Cody0103
New member
I was wondering why it is ideal to have a duo hard drive (at least thats what iv heard) for recording. AND, i was wondering what exactly it does, or what the point is.
thane1200
Medicated Member
The idea behind having two or more harddrives is to separate your recordings/data from your programs/applications. One harddrive contains the Operating System and programs while the other contains your recorded data.
This is advantageous for a number of reasons; you can easily protect your recordings if you get a virus or something crashes your OS drive or it fails mechanically, programs will not have to search through the entire OS and applications to find data for you projects (speeds up operations and frees up RAM if I'm not mistaken), you can easily transfer your project files to another computer by switching harddrives etc.
This is advantageous for a number of reasons; you can easily protect your recordings if you get a virus or something crashes your OS drive or it fails mechanically, programs will not have to search through the entire OS and applications to find data for you projects (speeds up operations and frees up RAM if I'm not mistaken), you can easily transfer your project files to another computer by switching harddrives etc.
buckkillr8
David Gilmour's clone
+1 on everything thane said.
Chili
Site Moderator
Just to clarify a little...
When saving your audio files to a separate physical drive, your DAW won't be competing with the OS for drive access time. Also, it won't have to sift through a lot of other files to access your audio files.
Here's a good write-up on optimizing your computer for DAW. It's specific to Win XP.
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ts/detail.php?Index=30058
peace.
When saving your audio files to a separate physical drive, your DAW won't be competing with the OS for drive access time. Also, it won't have to sift through a lot of other files to access your audio files.
Here's a good write-up on optimizing your computer for DAW. It's specific to Win XP.
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ts/detail.php?Index=30058
peace.
T
TimOBrien
New member
Quick paste from my wordpad file of setup notes:
You want to use a separate drive when data is being streamed constantly and you need quick, uninterrupted access.
The goal is SMOOTH UNINTERRUPTED THROUGHPUT of data so you wont get clicks, pops or worse, dropouts.
Here's how you want your system set up:
C: (Boot) OS, apps and vsts - your applications and vsts are generally only loaded once and don't hit the disk thereafter HOWEVER your OS will need to do occasional housekeeping work.
(order of secondary drives doesn't matter)
D: Sample libraries
E: thru Z: Music projects and misc data
Partitioning will NOT help you and is, in fact, bad. The arm has to stop what its doing on one partition, lift up and go alllllll the way across the disc to the other side, set down to do its job and then go alllllllll the way back again EVERY time the OS or an app needs to do housework. This mechanical movement is GLACIAL in computer terms and will lead to pops, clicks and dropouts in your audio. AVOID PARTITIONING and go to SEPARATE DRIVES. (the ONLY reason to use partitioning is if you BIOS doesn't support large disks or organizing a disk and then I would still avoid it as partition maps can go bad - or hacked - and then you lose EVERYTHING.)
A 7200rpm drive can stream around 100 tracks simultaneously, so film and orchestra producers will split up music project to multiple project drives every 80-100 tracks.
Because a standard 7200rpm drive can do 100 tracks, expensive 10K and 15K rpm drives are not neccesary. They're generally noiser, too... bad for the studio.
RAIDs are not very efficient on desktop OS's and tests by major magazines (Sound-on-Sound) have found that they only speed up access by 10-15% in the REAL WORLD and are not worth the extra complexity they bring to the desktop. Separate dedicated drives are better.
You want to use a separate drive when data is being streamed constantly and you need quick, uninterrupted access.
The goal is SMOOTH UNINTERRUPTED THROUGHPUT of data so you wont get clicks, pops or worse, dropouts.
Here's how you want your system set up:
C: (Boot) OS, apps and vsts - your applications and vsts are generally only loaded once and don't hit the disk thereafter HOWEVER your OS will need to do occasional housekeeping work.
(order of secondary drives doesn't matter)
D: Sample libraries
E: thru Z: Music projects and misc data
Partitioning will NOT help you and is, in fact, bad. The arm has to stop what its doing on one partition, lift up and go alllllll the way across the disc to the other side, set down to do its job and then go alllllllll the way back again EVERY time the OS or an app needs to do housework. This mechanical movement is GLACIAL in computer terms and will lead to pops, clicks and dropouts in your audio. AVOID PARTITIONING and go to SEPARATE DRIVES. (the ONLY reason to use partitioning is if you BIOS doesn't support large disks or organizing a disk and then I would still avoid it as partition maps can go bad - or hacked - and then you lose EVERYTHING.)
A 7200rpm drive can stream around 100 tracks simultaneously, so film and orchestra producers will split up music project to multiple project drives every 80-100 tracks.
Because a standard 7200rpm drive can do 100 tracks, expensive 10K and 15K rpm drives are not neccesary. They're generally noiser, too... bad for the studio.
RAIDs are not very efficient on desktop OS's and tests by major magazines (Sound-on-Sound) have found that they only speed up access by 10-15% in the REAL WORLD and are not worth the extra complexity they bring to the desktop. Separate dedicated drives are better.
Cody0103
New member
Hey thanks alot. This has helped out
R
RixMix
New member
Any insight on Internal vs External USB or Firewire drive? And if External any recommendations on brand?
R
RWhite
Well-known member
The only thing I would add is that if you are using an older motherboard with IDE (PATA) drives, try to keep your drives on separate controllers. You don't want to have reading & writing going on at the same time on the same controller.
As for an external drive, if your hardware is new I would say use ESATA. Otherwise Firewire is generally considered better for recording applications.
As for an external drive, if your hardware is new I would say use ESATA. Otherwise Firewire is generally considered better for recording applications.
buckkillr8
David Gilmour's clone
My favorite article on optimizing to refer people to.
Chili
Site Moderator
I might have gotten the link from one of your earlier posts.
Cody0103
New member
I was going to use a 20 inch imac