New Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Flight 16
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Radian said:
A few more pointers for you.

If you are installing a 2nd hard drive and want more performance, I would recommend that you install the 2nd drive on the 2nd IDE channel of your motherboard. This way you don't have two hard drives sharing one channel. Using the two IDE channels will help with the one channel bottleneck.

Also, I just switched to a drive that has an 8mb cache. It does seem to work well. Of course, this depends on how often the drive goes after the same data.

I've read reviews where ATA133 doesn't outperform ATA100 in the real world due to so many other bottlenecks on the system, so I don't think that may be a big concern. In other words, ATA133 doesn't get to reach it's full capacity. A search on the net would probably give some good pointers (ata133 vs ata100).

Hope I've helped out.
Click to expand...


Hi there, cheers, i have made a note of that :)
 
crankz1 said:
I wouldn't suggest you put your page file on the second hard drive if you intend to use that second hard drive as the working directory for streaming your audio data. Putting the page file on the second drive defeats the purpose of having the OS on one drive and the audio on the other.
Sure moving the page file to a separate drive other than the one Windows is on will speed up Windows, but who gives a rats ass about Windows. We want to be sure that the audio stream isn't interrupted by the OS and it's paging to the drive. :cool:
Plus if you have upward of 1 Gig of RAM, you will do fine just setting the Min and Max page file size to anywhere between 600 and 800 Megs ... no need for different Min and Max sizes. I set mine at 800 on drive C: only and have no issues what so ever. Any way, it's always better to add more Physical RAM than it is to increase your Virtual Memory.
Also, most 7200 RPM ATA 100\133 drives with DMA enabled and the proper IDE cable (80 conductor) will do just fine with multiple audio data streams. No real need to drop the cash on a SATA drive and controller, unless you just want to.
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hi there, how do i set the paging for mt drives?
 
Navigate to .... Control Panel\System\Advanced tab\"Settings" button for Performance\Advanced tab\"Change" button for virtual memory.
Click on drive C: to highlight it ... select custom size and set the Initial and Maximum size to whatever you want.
(With 512Megs of RAM ... I set mine to 800 and everything works just fine)
Now click the "Set" button.
Now highlight the drive you use for your audio and be certain that it is set for "No paging file" and click "Set" again.
Click OK and you are done.
Depending on the way it was originally set and the changes you make, you may have to reboot before the changes will take effect.

If ever you feel the need to modify it further .... you can always go back and change it any time you like.
 
crankz1 said:
Navigate to .... Control Panel\System\Advanced tab\"Settings" button for Performance\Advanced tab\"Change" button for virtual memory.
Click on drive C: to highlight it ... select custom size and set the Initial and Maximum size to whatever you want.
(With 512Megs of RAM ... I set mine to 800 and everything works just fine)
Now click the "Set" button.
Now highlight the drive you use for your audio and be certain that it is set for "No paging file" and click "Set" again.
Click OK and you are done.
Depending on the way it was originally set and the changes you make, you may have to reboot before the changes will take effect.

If ever you feel the need to modify it further .... you can always go back and change it any time you like.
Click to expand...


ok thanks for the help...

i have 1 MG RAM should i go a liuttrle more or less than 800?
 
I've never seen the OS page more than 300 Megs in my uses of the computer, so I think you would be safe enough to set it at 800 and never worry about it again.
If ever you get Windows warning you of running out of virtual memory, it's easy enough to change the amount.
 
crankz1 said:
I've never seen the OS page more than 300 Megs in my uses of the computer, so I think you would be safe enough to set it at 800 and never worry about it again.
If ever you get Windows warning you of running out of virtual memory, it's easy enough to change the amount.
Click to expand...


ahh ok cheers

If i do get that message do i bring the 800 down or up?

So far I have just took all my Audio ...and my Cubase folders and files and put them on my new "G" drive (NTFS). and set the pageing for it too 800.

is that all I need to do?

thanks for the help
 
crankz1 said:
I've never seen the OS page more than 300 Megs in my uses of the computer, so I think you would be safe enough to set it at 800 and never worry about it again.
If ever you get Windows warning you of running out of virtual memory, it's easy enough to change the amount.
Click to expand...


sorry i meant i have set the new drive "G" to "no pageing" and i have set my "C" drive to 800.
 
Yeah ... you should be good to go.
One thing though .... You don't actually want to install Cubase to the new drive.
You just want Cubase to use that drive for your projects directories.

-Edit- And Yes .... if Windows warns you of running low on Virtual Memory you will bring that value up.
 
Keep in mind that both drives will operate at the speed of the slowest drive. I don't know if this is true if they are each running off their own controller.
 
Great thread. I was curious about some of this myself. As I have an older ata 80 gig that I wanted to use for my audio data. I was gonna purchase a faster as the 10,000 rpm raptor to put my os & cubase on. Though if I do that does it defeat the purpose of getting a faster hd if the soundfiles are coming from a different slower drive?...someone mentioned having the two drives on the same line but can you do that somehow if one is sata and one is ata? Or should all my soundfiles come off the faster os drive too?....( not that i like that idea)
 
No .... a SATA drive needs to be controlled by a SATA controller whereas an ATA drive is via an IDE controller. They can't be run by the same controller. Plus a SATA controller supports one drive per line and an IDE controller sports two channels per line.
Unless you have some serious amounts of tracks, you'll do fine with 7200 RPM ATA drives. Not to mention it will save a bit of $$ for other gear.
As far as the fast SATA drive for the OS and programs, it's not really necessary unless you are a hard core gamer. Even then, you still want your audio on a separate drive. Preferably a fast one (7200 RPM ATA 100\133 at least).
If it where me, I'd stick that old 80Gig drive in and use it as the audio drive, leave the OS drive just the way it is and only worry about upgrading anything when\if the audio drive can't keep up with the track counts. Chances are the RAM and CPU will become the bottle-neck first.

-Ken
 
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