Shopping for audio hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fab4ever
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Fab4ever

Fab4ever

Getting better
So I'm getting ready to buy a hard drive strictly for audio. I have a little 20 gig number that does everything now. I have a PIII / 1 gig on an ASUS motherboard and 512 ram running Win 98 SE, Sonar 2.0, Sound Forge 6.0, etc.

So... I found this one for $99: IBM 80GB EIDE / 7200 RPM / 2MB / 8.5ms / ATA-100 / Hard Drive

Does that look like a good deal? Is 80 gig too big? Are there better options out there in the $100 price range?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Fab
 
I believe some IBM Deskstar drives completely suck. I think it was the smaller varieties, but I'm not sure. Something to check into though.

Personally, I would get a Seagate or Maxtor, though the 8MB cache Western Digital drives are nice.
 
Is it an IBM 120GXP?

Fast drive, but it runs hot. And IBM has it specified for no more than 333 hours per month power-on time. That not a joke. I'd say: look elsewhere.
 
I have Maxtor DiamondMax, which runs nice a quiet. You can buy one at CompUSA under the CompUSA name, usually for cheaper than the Maxtor name. They are the exact same drive. CompUSA just sticks their name on it.

80 gig is not too big.
 
Cool - thanks for the replies.

Any other recommendations for a 60-80 gig hard drive for audio?

Fab
 
I'll second the Seagate vote.

I've been using a lot of Seagate 380021A (80GB) and other sizes, in various machines.

Nice an quiet, not the fastest drive on the block but more than adequate for multitrack.

I use to detest Seagate/Conner IDE drives, but they have improved considerably over the past year.
 
i got a 120gig WD with 8mb cache for 150 ;)
no one saw the auction i guess on ebay a few weeks back, so i ended up getting it...
there's about 80gig free right now..
 
So if I were to look for a 60-80 gig seagate or western digital drive, 7200 of course, then:

1. what are other crucial measures of performance

and

2. what are the best (cheapest) places to find them?

Thanks again,

Fab
 
Would this one work well?

MAXTOR D740X-6L 80GB 80 GB 7200RPM

Thanks,

Fab
 
Fab4ever,

Any current harddrive will work just fine for multitrack... 7200RPM is preferable, as is one that is quiet.

The differences in performance are very very small, and not something to worry about in this application.

The seagate is 2dB quieter, and 1mS slower seek time...

Tough call! :) 2dB is 2dB though...

The maxtor you listed will work just fine.
 
put some acoustic materia(dynamat or something on those lines)l in your case and don't even worry about how loud the drive is...
 
Sure, there are after the fact solutions to anything, but if the option is there to buy the quietest drive in the first place, shouldn't you?

Dynamat works halfway, it's not a total solution. An ISO-Box would be the ultimate solution, but still - It's fair to say you would want a reasonably quiet PC to begin with for optimum results when using dynamat and/or an ISO-box solution.
 
Seagate Barracuda IV has specs consistent throughout the whole surface of its disks, which is the feature that not all 7200 rpm disks enjoy.
In real life it means that the performance will not change singnificantly for the worse when the disk becomes 70% full.
 
24bit 96khz tracking - drive? RAID?

I am about to get started on recording with my delta 66, and i hope to utilize the 24 bit/96khz resolution as I have been totally unhappy with resolutions that were lower (for example my old ISIS card was 16/44.1 and I basically think the quality sucked).

How many tracks can u realistically expect to write to a single ATA100 drive at once? I have 4 inputs on my Delta 66 so 4 would be the max - but I've been told you can stack the cards and run up to 4 at once. I have an AMD Duron 750 with 512 MB RAM/233 MHZ bus speed, 300 watt power supply and will be switching to Windows 2000.

If a single IDE drive can't handle this load (or a higher load say 8 tracks simultaneously) how do you get around this. Could you use one of those IDE RAID cards and get a few drives writing simulataneously?

Thanks
 
hey Kyle!
Howzit going? (Thought I recognized the "pearldiver" nick from over at CC...)

You should be able to lay down 4 tracks no problemo. My brother tracks 12 channels at once on an ATA66 machine with a PIII 650. (Albeit 16/44.1)

Queue
 
oh yeah...

If you topped out... RAID "Striping" would help. PCI controllers can do this, but you're risking creating a bottleneck on the PCI bus.

Queue
 
I had an Asus motherboard running Stripped Raid.
It would record 16 tracks 24 Bit 48 k using a Delta 1010 and a Hoontech Cport at the same time but I was always nervous thats why I shit out and bought myself an Alesis HD24 and boy are we in Love

Tony
 
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