Double Hard Disk

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nocaster

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I've bought and installed a new HD (Maxtor-Quantum 20GB 7200rpm) on my PC PIII 450 Mhz, 256 SDRAM - Mainboard MICROSTAR- chipset VIA (...!).
My goal is to have my first HD with all the normal stuff I use (and my wife uses) like WIN98, Word, Explorer, Outlook, bla bla bla and the second to use only for music recording with my terratec souncard.
I've inbstalled WIN2000 because I've read it's more stable and want to use ntrack, fruity loops, cooledit few programs more.
I pass trough an analog mixer into soundcard with my bass (directly into mixer) and with guitar (ac & electric) trough a zoom 9000 used as direct input.
Drum tracks with Alesis SR16 midi used on fruity loops then to ntrack.

Any suggestion with this system, bout resources, setup, memory, whatelse?

I also have problems with USB and Win2000.I'm sure it's because of VIA chipset (I've read a lot of similar threads in othjer dedicated sites). Help, please.

thanks
nocaster
 
A few tips:

Stay away from your USB when you are recording. Use your regular keyboard port and regular mouse ports. Disconnect any camera plugged in the USB. Goal is to keep USB clean, if possible, take the USB driver removed from your system.

Reason: USB is a CPU hog. That is why it is fast, the CPU checks it many times a jiffy. Problem is it takes away from all all your other processes.

It would be ideal if you could connect your hard drives on separate EIDE cables. Your computer has two ports, EIDE 1 and 2. You normally would want your operating systems, office productivity programs in port 1. It is okay to have your files (sound files) on port 2. When I say productivity - that includes the n-track program files, and the wave files on drive D. I am assuming you did not partition any of your hard drive. Make sure you got the jumpers on your hard drive set right (master/slave positions)
 
Personally I like USB in a recording rig. Besides the obvious advantages, it's really easy to extend your mouse & keyboard over long distances using a single cable & a hub (granted USB cables aren't cheap), if you have a USB keyboard & mouse.

At any rate, what problems are you having with USB? "A problem" doesn't really help much, although I can just offer up "a solution" :) I recently had a problem on a machine where win2k wouldn't install the USB root hub correctly. It installed something like "Generic USB Root Hub" or something, but it didn't work and had the ol' yellow exclamation point. All I had to do was update the driver from a the list of *known* devices, which *included* the VIA USB Root Hub driver. Why Win2k didn't install it I have no clue. This was on a board with the old MVP3 chipset though.

You shouldn't take any "optimization" steps until you're done with your "configuration." What does that mean? Well, I'm an anti-optimization guy, because most optimizations are based in fact but hold absolutely no merit. Therefore, you need to get everyting configured correctly, without any tweaking, and then see where you are. The most important steps are (in no particular order) to 1) Make sure your HD's are running in DMA mode 2) get that audio drive on its own controller if possible; configure logically! 3) Grab the latest VIA chipset drivers, this is critical when working with a non-intel chipset 4) Grab the latest drivers for your soundcard, and if you feel up to it, it doesn't hurt to get latest drivers for the rest of your hardware. 5) Update Win2k to SP2 online (the online install is faster than the full download). Don't do crap like resizing the swapfile, turning off video accelleration, disabling hard drive buffers. Now that your system is at least supposedly in good shape, try recording and see what it'll do. Often times it'll work just fine and you'll be done. Other times, it may be necessary to mess with BIOS revisions for your mobo and (if you have a seperate one) ATA controller, and driver revisions. You should be able to get a system that is workable without doing anything that feels funny (e.g., you hear somebody say, "windows configures this to intentionally perform very poorly for no good reason, so you have to reconfigure it yourself").

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thank you very much, Slackmaster2K and TonyA.
I'm going to see what is happening with recording.
Actually I have Win98 on HD1 and WIN2kProfessional onto the HD2, with double boot.
Normally I choose Win98 to do everything but music.
But program files are onto HD2,
I have a partition on it, with HD2-1 with all the progs and HD2-2 only data (files wav, flp,...).
HD2 is master, HD1 is slave.
About USB hub, the prob is that after installed latest BIOS and 4in1 drivers, the USB listed is unsupported drivers.
There is only usb controller unsupported, I have also an usb hub, all lights are off, then the usb port is not functional.

Thanks in advance
Nocaster
 
My setup is Drive C: as primary with programs and D: as secondary nothin but audio. Ive been told to keep your audio drive free of anything but your recorded files plus its easier to manage. I Dont use USB. Been told this is not a reliable method for audio applications, but I cant justify that cuz I never had to do it this way. I do know that cable modems suck and are slow on USB ports, but that may not apply with other apps.
 
Hey that's exactly what happened on one of my machines with the USB hub. If you do an "Update Driver" on the hub, and select drivers from a list of known drivers, you should be able to choose between "Unsupported Driver" and "Via USB Root Hub" or similar. THAT'S why I remember it was such a silly problem. ;)

Slackmaster 2000
 
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