recording gurus help.... DAW quandary?????

[MOSHWITZ]

Sup??


OK, i got a couple of new HD's for my recording rig and thought i'd get some opinions about HD placement and such. i've asked on a couple of other forums also, but here is the jist of it,,,
anyway there has always been different views about multiple HD's, and i am all about my audio on a drive of its own,, system on another which has 2 partitions, one for windows and one for all my rec. apps.
I just bought 2 new maxtor diamondmax 160gb 7200 rpm 8 mb cache SATA drives, which brings my to very first question.....what is the most ideal setup be without creating a RAID?

OK, first off for my DAW which is purely for audio and video only,,i'm running win. XP, SPR 5 ( and others FL6, finale, Guitar rig,,etc..) on a AMD64 3200(running at 2200 mhz) ASUS K8V SE deluxe mobo with 1.5 gb kingston DDR400 ram, 80 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache system/ apps drive and , a 160 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache audio drive, I flop between sound cards, but currently have a Roland RPC-1 card and an SI-24 comptroller( with the sonar patch for automation and now my Mackie D8B hooked up via midi for 8 more channels of automation in HUI mode) 1 CD burner, 1 DVD burner .

the way it is now , i have an 80 gb system drive with 2 partitions,, first, windows, second rec. apps. and the cd burner on the pri IDE cable, and the 160 gb audio drive with 2 partitions,,,first is 50 gb for current projects, and second is the remaining 110gb for finished audio storage. and the DVD burner on the sec. IDE cable.


the 80 gb gets bumped to another comp, so i'm left with 1 , 160gb PATA drive and 2, 160 gb SATA drives,,, Here is the ??? do i set it up like...

1) 160 gb sys. drive with 2 partitions,, first, windows, second,, rec. apps on the pri. IDE cable
and the dvd and cd burners on the sec. IDE cable

1st, 160gb SATA drive for current audio projects
2nd, 160 SATA drive for audio storage.

or,,,,

2) 160 gb sys, drive with 2 partitions,, first, windows, second,, audio storage on the pri. IDE cable
and the dvd and cd burners on the sec. IDE cable


1st, 160gb SATA drive rec. apps
2nd, 160gb SATA drive for current audio projects


or,,,,

3) ????

[img]/images/graemlins/help.gif[/img]

thanks
MOSH ON
DAVE

[Newc]

Re: recording gurus help.... DAW quandary?????

I don't put anything on the System drive except System stuff. No apps, no storage. If it burns, you lose everything.

I keep all my audio stuff on a totally separate drive (which eventually gets cluttered up [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]) so I don't spend a lot of time searching through multiple partitions and subfolders.

I have a "Sessions" folder for Adobe Audition Session files, and each Session has its own subfolder with all the tracks for that Session. I don't do the Documents And Settings/Owner/Documents/Local Settings/blah/blah/blah/My Music/ structure - just Drive:\Sessions\Subfolders by Session name.

Since you're having to put in a new System drive, after the OS is installed, disable/remove anything you won't need explicitly for Audio. I'd like to say you shouldn't need networking stuff or Helper Monkeys or Accessibility Options and all that stuff that throws a popup at you every 5 minutes (Desktop Cleanup, etc), unless there's no other way to download software updates for your apps, but you will at least need networking stuff to get OS updates and such.

Definitely look into tips and tricks of optimizing system speed by disabling certain background functions that sap processor and ram resources. Things like AntiVirus and other scanning apps delay your work because everything has to go through them first.
This includes Drive Aware programs like Nero that constantly queue your CD/DVD drives to see if a disc has been inserted.

As for connections, I'd say system and CD on the Primary IDE cable, the other drives on the secondary. This gives the OS a "straight shot" to and from the CD drive from the system drive without wandering around in the cables.
There's really no speed difference I'm aware of between primary and secondary IDE channels, since that's more or less a BIOS/DOS thing.

Not sure how/if partitions will affect access times, as the system still has to read a partition table to find a given location (empty space to record to or a fileto open). Not sure if that takes as long as scanning an entire drive - probably not since the system stores the partition table where it can access it the fastest.

And a CD burner and DVD burner is redundant - the DVD should be able to do CDs just as well if not better/faster. If it can, ditch the CD and add another HD - just in case [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]