Do You Use A Separate Hard Drive For Audio

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken7
  • Start date Start date

Do You Use A Separate Hard Drive For Audio

  • Yes

    Votes: 279 82.1%

  • No

    Votes: 61 17.9%
  • Total voters
    340
urobolus.com said:
All 3 of my drives are Seagate SATAII's. I run an 80gb for the OS and software, 350gb for samples like East West Quantum Leap products, and 80gb for personal project files for Sonar. Runs much better than keeping it all on one hard drive.

Something semi hard drive related that I've been wondering is disabling the paging file in windows. I used to do this because a lot of tech nerds said it makes your computer faster as it makes the computer use your memory instead of using a certain amount of the hard drive as RAM. But a lot of music PC tweaking websites say you should enable it at 1.5x-2x your physical RAM. I haven't done a close side-by-side comparison, but it seems disabling the paging file would be more efficient.

Just some other thoughts...
Click to expand...

You don't want to DISABLE the paging file, but you do want to limit its size and keep it a FIXED size. If you have a TON of RAM (I have 4GB) you can run a small one (I run a fixed 256MB pagefile). Have the pagefile on the fastest disk that is not your system disk.

There is a registry tweak you can do that prevents the OS kernel from ever paging, and you should DEFINITELY do this. Keep that lil puppy in RAM, and your disk subsystem will love you for it. Download Tune Up Utilities 2007, fre 30-day fully functional timebomb trial, the tweak is in there. HUGE difference if you have a lot of RAM.
 
I not only use a seperate hard drive for audio, I use a seperate hard drive for ALL data. Each of my 4-5 PCs (number varies on my mood) has 2 drives.

On each system one drive holds the OS and program files and it regularly gets backed up to an image file to a second, larger data drive in the same system (I use Symantec Ghost to do this, there are other programs that do the same thing). The second drive holds the OS backup plus any data files, and those data files get backed up to either DVD-R. or to a central server.
 
I just upgraded my Ram and HD and used the Symantec Ghost for back up.

Tonight before all is reformatted it will also back up to a CDs.

I think I said that right. :D I have someone helping me, because I am a noob PC 'r.

Eventually another PC system will be created for Audio only. In the meantime, I have considered an external harddrive, just for Audio with this PCU and may still do so next month.



I had been looking at the Seagate ones.

urobolus.com, since you have 3, you must like them a lot.
 
true-eurt said:
I just upgraded my Ram and HD and used the Symantec Ghost for back up.

Tonight before all is reformatted it will also back up to a CDs.

I think I said that right. :D I have someone helping me, because I am a noob PC 'r.

Eventually another PC system will be created for Audio only. In the meantime, I have considered an external harddrive, just for Audio with this PCU and may still do so next month.



I had been looking at the Seagate ones.

urobolus.com, since you have 3, you must like them a lot.
Click to expand...
I've got a Western Digital for my pc and one for my laptop. Best investment I ever made. I am not familiar with Seagate myself, but I know a guy who has a terabite one. No complaints from him (he doesn't do audio, he burns DVD's to it).
 
Old thread, but I'm partial to western digital drives.

I've always used them and never had any problems. Being a creature of habit..
 
I just got myself a Western Digital with 1 whole Terrabyte for €91!
Saved my audio files after I had to reformat because of a trojan.
Definitely worth it!
 
I do audio recording AND video editing. I have a freshly formatted internal system/program drive and I have a 500mb external drive to dedicate to project files.

Is it OK to have all my audio projects and all my video projects on the same unpartitioned external drive? Or should I create a seperate partition for each?
 
lyricist said:
I'm going to.(external) but how exactly do you record into the external HD?
Click to expand...

Unless you really, really need portable HD, then stick to a seperate internal HD for audio storage. I say this because mine fell onto a carpet floor about 1ft from the small table it was on and it died. I am very fussy with my gear and it was just one of those things. Some of them are probably better than others but keep that in mind.

:)
 
TragikRemix said:
Old thread, but I'm partial to western digital drives.

I've always used them and never had any problems. Being a creature of habit..
Click to expand...

The WD Passports are awesome. I've used three of them, a 60GB, a 120GB and a 160GB since they came out and I've never had a failure.

My experience with Maxtor hasn't been as good. Their internal drives are great, but their externals haven't lasted without some catastrophic failure at the 2-4 year point.
 
10953144851-Computer.png


these partitions are over 6 hard drives in my pc.

C - windows 7
D - my mp3 collection
E - my documents, original music, pictures, writing, etc
H - recordings only
I - Samples - this one has piano and bass and some other disk streaming samples on it as well as RAM based
J - Samples 2 - this has orchestral samples on it as well as some movies
L - BFD - all my drum samples are here
O - Backup - all my mp3, documents, and recordings are backed up here

So i have 4 different drives for audio, so that streaming

Recordings
Drums
Orchestra
Piano/Bass

can all be done separately and therefore take the strain off of the drives... and also contain their largeness :)

These next are on my other backup pc

W - Secondary Backed up Mp3, My documents
X - Recordings Backed up
Y - tertiary picture backup, original music backup
Z - email backup, misc...


yeah, im obsessed with backup.
 
I run the Ableton Live app, temp folder and decoding cache off of my C: drive (WD 250Gb,) but I keep the Live Library (samples and presets) on a separate internal (J:) drive.

I save projects and sets to the J: drive and backup weekly (w/ SyncToy) to an External Maxtor 500Gb that I try to keep off-site most of time. If I've got something I want to backup but the external is elsewhere, I'll store to a flashdrive and keep it with me.
 
Would it be a bad idea to store the sound libraries for 3 different MIDI programs onto the same physical hard drive (not the system drive)? In other words, have one hard drive for all 3 programs sound libraries separate from the system drive?
 
Did answer "Raid array"

Now I have a complete computer for a DAW and its not on the network or internet connected ( want to keep it clean as possable ) :D
 
I use a Mac Mini.... :)
So no options to add an extra hd internally.

However, it's plenty fast for my recording needs.
I did a performance test yesterday and it appears that the CPU is probably going to be the first to max out, depending on how many plugins I'd use. The hard drive doesn't break a sweat doing 18 tracks @ 24/96.

I do have an external Lacie drive to back up to and I occasionally copy data (mostly my photos) to my girlfriend's PC.
 
I use a seperate internal HD for all data that I care about for several reasons. If your OS needs reloading it would sure help not to have to worrya bout moving all that data around. Your secondary HD can also be an upgrade in speed, not that it matters so much in recording audio but in transfering files. Serial ATA is pretty fast. IDE, USB are fine though .

Hard drives are so cheap now its a no brainer. Internal or external.

I would even go as far as adding an external drive to back up your data drive. I personally use MS sync toy. Its free and it is very simple to use. You can sync one way or echo as they call it.
 
I use my main 350gb HD for the os and programs, i also have a 1TB drive in the computer for recording, any samples i make and projects. I also have a 1tb external drive for backing up projects and other bits n bob's like vst's.

I also have a hard drive caddy for transferring projects to and from the laptop which has a 120 gb drive in it.


I think having at least two hard drives is a must for home recording studios.

I found out the hard way :o about 2 years ago i only used 1x 500 gb HD partitioned in to 2 drives i had all my projects on 1 partition and the os and programs on the other. I never used to back up ether :o. Any way HD failed nearly 5 years worth of projects gone :mad:
 
Okay!
It took a while but I think I finally know what you're asking.
I use a dedicated PC for recording. It is off line, No spy-ware, no scheduled scans, no Skype and has all programs on the main hard drive.
I also have an external hard drive attached. This is where I store all of my files.
This means, by the way that when I open a DAW and go looking for a file, I get it from the external hard drive.
Now when the power goes out or the PC crashes, I keep my files.
Every week or so I back up my files in the main hard drive and also in the family PC.
I'm well protected.
 
My external drive is 1 terabyte and I currently have app 100GB free space and I still don't have all the tunes I want.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top