RPM OK?

G

gcounselman

New member
I am setting up my PC to do recording. I have purchased a Delta44. I currently have a SB AWE32 (old) hehe. I am wondering, I got n-track off the net and started fooling around with my AWE32 and recorded a song off of a cd. When playing back it plays fine until I start clicking certain effects on and off in real time. Is this a limitation of my cheap soundcard? or is it my HD. I gueass what I want to know is can this recording be done with a ATA UDMA/33 5400RPM Western Digital HD? I have a PII333/128RAM / 20.5 GB 5400 RPM Drive.
 
All I have to say is that I would never ever ever use a 5400rpm drive for audio.. I would use it as my Program files drive but not for any of the audio work.. I think my 7200 drives are dogs, I WANT MY SCUS!!!!!
 
P,S. CompUSA has some really good deals on Harddrives right now. Also some really great deals on CDR's I just bought 100 CDR's for 39.95

[Edited by ShakesTheClown on 08-03-2000 at 07:23]
 
I think my 7200 drives are dogs, I WANT MY SCUS
Click to expand...

I thought the difference in sustained transfer rates of SCSI vs. fast EIDE wasn't that huge. Audio doesn't often benefit that much from burst rates, to my understanding. While 5400RMP is slow, I've seen some good track counts claimed by professionals using 7200RPM drives for audio.

[Edited by Dragon on 08-02-2000 at 02:26]
 
FYI

Shakes,

SCSI srives are not measurably faster then 7200RPM IDE drives unless you get into the higher end SCSI drives like SCSI III. Sure, SCSI is nice but for the small speed differences in SCSI I &2 it does not justify the added expense. SOme people even report better throughput with IDE than SCSI I drives neway.....this is HOME recording not Ocean Way.

-gen
 
Thank you for that information gener1c I guess then I dont need to worry about ever getting any..
 
im with you pg , i wouldnt mind a scsi , yet ive just got a 20gb 7200 and its so much better than the two 5400 i had.. ive heard the same things about scsi , is it worth the added expense?? and does anyone have a decent price on a scsi??

[Edited by Spider on 08-04-2000 at 06:37]
 
Interesting that this should come up just as I've been discussing upgrades with my computer guy.

I have two 17 Gig 5400 RPM IDE drives.

He recommended replacing one of them with a 20 Gig 7200 IDE drive for the Cubase/music stuff and keeping all my programs etc. on the other one, or replacing both of them with SCSI drives (10 Gig and 20 Gig). Apparently replacing the IDE's with SCSI means changing the motherboard to include a SCSI adapter.

The transfer rate (he says) of the SCSI is 80 MHz, the IDE 66 MHz.

He is not a recording guy, he is a computer guy, but says the difference in transfer rate does not warrant the extra expense, as the performance will be almost identical.

Any of you computer jocks want to shed some light into my (our?) darkness?
Thanks,

foo
 
You wouldn't necessarily have to change out the motherboard unless you don't have have free slots left to add a SCSI adapter in. If you have a PCI slot free, then you could just plug in a card. Of course if your machine is like all mine, then you have no slots free and what your guy told you is correct. :)

I agree that unless the machine is being used as a high traffic network server then SCSI doesn't make enough of a difference to warrant the extra expense. From my understanding, the benefits of SCSI really come into play when you have multiple things accessing the drives at once, such as the processes on a dedicated web or file server, and SCSI handles multiple access better than EIDE.

For recording I think the 7200RPM IDE drives are well suited from both a cost and a performance perspective. I have two Maxtor 7200RPM drives, a 27GB and a 30GB. Both are working great so far, and the speed increase was noticeable for me when I moved from 5400 drives.
 
foo..

for 100 dollars you can throw in the promise fasttrak controller and connect both 17 gig drives up for 34 gigs of scsi comparable throughput depending on the speed of the drives..

- eddie -
 
Hey Eddie,

The plan is to keep the routine operating stuff on one drive, and keep the 'd' drive for music only.

But it's amazing the stuff you find out on this board.

Thanks,

foo
 
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