What internal drives do you use for recording?

kassonica · Post by **kassonica** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 6:06 am

Hi all, my studio is up and running but my main audio drive which is 4 years old is causing problems so I'm going to upgrade it.

Currently the drive is a western digital 7200rpm so I was thinking of just replacing it with another one the same but is there a better option?

Thanks.

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:01 am

I use the cheapest cause that's all I can afford. The last two I bought were the Seagate Barracuda 500gb drives. I have one for audio and one for samples. They've been working just fine. If I'm doing just audio recordings I have no problems. But VIs are causing processor spikes. Don't think this has anything to do with the HDs though.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:08 am

Just make sure you don't get "green" drives or 5400 RPM. The big new drives are very fast, especially if you partition and use the outermost partition for speed-critical data, like VI samples and audio files. Putting your OS on an outer partition will also speed up boot times considerably in many cases.

The partitions are listed in Disc Utility outmost first - innermost last.

Partitioning large drives also makes housekeeping easier.

There is another cool thing one can do if one does not have unlimited drives at his or her disposal: Cross-backup. Use the fast outer partition(s) for working data on two drives. Use the slower inner partition(s) as a backup of the fast partitions, one drive to the other. This is essentially a Manual RAID 1 (mirrored) drive array, with at the aforementioned speed benefits.

As long as you back up regularly, life should be good. I do recommend using Time Machine and a pair of external drives in rotation for the Time Machine data. I keep one TM drive off site at all times, and rotate every few weeks, or when I complete an important project. By using identical TM drives, I can use the same power brick all the time, saving set up time. When the drives are swapped, I go into Time Machine Preferences and change the TM Drive to the currently available drive.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:19 am

I trust WD or Hitachi drives.
I used to use Seagate but after they had drive problems a few years ago,I stopped using them.
It might be overkill or marketing hype but if I see a good deal on an enterprise drive I often go for that as well.
I don't use green drives but I'm considering for TimeMachine which I still have never tried. I don't totally understand TM and try to remember to run SuperDuper but I run it enough and I know I will regret it 1 day

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:55 pm

>Just make sure you don't get "green" drives or 5400 RPM<

Except for Time Machine. Likewise, if you have an older Time Capsule with a 7200rpm drive, replacing it with a Green drive will lower the temperature significantly and extend the life of the TC.

>I trust WD or Hitachi drives.
I used to use Seagate but after they had drive problems a few years ago,I stopped using them<

I agree - unless you have a 2010 iMac with an internal Seagate drive then you must use the same. Mine has a WD.

I have a recent Seagate that has become very noisy but, as long as it still passes SMART (barely), Seagate won't replace it under the 5 yr warranty. Grrrr.... waiting for it to either last 5 years or finish failing. It is one of the drives I rotate through as TM backups - most of the data is redundant.

>I don't use green drives but I'm considering for TimeMachine which I still have never tried. I don't totally understand TM<

It just runs. If you need to restore from backup, it just works. Certain license authorizations over the internet may need to be re-done (MasterWriter and Final Draft for me).

I have never had it get in the way of DP even when running RX 2, the most CPU/Memory intensive plug I use.

>As long as you back up regularly, life should be good. I do recommend using Time Machine and a pair of external drives in rotation for the Time Machine data. I keep one TM drive off site at all times, and rotate every few weeks, or when I complete an important project. By using identical TM drives, I can use the same power brick all the time, saving set up time. When the drives are swapped, I go into Time Machine Preferences and change the TM Drive to the currently available drive.<

I use inexpensive eSATA docks for TM on my iMac. I do have to shut down and re-boot as eSATA is not hot-swappable. I lift the drive out and put the other in, then re-select in Time Machine Preferences. These docks are low as $17 from MicroCenter, $38 from OWC. Connecting through usb, I turn it off, swap and turn on again without rebooting (eSATA is over 5x the speed of usb2, however).

For all the other computers on my network, I use a dual band Time Capsule with a 2G Green drive replacing the 7200 OE (now used for my external libraries).

dpg4macman · Post by **dpg4macman** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:39 am

I use 3 G-Drives. A 160g for samples, a 160g for sessions-audio recording and a 500g for backing things up. I also have an additional 500g for time machine.

I recommend the G-Drive

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm

Best of luck,

mvh

bongo_x · Post by **bongo_x** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 6:45 pm

I’ve been using the Samsung Spinpoint F3’s for a while and really like them, but Seagate bought them out so I don’t know how long they will be around or if they are still the same. WD bought Hitachi right around the same time, so that option went away. You now have 2 choices.

janzoulou · Post by **janzoulou** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 4:00 am

WD - Velocity Raptor for Projects, Samples and Samsung for b-up Server. And OCZ Vertex 2 for System. So far never failed and runs flawlessly.

jweisbin · Post by **jweisbin** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 2:03 pm

janzoulou wrote:WD - Velocity Raptor for Projects, Samples and Samsung for b-up Server. And OCZ Vertex 2 for System. So far never failed and runs flawlessly.

That is similar to what I used to do. But now I just load projects onto and from my boot drive which is an OWC SSD. When I'm finished, or don't need to work on them for awhile, I back them up to a few other drives, Time Machine, etc. Performance wipes away the velociraptor.

Libraries are stored on Hitachi 7200 RPM drives, currently I have one 4 TB drive and one 3 TB drive, and another drive for Time Machine.

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 7:58 am

Like bongo, I've had good luck with the Samsung products. My HDs get really heavy use and I expect I'll be replacing them soon. I'll probably be switching to WD now that the Samsung line has been bought out.

Phil

Radiogal · Post by **Radiogal** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 1:41 pm

OSX disk WD Black Caviar 1 TB

HD Audio "Running projects" WD - VelociRaptor 600 GB 10.000 RPM

The 2 other internals are WD Black Caviar 1,5 GB each with 64mb cache 7.200 RPM
These are partitioned and used for Sample libaries, projects in progress, one partition for DP projects and one for Logic projects, another one for Finalized Projects, one partition for all other stuff and finally one for the cloned bootable copy of the OSX drive. (SuperDuper)

External HD for Time Machine back up: G-TECH G-DRIVE USB 3.0/FW800 4TB (Resently bought from Apple Store).

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 12:23 am

SSDs Please.

tremo · Post by **tremo** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 5:58 am

How come you guys are saying not to use "green" drives? I have WD Green drives in my Mac Pro, and I like them because they're so quiet. Is there a problem using them to record audio?

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:30 am

Tremo, I stand to be corrected, but I inadvertently bought 2 Green drives and my understanding is...

They don't always (if ever) spin at 7200 RPM to conserve energy, hence the Green designation. I believe the actual speed of the drive depends on the load that's demanded of it at any given time.

One has my VIs and plug-ins on it and I have noticed (like with Ivory) I'll get the "slow drive" message.

I just haven't gone through the hassle yet to replace them and transfer files.

On a similar note, I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my 2 external Iomega drives (backups) from sleeping. I have my system set to never allow anything to "sleep" yet they do. And when they do it slows the entire system down and I usually have to shutdown and restart. (Or eject them after a backup is done and remount when I need them again.)

Buzzy

bayswater · Post by **bayswater** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:46 am

tremo wrote:How come you guys are saying not to use "green" drives? I have WD Green drives in my Mac Pro, and I like them because they're so quiet. Is there a problem using them to record audio?

From the Western Digital site:

Recommended use.
WD Green hard drives are tested and recommended for use in PCs as secondary storage, external enclosures and other applications that require cool and quiet operation.*

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