sorry...hard drive question

[PaRaNoId]

I will be upgrading my DAW setup this week and i have a question on my mind.....How beneficial (if at all) is it to have 2 hard drives in a DAW setup- ONE for the OS, and software and the SECOND for storing/retrieving audio?
BTW, see any potential probs w/ my setup? ----->
MY FUTURE SPECS:
Windows XP (sp I), SONAR 3.0 w/ patch 3.1.1
AMD athalon "Barton" XP 2600 (333mhz FSB),
ABIT NF7-M motherboard w/ nForce2 IGP + MCP chipset,
(2)Western Digital 7,200 rpm IDE drives
(2) Aardvark Q-10 interfaces w/ v7.13 drivers

[elninojesus]

Performance-wise it should help a bit but I would do it just for the convenience. If you ever get a virus or install something that ****s windows up, you can just format the C drive and reload without worrying about backing up all your audio stuff. When I was primarily running Windows I would reload windows almost every 6 months. Just make cd images of all your software and store it on that second drive.


Mark

[RichT]

Originally posted by PaRaNoId
I will be upgrading my DAW setup this week and i have a question on my mind.....How beneficial (if at all) is it to have 2 hard drives in a DAW setup- ONE for the OS, and software and the SECOND for storing/retrieving audio?
BTW, see any potential probs w/ my setup? ----->
MY FUTURE SPECS:
Windows XP (sp I), SONAR 3.0 w/ patch 3.1.1
AMD athalon "Barton" XP 2600 (333mhz FSB),
ABIT NF7-M motherboard w/ nForce2 IGP + MCP chipset,
(2)Western Digital 7,200 rpm IDE drives
(2) Aardvark Q-10 interfaces w/ v7.13 drivers

In my opinion it is ABSOLUTELY necessary to have a seperate drive for your audio data.

Check this site for tips on tuning your XP system for best audio performance:

http://www.musicxp.net/

Cheers,
Rich

[Roland]

Originally posted by RichT
In my opinion it is ABSOLUTELY necessary to have a seperate drive for your audio data.

Check this site for tips on tuning your XP system for best audio performance:

http://www.musicxp.net/

Cheers,
Rich

I second that!

Running audio off the system drive even if you have it partitioned can be fatal. Every time the system or application software makes a call on the system drive it overrides all other demands including your audio!

Storage of audio on the same drive is a definite no no.


Regards


Roland

[manning1]

and heres two tips from an engineer who worked for several computer companies(i own a daw).....
not only have two drives but....
1. some clone buildrs/retailers forget to enable dam on the hard drives. ive seen this many times with friends systems.
2. when testing any system to buy so you dont get burnt and lets say your in the retailers premises.....looking at systems.....
most are connected to the net now.......connect the system you are looking at in the shop to the net and download powertracks fronm pgmusic.com. it has a neat tracks test in it. up in the menus it will tell you how many tracks the system will do. if you see over 100 capability reported then the system should be pretty good.
another test you can do is download something like goldwave from goldwave.com and do a speed 3 minute noise reduction test
on a 3 minute 44.1 (just record anything so you have a waveform)
and time how long you get. if you beat 18 secs the system is pretty good. audacity has NR built in as well. also a utility off the net called dskbench.exe tells you how many tracks/drive transfer speeds stats etc. but the noise redn test is best because it cuts through the marketing hype as the processor has to go through every single 2 byte integer in the file.

[manning1]

oops typo - not DAM but DMA (direct memory access).

[dingo]

And as you probably now know, install each drive on separate channels, like have the OS drive as channel 1 (primary) master and the data drive as channel 2 (secondary) master.