Hard Disk Hard Facts.

[gurubuzz]

I want to get my sample libraries on the fastest part of a new hard drive

How do you do this.

Physically how does XP partition hard drives.

Hard drives have multiple disks within them and multiple heads.

Which part of which "multiple disks within a hard drive" does the partition start and finish?

Is there a way of making a partition on the fastest parts of the "multiple disks within" a hard drive and the next partition on the not so fast parts etc.

The fastest part is on the other parts of the disks as they go past the reading head the quickest.

Please lets not debate whether this is true or not because a cd/dvd always reads 3-4 times quicker at the other areas watch the readout when you are ripping a CD..

[amino]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

Is there a way of making a partition on the fastest parts of the "multiple disks within" a hard drive and the next partition on the not so fast parts etc.

A simple answer: No.

A simple explanation: You can't compare hard drives with CD's. They are two totally different technologies with different limitations and the computer works with them in different ways. The most important performance factor on a hard drive when reading samples would be average seek time. When you're ripping a CD you're not seeking at all.

[gurubuzz]

Yes I agree, On latency...

But sheer amount of sample being read...

When you hold the sustain pedal down with 100 note polyphony on long samples....???

[amino]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

But sheer amount of sample being read...

When you hold the sustain pedal down with 100 note polyphony on long samples....???

Well, if you do that on a software sampler I'm pretty sure that sound is multisampled. Then the hard drive will have to constantly move between 100 different places on the hard drive. A SSD disk might handle that scenario better.

[firby]

hallo. IT guy recording dork here. Uh The drive records quicker on the outside edges of the drive which hold more data. The fast data should be on the outside of the drive or another drive (exclusive samples prefferably with a fast scsi subsystem).

Thats pretty much how it works. HINT this is generally only on pretty taxed systems as ATTHD or even firewire can move alot of bits anymore.

Personally I have had a g4 400 mhz titanium powerboot run 24 tracks + + some intesive verbs in Logic at one time. Thats a pretty good chunk of juice.

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by firby

hallo. IT guy recording dork here. Uh The drive records quicker on the outside edges of the drive which hold more data. The fast data should be on the outside of the drive or another drive (exclusive samples prefferably with a fast scsi subsystem).

Thats pretty much how it works. HINT this is generally only on pretty taxed systems as ATTHD or even firewire can move alot of bits anymore.

Personally I have had a g4 400 mhz titanium powerboot run 24 tracks + + some intesive verbs in Logic at one time. Thats a pretty good chunk of juice.

But how do you make sure it is on the outside....


I just bought a new hdd and I am going to permanently move all my samples to that drive but I want them to go to the fastest bits....

If a drive has 5 disks in it thats 10 sides... if I split it up into 10 partitions would they be 1 for each side????

It may sound stupid what I am saying. I do understand the non linearality of hard disks but i know that you would get th highest throughput from the outside edges....

Maybe this thread needs to be moved to the gearnerdz section.

[zboy2854]

AFAIK, you can't specify where on the HDD a certain chunk of data will specifically go. But it's all a moot point anyway. Just get yourself a 10000 rpm SATA drive and forget about it. If you can't run whatever sample library off that without worrying about what part of the disk it's on, then something's wrong.

[gurubuzz]

If you want to run the quarter mile faster with a drag car it doesn't mean something is wrong....

I just want the best performance even if the hard drive was a Rotary with a turbo spinning at 25,000 rpms.

That's an Idea I might have forgoten to press the turbo button on the front of my computer...

[DontLetMeDrown]

A couple of things:

1. wtf is that avatar

2. There are many other places where you can squeeze performance out of your computer. You will never have that kind of control with a hard drive. Even if you create a partition, you have no way of telling it WHERE to put that partition.

3. Partitions are not the best way to deal with sample libraries anyway. As long as the samples aren't on your system drive, then you have already done all you can.

Like the other guy said, buy a 10k rpm drive and you can put this discussion to rest. There are many more important areas where you can squeeze performance out of your DAW. I've been building computers for over 10 years and I've never ever heard of anyone being able to do this. Having the sample drive defragmented is as close as you can get to accomplishing this.

[Kiwiburger]

If you want to run huge streaming-from-disk sample libraries, you need 3 fast hard drives. Preferably internal, but external if you must. The cost is peanuts, really.

Reserve your C:\ for OS and programs. But it must be fast, because it handles virtual memory. If you compromise here, it affects everything else. Defrag when necessary.

Reserve a fast disk for samples. Keep your files contiguous: defrag, defrag, defrag. Dedicating a drive to samples makes this very easy.

Record audio and save your projects to a seperate drive. defrag, or re-format, as often as you need. Much easier to manage this way.

You don't want to be running large streaming libraries from the same disk that is trying to swap out a virtual memory page file, or trying to steam or record your audio tracks at the same time.

Otherwise - you might consider using lean "placeholder" sampled instruments for tracking, and then doing your bouncedown with the huge libraries. That way it doesn't have to stream in realtime.

[zboy2854]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

If you want to run the quarter mile faster with a drag car it doesn't mean something is wrong....

No, it just means you're spending time worrying about something that you don't need to be worrying about, if your interest is in making music. Unlike in drag racing, using a sample library off a hard drive isn't going to produce a better result because the drive is X% faster. Assuming you dedicate a drive just to your sample library, the drive is either fast enough to do the job or it's not. The samples will either stream off the drive properly or they won't. Personally I've never had a problem with DFD streaming with any sample libraries using 7200 rpm or faster SATA drives, and with 10000 rpm drives, forget about it.

But if you feel your time is better spent chasing down performance gains that don't make any functional difference, go for it.

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by DontLetMeDrown

A couple of things:

1. wtf is that avatar
That is a Naga Sadhu who is performing Lingam Yoga.

2. There are many other places where you can squeeze performance out of your computer. You will never have that kind of control with a hard drive. Even if you create a partition, you have no way of telling it WHERE to put that partition.

Well windows knows where your files are and knows where to put them and how.

3. Partitions are not the best way to deal with sample libraries anyway. As long as the samples aren't on your system drive, then you have already done all you can.

Yeh... I've been building PC's for 12 years and do consultancy work...I'm just trying to break new ground.

Like the other guy said, buy a 10k rpm drive and you can put this discussion to rest. There are many more important areas where you can squeeze performance out of your DAW. I've been building computers for over 10 years and I've never ever heard of anyone being able to do this. Having the sample drive defragmented is as close as you can get to accomplishing this.

If some machine code guru out there knows the order of how windows lays files down I could porbably record silence for X amount of gigs megs and then copy my samples over and know that they will be close to the edge.
No one will ever break the 4 minute mile they said - - man will never fly - - woman shouldn't vote.....

......

[zboy2854]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

No one will ever break the 4 minute mile they said - - man will never fly - - woman shouldn't vote.....

Yep, equal rights for women, and hypothetical tweaks to a hard drive that won't make any functional difference in the usability of a sample library, I totally see the parallel.

[gurubuzz]

Awesome, now you see what I mean, cool, now let's put our thinking caps on and work this out...

[zboy2854]

Sorry, I'd rather spend the time actually using my sample libraries and making music...

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

If you want to run huge streaming-from-disk sample libraries, you need 3 fast hard drives. Preferably internal, but external if you must. The cost is peanuts, really.

Reserve your C:\ for OS and programs. But it must be fast, because it handles virtual memory. If you compromise here, it affects everything else. Defrag when necessary.

Reserve a fast disk for samples. Keep your files contiguous: defrag, defrag, defrag. Dedicating a drive to samples makes this very easy.

Record audio and save your projects to a seperate drive. defrag, or re-format, as often as you need. Much easier to manage this way.

You don't want to be running large streaming libraries from the same disk that is trying to swap out a virtual memory page file, or trying to steam or record your audio tracks at the same time.

Otherwise - you might consider using lean "placeholder" sampled instruments for tracking, and then doing your bouncedown with the huge libraries. That way it doesn't have to stream in realtime.

Totally with you mate,

I do run 3 hard drives C:/ is a ATA ide, disk 2 is sata, disk 3 is sata all on separate ports...even my burner has it's own port. just trying to squeeze it.

If your at bonniville flats trying to break the sound barrier on four wheels it's easy to say just fly a jet...but that's not the point.

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by zboy2854

Sorry, I'd rather spend the time actually using my sample libraries and making music...

you must have an optimized system to be on gearslutz while making music..

[zboy2854]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

you must have an optimized system to be on gearslutz while making music..

If you mean being able to browse the internet while having my music programs open, then I guess so. But then again, with today's computers that's not really very hard, but as someone who's built PC's for 12 years you already knew that.

The point is, you're looking for a solution to a problem that isn't a problem to begin with. If today's computers couldn't properly use or play back sample libraries, then I'd be right there with you seeking a solution. But that's not the case. A normally defragged dedicated drive for sample libraries already works fine. So your goal clearly isn't a music-making oriented one, it's simply tweaking for the sake of tweaking. Which if that's your thing, fine. It just has nothing to do with being able to get actual work done.

[emfrank72]

I'd take your question somewhere else. Most here are worried more with getting a great sound and would prefer not to know which platter or sector data is being written to. There has got to be the equivalent of a dataslutz or HDslutz type of page where people care about this kind of information. I just installed 3 10k rpm drives in my system and have never had to worry about it.
Good luck.

[DontLetMeDrown]

Originally Posted by emfrank72

I'd take your question somewhere else. Most here are worried more with getting a great sound and would prefer not to know which platter or sector data is being written to. There has got to be the equivalent of a dataslutz or HDslutz type of page where people care about this kind of information. I just installed 3 10k rpm drives in my system and have never had to worry about it.
Good luck.

Bingo!thumbsup Maybe posting in the "Music Computer" or "Geekslutz" sections might get you more results from tech-savy guys who care more about tweaking than music.

[Chuck Wool]

Isn't your RAM a factor here as well? Get a 64 bit machine and a TB of RAM.

[Joe Porto]

There's a simple solution to your problem:

SOLID STATE STORAGE

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by Joe Porto

There's a simple solution to your problem:

SOLID STATE STORAGE

There isn't a problem just trying to find out how a hard disk and OS interact

Originally Posted by rufus13

Women under 45 probably shouldn't vote, and neither men under 30 who haven't completed military service, as should accepting a social service subsidy (prison, welfare, section8 housing, etc.) cancel your vote for the year, but that doesn't have anything to do with hard disk drive access times.

You can partition disk drives and test the speed of partitions. On the old MacOS HFS/HFS+, if you partition a physical disk to "untitled, untitled2, untitled3" drives of equal size, and turn off the buffer or use blocks of data bigger than the buffer, the "untitled" partition will have a higher data rate because more blocks of data pass under the head at the fixed platter RPM.

Newer drives with big buffers (16MB +) seem very fast because the first/smaller chunks of data are accessed and sent at the buss speed not the platter/head access speed.

With a little understanding, we can intentionally not overwhelm the hardware, or if you want a demonstration (to the bean counters?) of how inadequate the hardware is, do that. The anti-intellectual rant does us no good. Knowing stuff and knowing how to know stuff, or at least who to ask, is good in itself, and a useful starting point to any kind of project, industrial or musical.

Cheers.

Rufus... do you know a way to test speed on XP?







Healthy communication is healthy....

If your not interested in finding out about hard drives don't tell me to go away....

[gurubuzz]

Originally Posted by Joe Porto

There's a simple solution to your problem:

SOLID STATE STORAGE

Do you mean RAM...


XP only addresses 3 gig or ram.....

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

Do you mean RAM...


XP only addresses 3 gig or ram.....

Unless you shell out extra for the server version.

[RobF]

I think Martin Walker at Sound on Sound wrote an article on this a while back. Maybe do a search there, or ask on their forum

[mwd]

You can use the outer edges of any drive to get a slight boost in performance (short-stroking the drive). You can also negate need for this by using 10K Raptors or you can kick the whole thing in the pants by short-stroking a Raptor.

On a Raptor these were my discoveries. The drive performance starts to dip 20% into the disk or at about 14GB on a 74GB drive. WinXP takes up 4 or 5GB when limiting a drive to the OS only. I use 3 Raptors. C: for OS only on a 12GB partition. D: for apps only on a 12GB partition and E: for data only (audio) with no partition.

The left over room on C I use for a drive image of D which uses this area of the disk but for dormant or inactive purposes.

The left over room on D I use for a drive image of C same dormancy.

The important thing with partitions is to have 1 active and 1 dormant (storage or archiving). So your drive heads are not thrashing all over the place trying to pick up active data thereby increasing seek times.

[mOjO FET]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

I want to get my sample libraries on the fastest part of a new hard drive

How do you do this.

Physically how does XP partition hard drives.

Hard drives have multiple disks within them and multiple heads.

Which part of which "multiple disks within a hard drive" does the partition start and finish?

Is there a way of making a partition on the fastest parts of the "multiple disks within" a hard drive and the next partition on the not so fast parts etc.

The fastest part is on the other parts of the disks as they go past the reading head the quickest.

Please lets not debate whether this is true or not because a cd/dvd always reads 3-4 times quicker at the other areas watch the readout when you are ripping a CD..

Have you hit any limit with you drive while streaming your library?

Any S-ATA drive should be sufficient for this kind of task when it's a dedicated drive.

Setup a RAID.

Or wait until SSD drives become more affordable.

Michael

[mwd]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

Is there a way of making a partition on the fastest parts of the "multiple disks within" a hard drive and the next partition on the not so fast parts etc.

This is done automatically. Look at the Raptor drive test. Notice the scale only on the left. The drive starts off reading at 83.8 MB/sec and ends up at 53.8 MB/sec. That's a big diff. Roughly 100% equals 74 GB. So you can see it begins to dip at 20% or app. 14GB. If you take a fresh disk and throw a partition on it... it's going to automatically be on the outer edge (the fastest). Throw another partition... it will be more inside (slower). Another partition (slower yet).

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

..a cd/dvd always reads 3-4 times quicker at the other areas watch the readout when you are ripping a CD..

Apples and oranges. The only thing practically in common is they both spin. CD reads from the inside out via a spiral. A disk reads from outside in via a circle.