How important is it to use 2 hard drives? Or partition a hard drive? I'm a serious amateur, not a power user & so far it's all on one HD on my computer, along with everything else & works fine. I'm researching ahead for whenever I upgrade. Thanks.
There are no end of people here who will recommend separate drives for everything, with merit.
I use one SSD drive for everything and I'm getting on fine, but I don't use large sample libraries or anything like that.
Using drive partitions won't achieve anything other than organisation.
Regardless of the number of partitions you have, a HDD can only read from, or write to one place at a time.
Overall, it depends on what you're doing, and what kind of drive you're using.
If you're doing 5-10 tracks with only a handful of plugs and no vst instruments or real time pitch/time correction, a standard built in hdd is likely to be fine.
Very damn important! But not for reasons I think you're driving at. Hard drives fail all the time. Back your stuff up! The performance benefit from using multiple hard drives for audio work is almost negligible, unless you are streaming tons of samples from one disk and recording multiple tracks to another at the same time for periods longer than you have enough RAM to cache the recordings in. Not doing that? You'll never actually notice a difference then - count on it.
Multiple disks in RAID-0 and the performance difference in SSDs is a different story...one that is actually noticeable at times.
This is only a convenience thing or for people who want to install multiple operating systems on one disk (or need to use multiple file systems on one disk for some other reason). Any performance or safety talk about doing this is nonsense, including the technically correct notion that more data is read from the outside of a disk in one revolution than from the inside...in reality nobody can tell the difference.
OP- Typhoid pointed out something I completely forgot about; I was only thinking about the performance point of view.
Backups are very important!
I do actually have a second drive that I move stuff over to for safety.
Nothing fancy. Just an old 5400 speed laptop drive in a USB encolsure.
Very damn important! But not for reasons I think you're driving at. Hard drives fail all the time. Back your stuff up! The performance benefit from using multiple hard drives for audio work is almost negligible, unless you are streaming tons of samples from one disk and recording multiple tracks to another at the same time for periods longer than you have enough RAM to cache the recordings in. Not doing that? You'll never actually notice a difference then - count on it.
Multiple disks in RAID-0 and the performance difference in SSDs is a different story...one that is actually noticeable at times.
This is only a convenience thing or for people who want to install multiple operating systems on one disk (or need to use multiple file systems on one disk for some other reason). Any performance or safety talk about doing this is nonsense, including the technically correct notion that more data is read from the outside of a disk in one revolution than from the inside...in reality nobody can tell the difference.
Using one HD, set multiple partitions. A partition creates a new HD out of the existing through the master boot record.
Short answer:
One HD is fine, but I would set an OS partition and a working partition.
Long answer:
For a Windows system, it is extremely important as far as performace is concerned. Reason being that Windows handles data storage differently than OSX and Linux. Hence Disk Defragmentation. IIRC, bits and pieces of information get stored on different sectors of a disk, kind of like how a RAID system (setup for performance as opposed to storage/backup) handles data. Computer reads locations out of the registry and loads it up. A smaller HD tends to access the data quicker. For EVERY Windows system, it's always a good idea to set your most used apps on the OS partition or HD, and all your other junk on a second, at the very least. Then you should run a defrag at least monthly. With a large HD, you'd probably have to leave it overnight as oppsed to an hour. With a good filing system on the second HD, you could run a defrag more like 3-4 months.
OSX and Linux handle their filesystems through journaling, which doesn't require a defrag.
While it won't be noticable at first, after about 6 months or so, you will notice slower boot times, slower load times, etc. When I used to build PCs, I would reformat and reinstall every six months. Win7 has come leaps and bounds, but I still wouldn't go without defragging or partitioning.
The only downside of using one HD with multiple partitions is that if the HD goes...everything goes...unless you are really a backup fanatic and always save copies to another/external drive.
I actually run 4 drives in my DAW...1HD-OS, 2HDs-Audio Work/Work Backup, 1HD-Final Mixes. On top of that, I also back all of that to external drives...and on top of that, I will burn DVDs of projects when they are finished, to include all the work files and the final mixes. I also carry one external backup drive in my laptop bag when I go to my day gig, that way I have a copy of all files at a different location, in the even of some disaster at my studio location.
(Knock on wood...)
At the very least, if you only have one HDD, get an external drive strictly for backups. When (not if) your HDD dies you have a backup you can restore on a new drive. Just backup often enough to make the backup useful.
A friend of mine had his drive die on his computer. He had a backup that he did when he bought the computer. So basically it was his computer 3 years ago.
The only downside of using one HD with multiple partitions is that if the HD goes...everything goes...unless you are really a backup fanatic and always save copies to another/external drive.
I actually run 4 drives in my DAW...1HD-OS, 2HDs-Audio Work/Work Backup, 1HD-Final Mixes. On top of that, I also back all of that to external drives...and on top of that, I will burn DVDs of projects when they are finished, to include all the work files and the final mixes. I also carry one external backup drive in my laptop bag when I go to my day gig, that way I have a copy of all files at a different location, in the even of some disaster at my studio location.
(Knock on wood...)
All good replies. Speaking of HD failure...are there any warning signs other than noise or slowing down? ie I don't know when to upgrade. I hate to rush it as it gets expensive if they only last 5 years or so...including solid state HD's so I've read.?
All good replies. Speaking of HD failure...are there any warning signs other than noise or slowing down? ie I don't know when to upgrade. I hate to rush it as it gets expensive if they only last 5 years or so...including solid state HD's so I've read.?
HDs will last longer than 5 years. I have a few from the 90's that still work. I think one I have is a small drive out of an old Compaq 75 mhz Pentium I system.
To answer your question:
YES! If you perform regular maintenance on your computer, not only will you prolong the life of your drive, but you will be able to detect when it's on it's last legs.
***BEFORE PERFORMING INTERIOR MAINTENANCE ON A COMPUTER, GROUND YOURSELF***
Open the case (if you can!), use compressed air to blow out all the dust, verify the integrity of the power cables, make sure nothing's rattling around, etc. Most of the noise you will hear are the fans of the Power Supply and the Processor. Newer computers will have a fan on the video card as well. When the fan starts making a whirring noise, it may be time to replace that component. Heat is a computer's worst enemy, and it gets hot in there.
Defragment your drive frequently. In addition to running disk defragmenter, you also want to verify the integrity of the drive and scan for bad sectors. Basically, sectors are blocks of data storage (again, files and programs are stored in different sectors of a disk). When a drive has a bad sector, it is a pretty good indication your drive may fail soon. In fact, if Windows cannot repair the sectors, you may lose the data stored on those sectors.
OSX allows you to do this from the First Aid tab of Disk Utility (Verify Disk, Repair Disk. Only press repair if bad sectors are found. You may lose data!) I don't have a Windows setup handy ATM, but a quick Google search brought this up (I'm going to assume these are the directions for Windows 7, although Vista and XP both have the same utility):
You can help solve some computer problems and improve the performance of your computer by making sure that your hard disk has no errors.
Open Computer by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Computer.
Right-click the hard disk drive that you want to check, and then click Properties.
Click the Tools tab, and then, under Error-checking, click Check Now. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
To automatically repair problems with files and folders that the scan detects, select Automatically fix file system errors. Otherwise, the disk check will simply report problems but not fix them.
To perform a thorough disk check, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This scan attempts to find and repair physical errors on the hard disk itself, and it can take much longer to complete.
To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
Click Start.
Depending upon the size of your hard disk, this may take several minutes. For best results, don't use your computer for any other tasks while it's checking for errors.
I think a case could be made for at least 2 drives years ago but since the advent of really fast SATA drives that benefit is gone.
The case for a SSD for system and DAW seems tenuous but I think they do give faster boot times? They are in anycase fairly cost effective now, being about a pound a gig and a 100G drive should be more than big enough for W7/64 and a couple of sequencers.
Back to mechanicals, yes they can fail and thus if you just have OS and DAW on it a swop or format for a bad infection is fairly easy if you have all your work on a separate drive.
Having had 2 usb external drives break (I know one at least was dropped!) I have replaced them with a 2TB network drive, behind a chair, in another room. Thus I do not need to have more than one (of 4) PCs powered up to access my backed up files.
If I was smart enough I could even read the drive over the internet....But I am not!
Yes, that's a very important reason to have two hard drives. I'll also mention that partitions are useful within one drive. I segregate data that changes often and fragments the drive from static data that rarely changes. For example, my audio samples rarely change but my temporary Internet files change all the time. It takes many hours to defragment a large drive, but only a few minutes to defragment a smaller partition. So this alone is a good reason to use partitions.
The reason I started this thread is that I just upgraded to Sonar Producer & the file is large & has exceeded the capacity of my backup drive. I think my best bet is to get a solid state backup - 500 gigabytes to give me room for expansion. Any thoughts or suggestions of what & where to get one at a gd price? Thanks again.
I use a couple of LaCie drives.
The one I keep in my laptop bag is one of the LaCie "rugged" drives, with the rubberized cover.
It's a 1/2 TB, and not much bigger than an Ipod. Only cost me like $100.
The reason I started this thread is that I just upgraded to Sonar Producer & the file is large & has exceeded the capacity of my backup drive. I think my best bet is to get a solid state backup - 500 gigabytes to give me room for expansion. Any thoughts or suggestions of what & where to get one at a gd price? Thanks again.
I'm on today!
