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
10-20 works fine for me. And if you are only going to do a session with it, you should be fine. Might get tighter if you are going 24/96, but other than that you should be fine to use up those old drives. Get a removable bay, and you can use all your old drives.
 
Great thread. Last night I installed a 120GB internal drive and I was wondering: why partition it?

Other than the obvious possibilities(I'm no techie, but it's probably easier to defrag in parts, right? and it probably takes less time to open files on smaller partitions since they're not as dispersed)... I couldn't think of a great reason.

If my 120G drive fails, it fails, whether I lose one 111G partition or three 37G partitions, right?

Second question: I can just keep using my old 40G drive as a master and run my apps in that, then save all my projects onto the new 120, right? is that what you are advocating in this thread?

Thanks.
 
I use three hard drives currently.
#1 SYSTEM Drive 80 gig SATA w/small backup partition
#2 AUDIO STORAGE Drive 20 gig ATA
#3 VIDEO STORAGE Drive 40 gig ATA

Sometimes #2 and #3 share space, until I can afford some BIG drives.
 
I use a completely seperate PC. I have my audio only pc and my general purpose PC. Easier for me that way.
 
Over the years I have noticed that partitions can get lost without a drive actually failing. Now I never partition my drives. Drives are way to cheap, so I just buy more.
 
sorry for my ultimate newbness but ive been working on a laptop with one drive for 2 years and just now got an external. what exactly goes on the other drive. is it just project files and audio clips or do like vsti's go on there too
 
Having data you want to keep or losing would make you want to cry on a deadicated hard drive is the way to go for lots of reasons.

One being, say, you have to reformat you Windows harddrive. You reinstall your audio program(s), point it to the saved audio files and configuration files (You can create a Config directory on the second drive.

Another being...it will all be faster because the CPU can go get program data while fetching/writing music.
 
I built a server to house all music files and some VST plugin files. So Sonar accesses its data on the server. The servers disks are SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration. So far it is working quite well. ;)
 
cephus said:
I said:

My question is this, how big of a hard drive would be needed to record a live band (4 tracks into delta 44) for a whole 45-minute set @ 44.1? I have a bajillion 10 and 20 gig hard disks laying around. It'd be nice to use them for one session.


This is a stupid question because it would take 3 days to open a session with that much wav data. Live recordings will require someone to stop/start the recordings.

Boocephus
http://boocephus.blogspot.com
Click to expand...

24 bit 44.1KHz audio requires about 6mb per minute, per mono track. So, you would require about 24mb per minute.

Do your own math. ;)
 
I've been using two drives on my recording computer for 4 years now, and it worked so well I added a second drive to my graphics computer.

The one I record on also has 2 external drives for backup, allowing me to keep it lean and mean.
 
Since it seems like there's some opinions floating around here on HD's, I have a related issue. I'm thinking about adding a nice usb 2.0 drive because I'm encountering some problems. Basically, the issue is that my audio playback stutters, even when playing CD's (using my firebox as the soundcard). Details can be found in my post here- https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=185661

Thanks for any help.
 
fraserhutch said:
If you are referring to using an external harddrive as a second drive, I'll agree with you. However, there exist valid performance reasons for using a second harddrive on a seperate controller for audio, i.e., disk 1 as the master on IDE controller 1, and disk 2 as master on IDE controller 2.
Click to expand...

I wanted to do that but it wouldn't work out with my two DVD drives. The cable between the two drives isn't long enough.
 
i dont use an external drive but i do have a seperate internal hard drive that i use for samples, sounds and vocals as well as many of my session files. the default hard drive is purely for programs
 
lyricist said:
I'm going to.(external) but how exactly do you record into the external HD?
Click to expand...

You make a file folder on your ext. drive just like on your C drive, same way as saving a text file only this is audio instead. Your recording software will ask you to do that........then have at it.
 
Yes, I have a 2nd HD - 200Gb.

I'm planning on getting a 3rd HD soon for VSTis and sample libraries...
 
Since this was posted from a laptop perspective, I use an external FW drive, but I'm wondering what rack mount options are out there other than the Glyph drives. My current external drive is starting to make some nasty noises due to traveling around with it and it's starting to worry me. I know all about the Glyph drives but I was wondering if there were any other quiet rack mount options for drives. Any thoughts?
 
All this time, I felt I was doing something wrong by saving all my audio data to an external firewire drive. I had a computer crash on me in the past. I had to format and reinstall the O.S. I Lost a lot of data and quickly opted for the external LaCie drive. I was under the impression that saving directly to external drives means that I am not in any danger of using my audio data. Are you guys telling me that I'm right for once?
 
I also Use a Complete seperate PC for recording Music, I also have a other PC Just for Video editing and the PC I use on the web...

My Music PC Just has a Single 60gb HD in it and Just audio Recording software and CD Burning software and so Far I haven"t had any Problems with Accessing Data or Drive speed but I will Probably add a 200gb Drive eventually for Music.....

Cheers
 
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