Suggested size for internal Audio & BFD Drive(s) on Mac Pro

[DougDoppler]

Hi and thanks in adance...

I just replaced my faithful G4 MDD with a Mac Pro which did not come with a second internal drive. I am seeking advice on drive size for...

1) an internal audio drive
How concerned should I be in terms of drive size, and what is the biggest I should go for. I'm using a Digi002, ProTools 7.x

2) drive for BFD
Anyone here using BFD with a dedicated drive? Worth it? And if so do you use that drive for other samples of just BFD. Hence how big would you suggest making that drive.

Conclusion: From what I've read in terms of efficiency it is best to not keep the internal non-system drives smaller. Good guidelines are what I'm hoping you can suggest. I have over a TB in external Maxtor storage, and have never had a failure with one of their drives - really impressed.

- Thanks!

[seclusion]

I bought 3 - 320 gig seagate drives for mine.
So 1 for audio, 1 for samples and 1 for backup.
Works like a charm!
If you really want to get into it.
Some people have put the OS drive in by the DVD slot 51/2" bay.
Then they have 4 swappable bays for other drives.
Man you may be pissed as there's been rumors of a new Mac Pro coming tomorrow.
I use mine now and use about 30% CPU and about 2 gigs of my 2.66 with 5 gigs of ram.
You won't be disappointed.
Later

[w_stylz]

If you want my opinion, 300 + gigs on the audio drive, 500 or 750 on the sample drive and backups of each or at least a back up for the audio drive and some of the sample drive. I have gone through a 200g drive and a 400g drive only to discover that I needed 750 to cover me for the next year or 2 while larger and higher quality sample libraries are released. Sata 300 of course to help with streaming audio. BFD can be a bit disk intensive especially with lots of layers. Theoretically, it can be trying to pull 70-80 channels of audio off of the drive at a time until you bounce it to separate audio tracks. Good luck!!

[PlatinumSamples]

To install every BFD pack available with full velocities requires about a 500GB drive. You can get a Seagate SATA 750GB drive for $189.99 at Fry's every now and then. I've bought Seagate 500GB SATA drives from Best Buy for $99.99

Rail

[DougDoppler]

Guys, thanks for the VERY robust answers. At the end of the day I've upgraded my Ram to 3 gigs (for now) and added 2 internal 250 gig drives. I'm mainly a guitar guy, and don't plan on creating a huge library of sounds. That said, I'll be curious to see how long it will take me to fill that drive. I was very cautious in read speed and purposely undershot any issues just so I don't chug. I just installed my UAD1-e and I'm chomping at the bit to just get in and work - without my computer hanging. I'll be running BFD in Ultra mode most likely, again with the strategy that I'm not making the plug work to process things down into the stereo pairs, which as I understand is a fairly noticeable resource drain...

Thanks again for your great input, I'll check back on this post in a few days to see if there are any additional pearls of wisdom waiting to be gleaned.

BTW, any people not that familiar with BFD, v2.0 is on the verge of coming out and supposedly is less resource hungry. To get a natural feel, try in Pro Tools using the real time midi offset to move your snare back .40 ticks in the track for example to get some nice depth in the pocket. I'd also suggest pulling the hi hat back .10 or so ticks and you'll find your pocket developing. Obviously move things to fit song to song, but these guidelines are a nice starting place for anyone who is less experienced in some of the nuances of getting a more lifelike feel that comes by pulling pieces of the kit back in the time. Make sure in PT that you separate the midi onto separate tracks to do this so you can control them independently. Hope that helps someone...

Thanks again for the great insight...

Cheers,

Doug