Any Sense to Less than 750GB Audio Disc? Disadvantage?

[JB3]

Looking over what's available for storage, does it make sense to look at smaller than 500GB for the main Audio Disc in a MacPro?

It seems that 500 and 750 seem to be making up the bulk of the newer models.

Does it still make sense to have a smaller disc for system and apps (does it help access time) as these do not become bloated with samples or audio?

Comments?

[JGP]

I prefer 350 gig or so, based on "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"
All drives fail eventually, so why make it huge.

[BLP]

For me it's a matter of projects; rarely will a project reach anywhere near 500 GB. Often they don't reach near 250 GB. I try to keep each project on a separate drive in order to reduce the possibility of a whole month or year or decade's worth of work going down the drain. This, coupled with the fact that projects come in and out every day, means more than one project per drive just hinders the hand off...

[allencollins]

smaller drives are faster.
also ever try defragging a terabyte drive?
I have. Take the afternoon off from recording...........

[Daedalus77]

The defragging is perhaps an issue with larger drives, but IMHO, you don't have to do it that often.

I've got two 750s as our primary (internal) audio drives for our HD rig, in a MacPro quad-core. They're 7200, which seems fast enough. I switch between them for sessions. I've contemplated putting them in RAID 0, which would increase speed, and, at least according to my tech guy, who is an Apple expert (IT guy at the school where I work, which is an all-Mac school), it's very stable. Haven't tried it yet.

Of course, we back up everything to other, external drives, as a matter of course.

I think the best policy, if you can do it, is to require clients to buy their own FW drive for a big session. You can build it into costs. That way, a session exists on the audio drive, on your backup, and on their drive. Redundancy is nice.

[BLP]

Originally Posted by allencollins

smaller drives are faster.
also ever try defragging a terabyte drive?
I have. Take the afternoon off from recording...........

Yep. Read and write speed can be a problem if you record a lot of tracks for different sessions non-sequentially, data can be spread over a ton of space causing problems with simultaneous reading and writing...

[JB3]

Cool, thanks guys. Good points, all

I had kinda wondered about those two exact situations: De-fragging and split sessions..

Daedulus, if you put your drives into RAID 0, aren't you precluding the use of Pro Tools? I don't think PT deals well with RAID. I guess that must be a non-issue for you.

But also excellent thought using the Audio drive, Backup, and an artist drive. Could be some issues with the mix session, but overall a very good archiving/backup scheme.

[PlatinumSamples]

Originally Posted by Daedalus77

I think the best policy, if you can do it, is to require clients to buy their own FW drive for a big session. You can build it into costs. That way, a session exists on the audio drive, on your backup, and on their drive. Redundancy is nice.

The drive is your best collateral for holding onto the masters until they've paid their bill - if they've supplied the drive you can't hold onto it.

This is a big reason why studios didn't allow you to supply your own tape (besides making a profit on the tape).

Rail