Will a hard drive partition help with audio?

B

boingoman

New member
Currently I am just using a folder on my C drive to store audio. At some vague distant point I want to build a separate box for games/the net or put a good audio hd in this box at the very least.

But for now, is there an advantage to creating a separate partition on my current hd to store audio? Like fewer buffer underruns, etc.

Thanks!
 
get two hard drives. one for windows, one for audio.
win one a small one.
the key to understanding this is read up on how hard drives work in google.
read up on the architecture of drives.
 
boingoman said:
Currently is there an advantage to creating a separate partition on my current hd to store audio? Like fewer buffer underruns, etc.

Thanks!
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No. There isn't.
 
Yup. You want >2 physical drives<

Think of it this way:

Your drive is recording audio (an intensive process with a LOT of data flowing through the bus on the way to the drive) when it encounters a need to do some Windows housekeeping.

The drive arm then has to slam all the way across the drive platters, do the housekeeping chore and then slam all the way back to where the audio was being recorded on the other partition and start laying down data again.

That doesn't sound bad to you, but that trip across the platter is in computer terms like you having to WALK across a city to the store and back again. Physical movements are like an ice-age to a computer. And all the while your data is backing up in buffers somewhere and hopefully won't have a problem when it goes to dump to disk again while even more oceans of data are still streaming in to be recorded.

Get another drive and put all your audio on it.
 
Boingoman,

I posted this in another thread, but it was about the same question you've got about hard drives and partitioning, etc. . . . .

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

I'm in almost the same boat. . . 1 computer for 2 uses. Here's what I did. Depending on the size of your hard drive, make 3 partitions. Two 12 (or so) gig partitions and a third parition with everything you have left over. Install Windows on both of your 12 gig partitions, and use your third partition for all your storage (i.e., mp3's, recording files, office documents, etc.)

In your first windows partition, install everything you use for general computer usage. . .office, games, etc.

In your 2nd windows partition, install only your DAW programs. Treat it as a separate computer used only for recording.

Here's a link explaining exactly how to do this: http://www.homerecordingconnection....ew_story&id=151

On your DAW Windows installation, you can tweak it to get the most performance out of your computer
Here's a link explaining exacly how to do this: http://www.homerecordingconnection....ew_story&id=253

Bingo, you've got 2 computers in one. I like doing it this way.

It's not going to be quite as efficient as another physical hard drive sitting in your computer (for the reasons stated above by TimOBrien), but it's better than doing it all on one unpartitioned hard drive - simply because you can set up your DAW windows installation to not do normal windows maint. stuff while you're recording.
 
BJW said:
Boingoman,

I posted this in another thread, but it was about the same question you've got about hard drives and partitioning, etc. . . . .

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

I'm in almost the same boat. . . 1 computer for 2 uses. Here's what I did. Depending on the size of your hard drive, make 3 partitions. Two 12 (or so) gig partitions and a third parition with everything you have left over. Install Windows on both of your 12 gig partitions, and use your third partition for all your storage (i.e., mp3's, recording files, office documents, etc.)

In your first windows partition, install everything you use for general computer usage. . .office, games, etc.

In your 2nd windows partition, install only your DAW programs. Treat it as a separate computer used only for recording.

Here's a link explaining exactly how to do this: http://www.homerecordingconnection....ew_story&id=151

On your DAW Windows installation, you can tweak it to get the most performance out of your computer
Here's a link explaining exacly how to do this: http://www.homerecordingconnection....ew_story&id=253

Bingo, you've got 2 computers in one. I like doing it this way.

It's not going to be quite as efficient as another physical hard drive sitting in your computer (for the reasons stated above by TimOBrien), but it's better than doing it all on one unpartitioned hard drive - simply because you can set up your DAW windows installation to not do normal windows maint. stuff while you're recording.
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There is no benfit of having 2 partitions over 1 large partition. Unless you claim it's for organization purposes cause that's all it does. It's not like 2 computers in 1.
 
For me its partly for organizational purposes, but if you make 2 different windows installations, you can set up one windows installation with no automatic maintenance, decellerated graphics, etc - basically you can set up your DAW windows install so nothing will automatically start up and interrupt your recording, while you can have a different windows install for everyday use.

I mentioned it's not as good as 2 different hard drives, but it's better than running your DAW on a windows system that has it's graphics settings set up to the max and automatic updates going with personal messaging programs running, etc.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Note that I'm talking about making 2 different windows installs, not just partitioning your hard drive into 2 partitions and putting audio on one of them - I agree that doing that is pretty pointless aside from organization.
 
Wouldn't a seperate hardware profile along with different login accomplish the same thing? 2 of the same windows installations seems kind of silly unless you are dual booting 2000/XP or similar.
 
i agree dawg 100 per cent.
instead of partitioning some of my tech friends claim win works better
when you have a profile for internet use, a profile for daw , a profile for
programming etc etc.
i dont partition myself. but then i have one pc for internet and another for daw work.
 
HangDawg said:
Wouldn't a seperate hardware profile along with different login accomplish the same thing? 2 of the same windows installations seems kind of silly unless you are dual booting 2000/XP or similar.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I didn't think of that, but it sounds like it would do basically the same thing without all the hassle. Maybe i'll switch to that - saves a lot of time booting up the computer any time I want to do something different.

Eventually I want to build a separate DAW computer. Something that's fast and quiet with no bells and whistles (save a sweet sound card - something like an E-Mu 1820M). For now I've got to deal with the thing that sounds like it's going to take off into space every time it boots up.
 
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