hard drive set up advice

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physics club

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Ok, was there ever a consensus of opinion on how to connect cd-rw and hard drives? i'm planning on have one Western Digital 20GB ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive for op system. one Western Digital 40GB ATA/100 7200RPM hard drive for audio, and one cd-rw drive for buring etc.

will this work ok:

Primary Master = WD#1 (XP-pro OS/programs)
Primary Slave = CD-RW
Secondary Master = WD#2 (audio/wavs)


Also, why exactly is it advisable to have the os and the audio files on 2 physically seperate hard drives? lots of folks think this is a good idea i'm just wondering why from a technical standpoint?


thanks!!
 
That will work just fine.
Your audio drive will be less confusing and more organized if you dont put the OS and programs on it. Plus all the space is available as audio files can be huge and consume a lot of space in no time.
 
Thanks a bunch Stealthtech. I'm going to start building this tonight. i is my first DAW system so wish me luck!!
 
heres what happens- everything is workin great, recording s are awesome, all your files are right where you need em- then uh oh- wait a minute- computer crashes- fatal exception 1xx02000x x00x00 blue screen- nothin seems to work right- well you could just reformat your harddrive and reinstall your os that just got toasted by a virus or software or some other prob. but you'll lose all of your audio- keep audio and important stuff on a seperate drive so if you have to do this you dont lose everything!- plus i think its a little quicker since your os is accessing files while your audio software is writing or accessing files- with 2 drives that can happen simultaneously instead of bouncing back and forth
 
The other reason why to keep 2 audio discs is related to read-write times. What happens is that the head has to travel less when it's on a disk which is less full, since all of what it is writing is nearer to the edge where the head resides (I can't remember if that's the inside or the outside right now). So, by keeping your audio files on a separate drive, there's less space taken up on that drive, and the head can access the info more easily. What you also need to know, for optimal performance, is:

1) defrag early and often. This helps keep all the data in a logical order, so that the head doesn't need to jump all over the place, as it does when data is randomly strewn about the disk.

2) keep your dedicated audio disk at NO MORE than 50% full, preferably less. This will help allow the disk to repeatably achieve the high seek times.

hope this helps!

-mg
 
Man I just have to say here, I have two hard drives myself, and sometimes it's a good thing.

However, the large capacity drives (80 GB and up) have serious performance edges on the 20 and 40 GB drives. A partitioned large capacity drive can be just effective, if not more effective than two seperate drives. Read, write, throughput, and sustained transfer. Futhermore, you can partition them to create two seperate storage spaces, or even three.

Also, it's not the best idea to put a CDRW and a hard drive on the same IDE bus. Keep CD and HDD on different buses.

typically:
Primary bus for HDD
Secondary for CD type devices

Here's a link to a relatively recent review of larger drives. Good comparisons too.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021011/index.html

Backup your files anyway! Things happen, and having two hard drives does NOT protect you from viruses or other computer disasters. Trust me I know. Have external backup too, if its that important to you.

Thats my two cents anyway. Good luck!
 
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