7200 RPM? 10,000 RPM?
So I have a 7200 RPM internal hard drive in my new computer. I am going to buy another internal hard drive because I like to have all my audio and session work on one slave hard drive… and then have all my programs and OS and whatnot on the main hard drive.
Here’s my question: If I was to buy a 10,000 RPM internal, would it make more sense to use it as my main hardrive, with the programs and OS? Or use it as my storage hard drive, and have it hold all my n-track sessions and whatnot?
I’m not sure which option will be the fastest…
if you use it as your main drive then Windows interuptions should be over faster causing less dropouts (when you are near tracks limit) - if you use it for tracks only then you should be able to squeeze a few more tracks out of the PC before dropouts occur - its ROUNDABOUTS AND SWINGS untill you can get both drives upto 10000 -
then of course (if your PC can handle them) there are SATA drives that run upto 15000RPM -
Dr J
While DrJ is correct that it’s preferable to make everything as fast as posiible the general rule when you have one fast and one slow is to use the fastest drive for audio streaming.
One thing to consider my be the noise of the drive. At least n the past, the faster the drive the more noise from the computer. With a good processer a 7200 RPM drive will record 16x44100 with little or no problems. I use one running thru firewire for my laptop. The laptop has a 5400 and I can record directly to it with no problems - but it is a Intel duo 2 core and is a very fast processer. So, what this all indicates to me: thru-put may be more important than disk speed. I know that is not what was once common advise, but it has been my experience.
Bax
Right bax, throughput is the KEY whether the platters rotate at 15,000 RPM or 5400 RPM. Look at the throughput numbers, the on board cache size and the noise figures when planning a build for DAW work. Also, do a little math… if you want to record a lot of simultaneous audio streams at 24 bits and crazy high sample rates (96khz +) then yeah, you might need a screaming fast disk. Otherwise, meh… 7200 will do just fine. I track 24 audio tracks at 24/44.1 every Sunday for over an hour to a WD 80GB, 7200 hard disk with an 8MB cache. Works and sounds fabulous.
The other thing to consider is using VSTi/DXi sample players that stream from disk AND simultaneously recording bunches of audio… that’ll sock a strain on your disk sub-system real quick like!
D
I concur about throughput. I am assuming that this new drive is SATA II which is what you want for throughput. The 10,000 rpm disk will probably perform better but it may be noisier.
thanks for the input guys…
here’s 1 more question: what if I was to just stick with 1 hard drive (7200rpm) and have everything (OS, programs, and audio sessions) on it. Will that be slower than having 2 drives (one for OS and one for audio) at 7200rpm? or about the same?
It will be slower, and you will have more dropouts and problems. Your OS will be accessing the hard drive at the same time as ntrack is writing audio to it or reading from it, and it is just a train wreck. In the old days of N1.3 I tried to make do with one drive, and was amazed how many more tracks I could work with just by adding another drive to the system, not even a particularly fast one.
So, for best results, get another hard drive - I found one this weekend at Fry’s - $69 for 300Gbytes, 7200rpm. That was too cheap to pass on!
Good luck!
'til next time;
wynot
2 crives will give you the best results. However, it not a necessary setup. If you are going to be using a lot of tracks and a lot of effects the seperate drives are worth it. If your projects are not so complicated then a single drive will probably do - particualrly if you are using a dual processor. Look for the buffer size, you want at lease 8 and 16mg is better - the buffer size allows the hard drive to handle the higher thru-put you want. If cost is a factor, start with one drive and see how it works out.
A suggestion: in either situation ,I’d create a “boot drive” partition for the Operating system so that it can be reformated if the operating system craps out (it’s not If it is When). If you are going to put only the operating system on the partition you will still need about 10 gig - Windows keeps loading stuff onto the C drive relentlessly and moving the “stuff” has never worked well for me. I personally now use 25gig “boot drive” and load the other programs on that drive. The trick is you do not want the operating system to have to address the drive that you are storing you audio to as you are recording. Create a “swap” drive on the C: drive that is at least twice your memory and make it a constant size: min size = twice memory size, Maximum size = twice memory size. Up until Windows XP I would have suggested a seperate partition for the swap drive, but it’s better to just load up on mamory sticks ( 2 gig is probably the best with XP) and use a hard drive with at least 8 mg buffer and hope to avoid using the swap feature at all. You can probably get by with a much smaller wwap drive space, but large hard drives are not much more than the smaller ones.
Standard music daw setup:
Boot drive © - Operating system, applications and misc business data
Secondary drive (D) - Audio projects and misc data
Third drive (E) - Sample Libraries
You don’t want the operating system housekeeping to interrupt the streaming of audio to or from the audio projects drive. A 7200rpm drive can stream upwards of 100tracks simultaneously; if you are an insane person who works with more than that you can break up project storage over more than one drive.
Some samplers load all the samples of an instrument into RAM, but some stream off the hard disk giving them infinite library size. If your sampler streams, you want the libraries to be on a dedicated hard drive.
Merely partitioning a boot drive for audio project is bad. If you are recording a stream to Partition2 and the OS has to do housekeeping, the recording arm has to lift up, swing all the way across the disk, set down in Partition1 then do its work and go all the way back again. (Sorta like driving across town every time you want to take a sip of soda… in computer time its GLACIAL!) Interrupting the recording/reading stream like that is a sure way to clicks, pops, dropouts or highly reduced track count.
I agree with Tim - in part. The trick is to Not have the computer doing anything except audio recording. Turn off any programs that might be running on your computer and disconnect from the internet. Then the drive does not have to move the read arm around so much. That’s the idea behind two drives. Two partitions on one drive is Not the same as two drives, but if you are using only one drive, and turn off other programs, the drive should not be moving the arm around too much for good recording even with one drive on two partitions - at least I have never experienced a problem. I guess Tim has a point, there certainnly is the possibility of slowing things down, but I have never had any trouble using seperate partitions, and I sure have had to reformat operating systems.
I suppose the best advise is get two drives.
Another option is to have two drives, each with it’s own operating system. You can have one drive that has only n-Track and your other recording software on it. No internet, no games, nada. The other drive is your non-recording drive with all your other stuff. When you record you boot from the recording drive and save your song files to the other drive. This has the advantages of saving your recording data to a separate drive and keeping your recording OS as clean as possible.
I actually have 3 drives. One boot drive with n-Track, one boot drive with everything else, and the other hard drive for recording data. On top of that I have an external drive for backup.