2nd drive once again...

  • Thread starter Thread starter getuhgrip
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getuhgrip

getuhgrip

Bring Back Transfat!
Finally sat down to install second drive in my daw this morning.
A mind screw in itself: Ok, 80 pin ribbon goes to IDE 2 cause it's secondary master. Jumper on CDRW goes on slave cause it's.......

40 pin ribbon goes to IDE 1 then to the 5400 drive C..........


Anyway, I got the smaller 5400 drive set as IDE 1 master.
CD as IDE 1 slave.
Larger 7200 drive as IDE 2 master with CDRW as it's slave.

Both drives have been fdisk'd and reformatted.

Now, I'm installing windows on small (drive C) drive.

Here's my questions:

Is there any reason not to use Nortons as my scan disk/defrag program?
If not, it should just be installed on C but not D drive, right?

What programs should be installed on the D (music storage) drive?

If none, then how does that work? Just make a file called "Music" and transfer all songs to it?

Last one (for now), When I'm recording tracks in Ntrack, is there a way to get the tracks to go directly to the D drive, or should they stay in the C drive until mastered and completed?

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Here's my questions:

Is there any reason not to use Nortons as my scan disk/defrag program?
If not, it should just be installed on C but not D drive, right?

If you want to use Norton speeddisk or whatever it's called, install it on C yes. I don't think it's a useful program IMO.

What programs should be installed on the D (music storage) drive?

No programs should be installed on your music storage drive. Just audio data

If none, then how does that work? Just make a file called "Music" and transfer all songs to it?

Create folders on your music drive. i.e. Song 1, Song 2, Song 3 etc. So, before you start a new song in N-track, create a folder on the music drive called 'song X' . Then when you start the new song in N-Track, point it to that folder.

Last one (for now), When I'm recording tracks in Ntrack, is there a way to get the tracks to go directly to the D drive, or should they stay in the C drive until mastered and completed?

Not familiar with N-Track but I assume there is a way to 'point' it to the appropriate folder on your music drive. You don't want to be recording the data to C.
 
Thanks Bro!

I didn't expect to catch anyone this early in the day.
Right now I'm just going through the "where's the disk that had that driver?" routine.

Glad you spoke up. I didn't want to continue loading anything until I knew how I needed to do it.

Thanks again,
Rick



Hey! I might actually get a song recorded this weekend! :D
 
Do not ever, ever, install any norton utilites on your machine. They offer few benefits and pose substantial risk to your system. I'm speaking from many years of helping people remove norton from their computers (e.g. reinstalling windows).

Also avoid programs like "FirstAid" or anything that "makes windows safer and more reliable." Windows 9x is beyond help, and you're better off just being careful with your machine.

As far as n-Track goes, it's kind of a pain. You have to go into Preferences and setup your file locations for each project. The pain is that these preferences aren't project dependent so you have to be very careful. n-Track file management is a bitch.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slack,

> Do not ever, ever, install any norton utilites on your machine. <

I have to respectfully disagree. I have used Norton Utilities with Windows since NU version 3, and I used the DOS versions since they first came out in the early 1980s. Not only is Norton's Speed Disk a LOT faster than the one that comes with Windows (98, not 2000), there are many other useful utilities like its Protected Files, the Registry optimizer (part of Optimization Wizard), and WinDoctor.

> They offer few benefits and pose substantial risk to your system. <

Again, I have never had a moments trouble with any of the components in Norton. What problems have you seen that you can directly attribute to Norton Utilities?

> Also avoid programs like "FirstAid" or anything that "makes windows safer and more reliable." <

Now that I surely agree with. :)

--Ethan
 
You may have problems slaving the CD roms with the HD's. Some newer MOBO's work better if you keep the HD's and the CD's on their own IDE ports because of the faster ATA specs. That is my understanding but I could be wrong.
 
I have had to deal with two machines in which the Norton disk management/peformance utilities hosed Windows. I can't remember how many times I've seen the installation/upgrade/uninstallation of Norton hose Windows, or hose Windows upgrades.

Of course these people weren't exactly whiz kids. I also can't tell you for sure *what* they did, only that they've said "well, I ran Norton such and such and...". I manage around 40 users at work here (been here for about 7 years), and of course any time they have a problem with their computers at home I'm doing pro-bono work. Is that how you spell "pro bono?" I'm talking like doing free work, not about liking that guy from U2. But I digress...

After seeing a particular software package kill windows a few times I tend to dislike it...especially when I'm the one cleaning up the mess. Granted I'm still using Windows so that kind of makes me a hipocrit by default! haha.

Now I'm sure that norton utilities in the right hands might be beneficial. I've never installed them on any of my machines, but I know that they're packed full of features. "Packed full of features" is a synonym for "dude, why in the hell did you do that?"

At any rate, it is my opinion that the average Windows 9x user not install Norton Utilities. That's the last I'll say because we're kind of off topic (my fault) and this will just turn into a "yeah well I've never seen problems" "oh yeah well I have seen problem" "oh yeah well how do you know you've really seen problems" "yeah well how do you know you've never had problems" kind of argument. hehe

That's the way it works though. You might have a product that 1000 people have had no problems with, but one guy just isn't having any luck at all. Or you might have a product that 1000 people have had nothing but problems with but one guy just thinks it's the cat's meow. Take western digital hard drives, for instance. Of the 10 or so hard drives I've had fail over the past maybe 10 years, an overwhelming majority (like 8 of those 10) have been Western Digital, and they've been running in many cases alongside Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, and various other drives. Now everytime I mention hating western digital, there's always a couple people who say they've always used western digital drives and have never had a problem. Heh, well, that's the way it goes!

I hope that anybody who read a person's opinion in this or any forum in regards to the quality of a product realizes that it is indeed just that *one person's* opinion. There are so many things that can go wrong or go right when you're dealing with any computer system that it's impossible to tell if something is bad just by one review.

However, I will STILL recommend that people not install Norton Utilities. Horf!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slack, you're the LAST guy I would ever attempt to second guess.

But what IS a decent defrag program?
Windows takes forever. Is there something I can use that you feel safe with?


Whatta ya mean by "project dependant"?

Never mind....I'll take that one to the Ntrack hut cause I've got more setup questions anyway. :cool:
 
I am generally with Slack on Norton issue, BUT:
First, If one installs something like Norton System Works, he should disable all automatic monitoring options, otherwise it becomes too dominant and the system will become sluggish.
Second, one should never (I mean NEVER) allow Norton Find and Fix Problems to fix the "problems" automatically. Now, THIS will mess up the system. Naturally, this is what most unexperienced users would do. At the same time it can be useful if you go through problems one by one and manually fix the ones that are true problems.
Norton Speed Disk is faster than MS.
Norton Antivirus is less destructive on your system, than McAfee.
 
getuhgrip,

Seriously though man, if you install Norton you won't hurt my feelings or anything. If they broke every single machine they were installed on then they wouldn't exist right? Maybe I've just had a string of bad luck. So weigh in everybody's opinion. If you've used Norton's defrag in the past and like it, then use it! Ethan's not exactly a lightweight, and he likes Norton, so who knows.

Personally I'm a big semi-anti-defragger. Some people defrag so often it really cracks me up. My "current projects" partition on my audio drive is 15GB and has about 1GB of space left. There are about 9 projects going on it. I'm adding and deleting files all over the place all the time. The last project I mixed (ametth sent me his blatchford tracks to play with, fun!) was 24 tracks of 24bit/44.1khz audio. I had 6 tracks with Waves C1 compressors, two Waves Trueverb plugins on the aux busses, one delay, one de-esser, one lofi, and one resonant filter (northpole I think). Now of course I'm still using an old BX motherboard which I just love. These old things ("old", hehe) were so well made....ahh... oh, and of course the additional revolutions of a 7200RPM hard drive sure do help a lot compared to older 5400 and slower drives, in which fragmentation really seemed to be a noticable problem.

At any rate. There are some tricks to defragging:

1) Defrag at night silly man! Don't sit there watching the defragger!

2) If you're going to be concerned about fragmentation, then defrag all the damn time. The more you defrag, the faster the defrags.

3) If you work on one or a few projects at a time, you can create a small audio partition of say 2-3GB. At the end of your projects, just move all the files off the partition and voila, it's defragged. Then you only have to defrag your OS partition once every so often.

Don't get me wrong, I do defrag. I just only do it once every so often....like once every 6-12 months. After a while you certainly can start to "feel" it.

Again, your mileage will vary!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Agree with S2K 100%. I've seen Norton do far more harm than good on many many machines. What kind of harm? Name it, everything from GPF's, error's at boot up, 'illegal operations'.

If you want to run anti-virus, I recommend EZ-Antivirus. www.my-etrust.com

As for defrag, I haven't for literally years. I don't noticed any ill effects.
 
Slack,

> I can't remember how many times I've seen the installation/upgrade/uninstallation of Norton hose Windows, or hose Windows upgrades. <

I've uninstalled/reinstalled Norton Utilities or SystemWorks only a few times, for other people. And I've never upgraded my own versions other than the minor updates you can download on the 'net. Maybe that means I have to stop buying a new computer so often! :)

> Of course these people weren't exactly whiz kids. I also can't tell you for sure *what* they did, only that they've said "well, I ran Norton such and such and...". <

A really big problem is all the crap that is preinstalled on so many new computers. And all the shareware and (lame commercial programs) people put on their systems. I hear this not only about Norton, but many other software I use all the time that's "known" to be buggy. When in fact it's probably something else. Case in point:

A few years ago I helped a friend who couldn't stay online for more than 15 minutes before his broswer would crash so hard he had to power down. I installed Norton Utilities and ran WinDoctor which found 700-800 errors! It took two passes to fix them all, and his computer has been fine ever since. What was the problem? Who the heck knows! All the crap shareware and freeware his brother-in-law installed? Probably one of those. Or maybe a combination that happens one time in a hundred.

All the time I hear people complain that Windows always crashes, or that Windows 98 sucks but Windows 2000 is much more stable. I've used Windows 98 since SE came out, and I have NEVER had ANY of those problems. I am convinced the real issue is having too many crap programs installed. ("Crap programs" is a technical term.) In fact, I just finished an article for Keyboard magazine (assuming they accept it) explaining exactly these issues: how to keep your computer lean and clean and running smoothly.

--Ethan
 
WS,

> First, If one installs something like Norton System Works, he should disable all automatic monitoring options <

Yes.

> Second, one should never (I mean NEVER) allow Norton Find and Fix Problems to fix the "problems" automatically. <

Not always true, but generally Yes.

> it can be useful if you go through problems one by one and manually fix the ones that are true problems. <

Definitely Yes! And sometimes informative too.

> Norton Speed Disk is faster than MS.

Hell Yes. :)

> Norton Antivirus is less destructive on your system, than McAfee. <

I've never had McAfee, but every year when they compare these products, PC Magazine continually ranks Norton's more highly.

--Ethan
 
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