2 hard drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter dnl88
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dnl88

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Ok I've been around and it seems that to playback alot of tracks u need 2 hard drives.
My audio hard drive would be a maxtor s-ata 80mB
would a 40GB udma133 2MB cache be good for system disk (and other programs)? or do u need to get a really fast system drive?
 
I'm a believer in dual hard drives. It's easy to do and it works well. Both my computers have 2 drives. The recording computer has 2 40G 7200RPM hard drives and it works fine. I archive projects, once they are done, to an external drive so I don't really need a larger one...


...but if I were doing it over I'd put an 80G second drive in it, just because it's so cheap and easy to do. 40G is plenty for the boot drive since I only have Adobe Audition, CD Architect and other audio-related software on it.

My other computer is used for email and graphics and has a 30G boot drive (and when I bought it, that was enormous) and I recently added an 80G secondary drive which holds all my graphics.
 
could I know your computer specs, just to compare?

so youre saying it'll work well then?
 
Yeah .... I'm also doing fine just using ATA 133 drives for both the OS and audio.
A SATA drive for the audio would offer increased transfer rate, but you really only want a SATA controller that is natively part of the chipset.
If your mobo offers SATA support via a Silicon Image chip .... Don't use it for your audio drive, because it is on the PCI bus and will compete with the soundcard for bandwidth.
Silicon Image SATA is fine for normal computing and games, but I highly recommend not using it in a DAW. PCI bandwidth is to precious for our intentions.
 
Yes but what mobo do you have?
The Silicon Image chip that I speak of is on the mobo. It's not an add-in card.
The mobo I use is an Abit IC7-G (Intel 875P chipset), it offers native SATA support via the 875P chipset and it also offer SATA support via a Silicon Image chip. Thus boasting 4 channels of SATA.
Many mobo's that only offer two channels of SATA are using the Silicon Image chip.

-Edit to add- Unless of course the 2 channels of SATA are provided via the chipset.
 
i've got an asus p4p800-e deluxe mb with 865pe chipset which i think offers native s-ata
 
Yup .... your good to go. The 865 is the same as the 875 in regard to native SATA support.
 
To answer dnl88's question, I run (recording) P4, 512MbRAM, XP Home, 2 CD burners [Plextor Premium, no-name for different tasks], 2X40G. A real simple setup that runs like a train. My hotrodding and motorcycle racing days taught me that a simple machine that works is worth any number of state-of-the-art nickel rockets that don't. The graphics box is P4, 256RAM (not enough, that's the next upgrade), XP Home, CD burner, 30G + 80G. My son in law loaded it with all kinds of "kewl" software that I have gradually uninstalled until it's a fairly lean machine.

Sorry, without digging out my spec sheets I don't know what kind of MB or whatever: PC technology is mature enough that any competent designer is going to make something that'll work. But I have a bad attitude: I'm not a gear snob. If it works, it works. End of story. I'd rather obsess over the music than the hardware. Just me, I guess.
 
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