10,000 RPM hard drive VS 7,500 RPM hard drive

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 5:55 pm

Does it make a big difference? I have an macbook but can only have 2 gigs of ram. That is the max the laptop can have. I have a 250gig 7500 rpm hard drive. I am running Logic 7, synthogy piano, and want to buy ocean way drums but scared as my system already gets overloaded sometimes. If I buy a 10,000 rpm hard drive will it solve my problems or will it not make a significant difference?

thanks,

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 6:31 pm

Stick the new HDD in an external firwire box and use that. Use the HDD in the Mac to just be the operating system and programs drive. Write audio to the external.

The bottleneck in the laptop is the cpu fsb.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:41 pm

I agree with Greener. You want two drives, one for OS, one for recorded audio. The extra speed of the 10k drive will allow you to stream more tracks for multi tracking. I forked out the extra cash for a 10k RPM drive, and get 24 tracks simultaneously recording with the drive chirping 1/3 of the time. It may not have been worth it. 7200 should be fine for just about anything you want to do.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:06 pm

How about one of the new solid state drives?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.aspx?key=Imation+SSD&platform=All&sr=1&Find+it.x=0&Find+it.y=0

Quiet

Long life

Extremely fast

SATA II

Mounts anywhere a standard drive will mount.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:32 pm

Crazy! $3000 for a 128GB solid state drive? The new MacBook air is coming with 128GB SS drive and it retails for just over $2000.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:32 am

8gb micro sd.

That makes me freak out.

MacBook air makes me think about what's in the heads of some people.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 3:23 am

Greener wrote:

MacBook air makes me think about what's in the heads of some people.

It might seem like a fools idea right now. I can't wait till more company's start moving toward Solid State drives. It's one of the biggest bottlenecks in a computer. Imagine a computer that is virtually instant on. That is the MacBook Air. I would love to see an entire OS ship as a Solid State drive instead of on DVDs.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:46 am

"Imagine a computer that is virtually instant on. That is the MacBook Air."

But there is nothing that's instantly on.

My typewriter is just as powerful. It's always on.

I too look forward to an interesting and better SSD world. Just don't get me started on Macs. Razz

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 5:00 am

I am saving all my audio data to the hard drive. I am using usb 2.0 instead of firewire because my firebox is using the firewire input. Should I get a firewire hub and run both firewire?

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 1:48 pm

oh no he didn't!!!

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:52 pm

Please tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm not an expert at this.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 3:54 pm

Ok, I guess I was connecting it wrong. I put a firewire output from my audio interface to the computer and a firewire output from my audio interface to my hard-drive. Is that correct?

I still have the same core audio problem though.

Are there settings in logic that I need to change? Audio settings? Buffer settings?

thanks for you help

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:49 am

What sample rate/bit rate? How large is your buffer. It should be no more than 256 or so.

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:53 pm

44100 sample rate. My buffer was 512 and I just put it to 256 and I still got the error. When I went to the system performance the audio was the thing that kept getting maxed out. Is it my audio interface? Should I lower the buffer even more?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:12 pm

Welcome to the world of DSP, and overloading your system.

The general rule of thumb... small buffers for tracking, big buffers for mixing.

One thing you may want/need to do, is render stems to get the actual track count being processed down.

You should also watch out for how many plugs you are using. Synth's, convolution verbs and big plug-ins are resource hogs. Check the manual and look for reccomendations for maximums, and norms.

As slow as your overall system is, it should still be plenty strong enough to handle 24-36 tracks with at least 1 plug/channel.

Also, there should be a few system settings to disable/set, that will ease the processor load. This info should be in the manual in the set-up/getting started setting.

Do not run ANY other applications when you are running the DAW.

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