Partitioning vs. Separate HD's and where to store your samples

[thisDude]

2 stupid questions to whom it may concern... 1) Is the performance of 2 separate dedicated drives really that much better than having one drive partitioned for both your os and audio? 2) Which drive or partition should one store samples to be streamed from disk? The partition/drive with your os or the one with your audio?

[Franknputer]

1) Yes. Different drives allows the drive mechanism to operate only on audio, independant of any OS-related activity. Also, your OS disk need not be as fast as what you'll need for audio. 2) Audio. Storage doesn't so much matter, but you'll want it separate for streaming it; also, if you have to reinstall your OS, having them on a separate partition/disk means that you can reinstall without losing your data!

[Wrave]

The reason you need tow separate physical hard drives is so you can have all of your system and applications files on one, usually the C:\ drive. As a program runs, it may occasionally go to the applications files, .dlls and and data files while it is running. Your audio files are kept separate because streaming audio during writes (recording) or reads (play back) needs to constantly be accessing the data from your audio source files. Essentially, when it comes to storing data or retrieving data from a hard drive, the computer can only access one location at a time per drive. If you have two separate partitions on a single drive, applications in one and the audio in a separate partition, you are requiring the read mechanism to access both the programs and the audio from that one drive. First it reads some application data and then it has to bounce to a different partition and read some audio data and then maybe back to the application partition to read for more info needed by the application. Wth two separate drives, it reads from the applications drive what it needs, whenever it needs it and never needs to bounce around looking for something else stored on the same disk and once the recording or playback begins, it can access that data without ever needing to relocate the read heads of the drive. I write about this and it sounds like with two drives the read/write heads can access the drives simultaneously but that's not exactly true. Accessing data is sequential and unless you have an application optomized for multiprocessing and multiple processors available in your computer, the brains of a computer still do only one thing at a time. But, it does that one thing very quickly and then goes on to it's next task. This is usually purely electronic switching and it is much faster than the physical relocation of the read/write heads on the hard drive. As to where you should keep your samples there may be someone that can tell you better than I but as I understand it, most samplers keep their data in volatile memory and once loaded it needs not be re-read from the hard drive. So, technically, it ought to make little or no difference where you store samples. However, having said that, I believe "Sample Tank" can access the samples directly from the hard drive. If this is so, it means you need to know how your sampler functions. If, like "Sample Tank", your sampler streams directly from the HD, you would probably be better off keeping the applications and samples on separate drives. If it stores your samples in memory, then it might be best to keep the samples on the same drive as the applications. I am sure others will have some ideas as well. I hope this is helpful.

[thisDude]

Thanks guys, so the consensus is 2 drives, one with your os and apps, one for your audio, samples and project files. :thu:

[Sylver]

You may be able to squeak out a little better performance if each drive is on a seperate controller, too. Most PCs have two controller busses these days.

[phaeton]

Oh, and btw, if you *do* use 2 different drives, be sure to have them on seperate IDE cables plugged into separate channels, otherwise all dual-drive benefits are lost.

[gtrmac]

I have three drives all as masters on seperate channels. This is accomplished by using a Promise ATA-133 Controller Card. The third drive has partitions for backup/archiving and a partiton for samples used with Halion software. Halion streams directly from the drive so it is recommended to dedicate a drive for it. Wrave has given the story on why this works best and my experience confirms it, I get great performance from my system and the systems I have built for other studios.

[the stranger]

Thanks guys! :thu: I needed to ask this, too! You send me the bill, right? :D

[Beatheavy]

Great advice fellas. I use 2 drives on the same IDE cable on my pci yikes g4. If any of you are familiar with model, they have the option of satcking the master and a slave together on top of each other. As I understand it, the only way to seperate the slave from the master IDE bus is to install a separate pci controller card for it. gtrmac, you mentioned have 3 drives on sepreate channels. can you clarify what you mean by different channels? Thanx for advice guys.