About to install only OS , DAW , & Sample library for a

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:35 am

greetings!

So as l stated in my subject l have a new machine w/ three hard drive in my quad core 3gig RAM machine. But l don't know what software should go where? after talking to a few people l got a couple of different answers on what would be more efficient and what would help my programs run faster and safer.

computer tech gamer friend that builds pc's says

1 ide 20 gig install XP os in it

1 ide 80 gig install komplete (50 gigs + cubase 4)

1 sata 320 gig for recording audio

this seems to me to be a reasonable setup but to me appears there MIGHT be some latency issues.

however , after talking to a digital recording savy guy, (but uses mac)he stated i should install my programs like this

mac user , MIDI and music biz proffesor states ...

20 gig ide just a spare drive

80 gig ide audio files

320 gig sata XP o.s Komplete4 and Cubase 4 and do editing on my sata drive.
totally different from the gamers idea.

both setup ideas come from experienced users.But l would like to know how some of you guys in the PC recording field take advantage of todays advanced cpu processing and how you arrange your programs when having 2 or more drives. thanks guys .
ps my audio midi interface is a tascam fw-1804

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:52 am

HI,

OS and ALL programs on the small drive 20G is too small perhaps...

320G for audio only

the 80 g for All samples only you do not install programs on any drive but the OS...

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:56 am

hey,
i agree . 20 gigs for os AND all os programs is to small. i dont plan on ever doing that, what i do consider is only putting my os on it.
whats your opinion.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:24 am

Smaller drives are slower since they have to cover more rotations to access the data. A larger drive is better even for your OS. Anyway Hard Drives are dirt cheap. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for a 64MB Hard drive that was the size of four paperbacks stacked on top of each other. Now you can get thousands of times that for 50 bucks. Generally a 160GB SATA drive goes for about $50.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:13 pm

Heuseph, thats odd you say that . my gamer/builder friend suggests i putmy os on its own, small hardrive (20 gigs isn't really small any way) im not sure the reason why. either way it goes against the grain here. but i will definatly look into it.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:29 pm

Think about it. A 20gig hard drive at 7200 rpm will have to spin a lot more than a 160gig at 7200 to read the same amount of data. It's just logic and very simple physics. Why? simply because the 20gig hard drive uses up more physical space than a 160 gig hard drive to read/write the same amount of data. Sure, use a separate drive but use a bigger hard drive than 20 GB. Also if you're OS after updates and security patches is 5GB, that's 1/4 of your drive!

I have my OS and software on one 80 Gig Hard Drive My samples on a secondary 120GB drive and another 120GB drive(which I plan to upgrade) for audio. I still think the 80GB is too small and too slow for my OS/Software.

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:03 am

TLA: SSD.
64GB SSD will set you back a lot, but if you can find something faster, I salute you.

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:30 am

faster reads horrid write speed

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:34 am

...ideal for an OS.

No?

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:10 pm

At $800 for a 64gig drive, it's just not worth it. There are plenty fast enough standard drives. For $800 you could get a couple of Terrabyte drives and some high speed memory.

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:25 am

hueseph wrote:

Think about it. A 20gig hard drive at 7200 rpm will have to spin a lot more than a 160gig at 7200 to read the same amount of data. It's just logic and very simple physics. Why? simply because the 20gig hard drive uses up more physical space than a 160 gig hard drive to read/write the same amount of data. Sure, use a separate drive but use a bigger hard drive than 20 GB. Also if you're OS after updates and security patches is 5GB, that's 1/4 of your drive!

That has some validity, but you may also consider partitioning a larger, faster drive to a smaller partition for the OS, with the rest as storage/temp. Why?
The platters are still the same physical diameter. And, you don't NEED 300GB for OS and programs. If you partition it so the OS and programs use a smaller area, and the fastest partition, then the heads move over much less area (less-wide swings), and the data is more concentrated to a smaller physical area for faster read/write.

Make sense?

And, don't forget to experiment with with your audio drive to find a good balance of settings when you format that.

Kapt.Krunch

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 9:14 am

back in the late 70's I could almost tell the difference in a few milliseconds... but isn't 7200rpm still 7200rpm and an average seektime of, say, 8 ms still an average seektime of 8ms?

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:50 pm

so is space saying 8ms for either a gig drive or 80 gig drive?

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 3:31 pm

I know SSDs are not cost effective, but still. How often do you do massive amounts of time-critical writing to your OS drive?

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:08 pm

Space wrote:

back in the late 70's I could almost tell the difference in a few milliseconds... but isn't 7200rpm still 7200rpm and an average seektime of, say, 8 ms still an average seektime of 8ms?

Seek time is exactly that. Seek time. The amount of time it takes for the drive to "find" the info you're loading. Throughput is something else altogether and is variable depending on the size of the drive and where on the drive the data is written.

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