hard drive configurations for DP use - please advise

[SeikoT123]

I'm setting up a new G5 2.7Ghz for use with DP 4.52. Will be getting EWQLPlat orchestral samples and expect to use them a lot. I have a question about hard drives.

From what I've read on this forum, for optimum performance, audio should be written to a drive other than the drive the OS is on. My computer has a built-in 7200 SATA drive (250 GB, the standard pre-installed Apple model on which the OS is installed), and I am planning to get a second internal SATA drive. My questions are:

1. Do I need separate hard drives for (i) the OS, (ii) storing the EWQL samples and (iii) writing audio? I'm willing to get 3 sep drives (i.e., adding an external - got the budget for it), but do I really need 3 or will 2 do the trick?

2. Should the additional drive(s) be 10,000 vs. 7200? Is there really a big difference?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[qo]

You can get by with samples and tracking on the same drive. As you no doubt are aware, the 10K SATA drives are relatively small (74GB max). So, they are not really optimal for samples. And, the larger SATA drives are 7200RPM, which isn't the most optimal for tracking.

Your requirements are gonna dictate what's best. How large are your projects, typically? 10K SATA does allow you to scale to more tracks. But, at some point, you enter the overkill zone if your projects don't warrant the extra performance.

I opted for an external 4-bay SATA enclosure (see Gear link in my sig) with removable drive bays because I also wanted/needed "active" offline backup. You can use an external firewire drive for this though. In my case, I wanted the ease/speed of the SATA backup drives being online all the time and didn't want to have to unplug an AD or DA converter to plugin a firewire drive.

[Shooshie]

I'll tell you my recent experience, though I don't expect everyone to do it this way. I've been re-installing my system. I erased the systm drive and set about putting it all back together the right way this time. But what is the right way? Well, for one thing I want my drives to take full advantage of their speed, and to use the busses to their most efficient. If a drive is reading and writing at the same time, it's not running its most efficient. It can do it, but it will work a lot harder, and perhaps be somewhat slower.

So, I drew a diagram of all my peripherals and their cables. It was more complicated than I thought. I counted about 50 total devices. Figure that those are all duplexed, and you've got 100 I/Os. More, since some things are connected in more than one way, to more than one device. (MIDI Interface, for instance)

Ok, once I had a list of all the devices I have online, next I figured out how many things are really reading and writing at the same time. That would include:

Computer In:
••• 3 audio interfaces connected to microphones, devices, MIDI instruments, and external mixing board
••• Mach Five
••• MOTU Symphonic Instrument
••• Ivory
••• recorded audio tracks from disk
••• Digital Performer application/processing calls
••• OS X System and Core MIDI
••• Input devices (trackball, keyboard, etc.)
••• dongle

Computer Out:
••• 3 audio interfaces, etc. (2 PCI, 1 FireWire)
••• audio being recorded to disk
••• MIDI Interface
••• Monitor (which also has two more USB ports)
••• Soundsticks (when used)
••• I'm probably leaving stuff out, but this is just to give you an idea.

Then I went over the whole list and assigned the most logical hard drives, busses, cables, and ports to each item. It was a puzzle, but my main guiding principle was to avoid items sharing cables/ports/busses simultaneously. If they will be reading at the same time, put them on separate busses, cables, devices.

Therefore, I don't want a hard drive taking System calls, reading DP Files, writing recorded tracks and reading Ivory samples all at the same time. And so forth.

The result will, I hope, offer me much smoother operation and lower CPU overhead. Too soon to tell how it works yet. I haven't gotten DP reinstalled yet. But I'm working on it.


Shooshie

[Buckage]

Shooshie,

Please let us know how this works out for you.

Thanks!

[SeikoT123]

qo, Shooshie,
Thanks for your replies. I am grateful for your advice.