Samplitude, Firewire drives & 98/XP

[Joe Hannigan]

Just wondering how many folks are now moving to external firewire drives for increased storage space and speed, and what difference XP makes in the overall picture.

I've found that Firewire HDs work wonderfully well for most projects, but I'm stubbing my cyber-toe on some things, and I don't know if they're related to the Firewire drives, Win98 SE, Samplitude, etc.

Lately, most vendors of my various hardware (sound & Video devices specifically) have suggested I move to Windows XP and be done with Win98 SE. (Better implementation, drivers, etc.)

I'm also reading that it's wise to Partition large drives (bigger than 20 gigs) to keep access patterns smaller, and less "hunting" for data, esp with drives so large, that can become fragmented and difficult to read.

Just today, using WIN98 SE, I have had some strange "Freezes" that temporarily stop Samplitude cold for about 20-30 seconds while a single stereo wav file (with minimal DSP) was playing. The only difference between this time and any other time was the fact that the stereo Wav file was on an unpartitioned, 80 gig, external Firewire HD (Maxtor) that was about 40% of capacity. (Possibly getting fragmented, too).

I moved the file & project over to an internal IDE (DMA was "on" for both, btw) and the "Freeze" went away. (Did this rewrite & reorganzie the file into something more contiguous? Or, do internal IDE's work better than external Firewire drives?)

So I see at least two things that concern me: Should I be Partitioning the big drives to take better advanage of them, and will going up to Windows XP help with all this? (i've had other problems with the Firewire drives that everyone claims will go away with XP.)

Anyone with similar experiences? (I run Samplitude on WIN98 SE on my main DAW system with a P3, 500 MZ, 256 meg RAM, various IDEs, etc., but also have a VAIO laptop with XP and it's smooooth.)

[WireLine]

Great topic, Joe!...I may be wrong, but it seems that FireWire drives are pretty much designated as backup use only (from my interpretation of readings) and that all actual 'stuff' should be on primary IDE drives. This may be a clue to your hangfire.

I have 2 100G HDs, the OS and short term storage is partitioned, the other 'working space' for audio is not partitioned. As of yet, I have not had any of the studdering or freezing you described (knock on wood).

We use XP here, and it has been a seamless flawless OS...well worth the effort I think.

[Joe Hannigan]

<<I have 2 100G HDs, the OS and short term storage is partitioned, the other 'working space' for audio is not partitioned. As of yet, I have not had any of the studdering or freezing you described (knock on wood).

We use XP here, and it has been a seamless flawless OS...well worth the effort I think.>>

Ahhhhh, now you're giving me some more clues! I have been using Win98 SE for a long time now, but I think I am about at the end of its usefullness for what I'm doing. I am THISCLOSE to moving up to XP professional. I have installed it twice, but with some problems, and had to back away each time. I've been reading more and more about it, and have addressed the various problems, uh..."issues" related to upgrading, and I think I'm about to start on it again.

I've not heard a bad word yet about XP from the Audio pros...

[martin armsby]

Hi,
I would consider myself as "above average" when it comes to running and maintainance of computers. I have four computers - all self built - running 98se and XP on seperate "C:" partitions. Each computer runs Sam 5.58, 6.04 and 6.5 beta.
I've been able to tweak 98se into a stable platform over time. Ok now XP is in comparrison, fairly new to me and I've been working on its tweaks etc. for some time too.
I would say - out of the box, XP wins hands down. But - I can playback more tracks with more effects on a tweaked 98se. Also trackbouncing is up to 3 times faster on 98se. The release of a service pack is due any time now for XP which may bring up the speed to a level of the old NT4 - who knows - I hope so 'cause I do actually prefer XP and can quite happily do without the tweaking hours spent on 98se.

cheers

M

[Joe Hannigan]

Martin;

The track bouncing time concerns me, becuase like many of us, I often do a "bounce" of an entire multitrack mix, usually 8-10 tracks, very often with DSP, and a lot of them 1/2 hr or more. Just one small (?) reason to worry about XP, but I agree about the service pack looming - it will probably help.

Just to follow up on my adventures with Firewire drives, I have upgraded to Adobe Premier 6.0x (for video editing/capture, etc.) and have been using one of my firewire drives
to write-to/read-from and it's flawless. As of yesterday, it works!

Just for reference, even MP3 compressed AVI files are pretty darn HUGE and require a fast throughput to get info to/from the HD, so I think firewire has passed the test there, at least in terms of speed.

What I try to do in most cases with multitple camera streams or audio feeds is to have them on different drives...my thinking here is that the audio can come off one drive, Cam1 view can come off another, ditto for Cam2, and so on.

By comparison, grabbing a couple of tracks at the same time from a Firewire drive SHOULD be fairly easy, but again, I'm thinking that paritioning and defragging are going to be the real icing on the cake.... I'll keep you posted! <G>