Optimal Performance

  • Thread starter Thread starter L'espion Noir
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L'espion Noir

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Hi Fam

i need some suggestions
i'll have 3 hard drives in my box
and i would like some suggestions on how to store my work
i have one 20 GB which has WinXP on it
i have two(2) 60 GB both empty
i have Cubase SX not yet installed
i have wave lab 4 not yet installed
and Cakewalk 9 which installed on the 20 GB should i move it
plan on getting somekind of drum software

should i have the programs installed on the same drive as the OS
or install them on different hard drives
i thought it might make a difference in performance or would it?

Guidance
 
The programs can be on the same hard drive as the OS, that's normal. Many folks choose to write DATA, however, to another drive.

In your case, with three hard drives, we'll need to know how many IDE/ATA controllers you have in your system (or SCSI?). This will greatly dictate how you configure the system.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Seeing as how you have two 60GB drives, RAID is an option you may want to consider. A friend of mine just assembled a box with four 80GB drives configured in a RAID 0+1 (mirroring and striping) and it's crazy fast - more than double SCSI U160 according to SiSoft Sandra.
 
thanks for the replies

how many IDE/ATA controllers you have in your system (or SCSI?).
i don't know what you're refering to Slackmaster2K
but if this can help
the 20 gb ( primary drive ) and one 60gb share one IDE
and the cdrom and the other 60gb share one IDE

What is Raid and how does it work

Guidance
 
RAID is a Redundant Array Of Inexpensive Disks. It uses multiple hard drives to write seperate chunks of a file to one or more other disks. So if you have 2 hard disks it would be about two times faster than with one drive. 4 hard disks is 4 about times faster, etc...

If you didn't go with RAID, I would suggest to keep your 20 (primary IDE channel) as your OS and programs drive, and have the 60 gigger on the secondary IDE channel as your music drive. So if your OS decides to use up the primary IDE channel to write some data while recording, it doesn't affect the second IDE channel which contains the drive your music is being saved to.
 
I would retire the 20 GB drive for backup and MP3 usage. I assume the two 60 Gb drives are plenty fast for an audio setup, migrate XP onto one of the drives along with all apps. Partition for apps, partition for file backups. The second drive should be dedicated to audio. Each drive on its own controller, one sharing with CD-ROM/RW (Ideally the audio drive so you get decently fast CD-ROM access) and the other with the MP3/backup drive.

I'm not to sure about striped RAID for audio use, though, unless it's 0+1, it's much safer than a straight RAID 0.

RAID is overhyped IMHO. It adds little to the audio user, the possible benefits are seen only in enterprise storage and non-linear video editing, where huge SCSI RAID 4, 5 arrays may be used. Yes it is available and it's easily integrated into motherboards, but not twice or more as fast. The benefits are incremental, IMO a striped array is too risky to be running a homereccing business out of. if one byte from one of the drives goes, you've lost the whole file. And rebuilding data from stripes (say, if you've reformatted) is the most painful thing to happen to anybody.
 
thanks alot guys
the Raid 0+1 seems to be the most recommended but it requires at least 4 hard drives and i only have 3
i think i'm gonna keep the 20 for programs and OS and the rest for storage

Again thanks
 
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