Dedicated drive for audio

[jsquare]

Hey, hey, hey. I've been of the understanding that you should have your start up drive be one drive and your audio recording drive be another. I know this has probably been discussed, but I'm back to Audioforums after a few months of steady work. Now I have time to catch up. I've been using the stock 40GB drive that came with my dual 500 G4. So far, no problems. Should I worry about this, or am I doing the right thing? Thanks.

[f0rGe]

If it's working, leave it http://www.audioforums.com/forums/biggrin.gif

[jsquare]

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, that's what I figured. I keep it reasonably defragged and haven't had any bad luck so far with corrupted files or weirdness. Seems like the 40gig drive is perfect for recording and wonder if my startup disk should be a smaller one dedicated to the OS and programs. Anyone else care to shed some light on the subject?

[gbush]

I did a lot research on this same topic a while back when Iput my system together. What I found was exactly what you are saying. You should have you system and audio on separate drives. The resoning is this: the less your computer needs to access aparticular disk the more trhoughput you will have for the audio. This will increase the number of simultaneous audio tracks you can run. If you are only using a couple of auidio tracks then you will not notice the difference. However, if you start increasing the number of tracks you may begin to notice problems with access resulting in clicks, pops or skipping in the audio playback.

If you want the best performance you should also be using fast scsi drives as the throughput is much greater as compared to ATA, IDE, EIDE setups.

[jsquare]

I haven't experienced any problems yet, but I see what you're saying. As my Protools Sessions and Logic Audio songs get more complex, I may consider an additional drive. How do I do a safe and stress-free transfer of my OS and programs to a new, smaller drive? Is it easy? I have a fully functional system now and don't want too much head scratching and downtime. I realize I'll have to then reformat the newly designated "audio" drive and start anew. Is it a fairly painless process to do all this? Guess I'm kinda nervous about messin' up. Thanks for the advice so far, guys.

[Bob Booth]

Just drag and drop your OS folder onto the new drive, select it as your boot drive, and make sure it works. Done. Now go clean your room, I mean your drive.

Bob Booth
Turner Valley Studios

[This message has been edited by Bob Booth (edited 08-29-2001).]