IDE configuration for DAW. Any comments??

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abolit66

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hi,
Sometimes reading too many articles might cost you a lot of headache :D
It's about IDE hard drives to be installed in DAW.
Some guys say that both System and Sudio HD's must be on the same IDE (primary) bus, and all CD-Roms or CD-Writers on tha secondary IDE. The reason for this is that CD and DVD drives would slow down the IDE bus spead.
Some other guys state that would be a much better to put the System HD as Primary Master and Audio HD as a Secondary master, and CD's go to Secondary Slave.

Which configuration works better for your DAW?

Any comments on that???

Peace
 
Don't know which is better but my operating system is on the primary master and the D drive where I keep the wavs is primary slave. The ROM and writter are on the secondary. I've never had any problems sunning it this way.
 
read up abollit on pc architecture sometime...and all will become clear.
particularly read up on hard drive contention and channels.
the ideal is to have two hard drives..each on their own "channels" .
this way windows can do its own thing and you dont get contention.
windows has its own hd all to itself. this IS important.
hard drives with large caches are good for multitrack audio apps because they act as "holding areas" for audio data thus improving perceived performance. they are also good in the aspect of LARGE TRACK COUNTS.
ie...your less likely to get stuttering because of the cache aspect coming into play.
a good amd 64 for example with large cache hard drives should do 80 tracks for example. or maybe more if the pc is set up and finetuned properly.
 
I've seen it argued both ways as well.

For me, I put each HD's as the master on a separate controller, and slaved the CD drives. While the CDs might slow down the bus, I believe this is only if both are being used simultaneously. This would never be the case for me, at least while working with my multitrack projects.

I would only use the CD burner after I have mastered something down to two track, or simply for loading software/data, or backing something up.

I also feel having the OS drive on a separate controller allows the OS to do its thing without interfering with the audio drive.
 
manning,
If I have had only two hard drives (system and audio) and no CD ROMs I would have installed them on different controllers, - that's no question about it!
The question is what is the better place to put the CD burner or DVD burner...

Peace
 
From what I read, installing them on different IDE channels is the best way to go.
Your goal is to avoid interference between devices. DVD/CD-Rom interference with your drive will be more severe, but at the same time you can control it by not using those devices while recording.
OTOH, interference between IDE drives will be milder, but you can't control that (especially Windows).
As Track Rat says, maybe you can put both drives on the same channel and still have no problems, but logically those are the steps I will take.
Andrés
 
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