Please Help...New Computer and I Am An Idiot

Village Idiot

Village Idiot

The Love Butler
I just bought a new computer that I want to use strictly for home recording. It's a custom-made one, and everything in it is upgradable and interchangable.

I'll be upgrading it as money dictates.

Has an AMD Athlon 2000 running at 1.7
20 mg. Hard Drive (I'll be putting in my own 60 gig this week)
128 worth of memory. (I have a 256 mg memory card not installed)

I installed my Audiophile 2496 card into it already.


My questions are many, but these are urgent...

1. Do I NEED an OS in it at all?

If so...I can put either XP or 98 in it. Which is better?
It currently has Windows 98 installed. If I go with XP, should I remove 98, or install XP over it?

2. Can I have both a CD-ROM AND a CD-RW working in it?

I installed my Writer in the bay under the CD-ROM, and I cannot get either of them to play my CDs...The guy where I bought it from told me that I may need to install XP for both of the drives to work. Says there is a "plug-in port" for the factory-installed CD-ROM drive only, but by putting in Windows XP both units will work, and will bypass the need for the plug in port .

3. Is it always a good idea to have TWO hard drives in a recording unit, and why?

4. Anything else I need to know? Please enlighten me!

I would like to have this resolved by tomorrow night, so I can lay down some tracks on it.


Thanks for any help.


VI
 
1. Yes.....I would go with XP
2. Yes you can have 2 CD drives
3. It is nice to have 2 HD's 1 dedicated to audio only

IDE 1 Primary Drive (Master) CD drive slave to master 1
IDE 2 Secondary Drive audio (master) CDRW slave to master 2
 
Stealthtech!!!!

Don't leave me! :D

Thanks for your reply...

Should I uninstall Windows 98 before I add XP, of should I install it over my 98?

And what do you think the guy from the computer place was saying anyway about the audio plug-in port?

Two HD's eh?

So..One is for pretty much booting up the computer only, and the other for recording only?

I have no idea how to partition them to do that...I'll learn, I suppose.

Thanks again...Anyone else have any advice?
 
Congrats on your purchase!

Partitioning involves splitting a single drive into two separate sections pretty much isolated from each other. This is handy if you want to have two operating systems on one drive.

For your purpose, there is no real need to partition a single drive.

When you have two drives, they are simply set up together under one operating system. Typically with two hard drives, you will see two separate directories in explorer: one for each drive.

I have an athlon with two 7200 rpm drives. One drive is for the operating system and all software. When I record, all my wav files go into the second drive.

Hope this helps some. Outside of repeating Stealth's sentiment of using XP instead of 98 (because XP allows 98 compatible software, not typically vice versa), I don't have answers to your other q's.

Cy
 
You did help me, Cyrokk ol' buddy...

You are saying I should install an extra hard drive and use it like you do, right? I have an extra 20 MG. HD laying around.

Thankyoubaby.



VI
 
Yeah, if you got another compatible hard drive, then by all means install it.

There may be a more efficient way to use the hard drives, but I like having all my wav files on one drive. Makes it much more organized and I don't ever have to worry about deleting something important, audio or system related. Some people record entire albums on them and then remove the HD as backup.

Cy
 
Thanks, Cy...

I'll install that other drive tonight.

And I am NOT going to bed until I have my questions resolved.

Of course, my wife may have left me by then.


:D
VI
 
2 drives is fine.

If you're only gonna have 384 MB, use win98. if you got 512 MB or more use XP. Using and DAW app, and loading a complex song in XP with 384 MB will put you in file swap hell. You need more memory for XP.

If you install XP, do it from scratch. Upgrading makes the OS more bulky and slow since the registry will still have lots of old win98 related crap in it.

The audio thing with the cdrw is the analog audio cable. There's probably only one place to plug one in, so only one drive can have analog audio. A non issue it can be solved by having windows XP, OR win98 with the latest media player 9. It still can play stuff off the drive digitally even with win98. Not sure about other apps though.
 
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