hard drives anyone?

  • Thread starter Thread starter pikingrin
  • Start date Start date
pikingrin

pikingrin

what is this?
I've got an e-machines system with a 200gb hard drive. I don't know any of the specs on it, so keep that in mind. I just went out and got a BFD drum sampling program, and it's 9gb of info. It says in the manual that ideally, you should install it on a hard drive that is dedicated to audio programs/tracks/etc... With that statement in mind, I need some advice. Would it work to partition the stock 200gb, or would it be better to go drop a couple of bucks on a new hard drive or 2? If that would be the better route, are there any recommendations on good hard drives for audio recording? In the future I am hoping to end up with 2 externals, one for the software, and one for the music, but I don't know if it would be a worthwhile investment.
 
Well, I'd say just install it and try it out. Chances are it will work just fine. Ideally, yeah it would be good to have two separate drives, one for the system/program files and the other for music projects.
 
would it be better to put all of the recording/sampling programs on a seperate drive than the operating system and all the other programs?
 
Not really. It makes sense to keep the system and the programs (recording and otherwise) on the same drive.

However, it's a good idea to keep the files (the project files) themselves on a separate drive, at least while you're working on them, so you don't unduly stress a single drive. Your music drive would be stressed while recording audio tracks to it, while playing back audio tracks and while streaming samples.

The system drive would be active during opening and closing windows, programs, shuffling things from RAM to VirtualMemory/Pagefile and some other housekeeping chores.

Separating those two processes to different drives would lead to a better overall system performance.
 
Hey, thanks for all your help, I just went and installed a new hard drive yesterday. A little 80gb western digital (internal). I have that one now as my dedicated hard drive for all my audio files, and the 200gb for the programs. As of yet, I haven't started any projects, so I don't see any difference yet, which I may not, but hopefully it will all work a little smoother. It seems like it would put a little more workload onto the CPU to be running 2 drives though... but I'm still learning all this stuff...
 
pikingrin said:
would it be better to put all of the recording/sampling programs on a seperate drive than the operating system and all the other programs?
Click to expand...

Yes specially if your using a IDE/EIDE type.

IDE interface allows only one of the two disks connected to the same cable to be active at a time, and any request to use the second disk will be blocked while data is being read from the first disk. An EIDE interface duplicates this IDE restriction, but since the EIDE chip looks like two IDE devices, a request can be made through the second interface while the first interface is busy.

SCSI A SCSI controller can have all of its disks moving into position while one disk is actively transferring data. The above can't. The IDE/EIDE's read - send - read - send - etc....

Better installed web servers, for example, log requests on a different drive because that way they can push the page to the user with one drive while the other is logging otherwise you would have to wait till the logs were done before seeing a webpage.
 
SillyBee said:
Yes specially if your using a IDE/EIDE type.

IDE interface allows only one of the two disks connected to the same cable to be active at a time, and any request to use the second disk will be blocked while data is being read from the first disk. An EIDE interface duplicates this IDE restriction, but since the EIDE chip looks like two IDE devices, a request can be made through the second interface while the first interface is busy.
Click to expand...

So how would this make it benficial to have 3 seperate drives if it cannot access but only one at a time? Maybe I am mis-understanding... This is how I am reading your statement. I (theoretically) have 3 IDE drives. 1=OS/system programs, 2=Audio Software, 3=Audio Files. If it blocks data from every other drive while one is working, it seems like it would slow things down. Please explain...
 
pikingrin said:
So how would this make it benficial to have 3 seperate drives if it cannot access but only one at a time? Maybe I am mis-understanding... This is how I am reading your statement. I (theoretically) have 3 IDE drives. 1=OS/system programs, 2=Audio Software, 3=Audio Files. If it blocks data from every other drive while one is working, it seems like it would slow things down. Please explain...
Click to expand...

I don't even know if you can still buy IDE's (added for completeness)

Enhanced IDE (EIDE) and Ultra-ATA. EIDE more common.

But good question....you did understand!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top