Bad idea to record to same drive as OS

[plum]

I have been recording to my (original 5200 RPM I think) with the OS 10.3.9 partitioned to half of the 80GIG, and the other half used for recording audio. Is this a bad idea and decreasing my performance much? I own an external Firewire but it is filled and my DVD writier is on the blink right now. Is the general concensus that this is a stupid thing to do for Drive/computer health and audio performance. Because I want to stop then and take the time to clear out my 7200 Firewire Drive and start recording to it! To my amazement though the combo has been running very well compared to OS9 and DP3..

[jonotron]

If you are recording say one or two tracks at a time, you will get on just fine. It's surprising how much you can get on the OS drive without hassle . The most i've seen is 18 tracks onto a 17" powerbook (an accident, was meant for a lacie but went the wrong way).
Having a fast external drive seems to be good for stuff like merging tracks where the drive rasps away really quick. Don't ever use an external DVD writer as a tracking device, or for anything other than backing up completed files, they are far too slow..

[pcm]

I recorded 32 tracks onto my powerbook, for 60 to 90 minutes at a time, all night long. No problem. The issues is more with edit density. That will show up problems faster with a boot drive than an external. But for flat out recording, so long as you have a fair bit of free space, it just isn't an issue.

[Timeline]

I have mentioned this before but new 7200 fast drives at 120gb and above are just on the horizon and if we're patient I think we can have it all.

Seagate is also pushing the envelope on even newer technology with "vertical",perpendicular recording technology concepts.

When available, it would take your basic PB 1.5 or 1.67 and increase it's capabilities dramatically to safely record multi-track to the tune of 30 to 40 tracks at once at 88.2 24bit and have the room to do it. Recent articles say that 180GB is not out of the realm of possibility.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... e=business

[plum]

What I forgot to mention was that I was told simply that recording to your OS-drive creates a lot of fragmentation; and that because of the OSX's inabilty to allow complete defragmentation (with programs like Disk Warrior which do not actually defagment anymore)?) without a clean wipe/reformat-- that Drive Health is diminished along with longevity. And also, that one's drive(s) in OSX should be reformatted once a year for maintenence. Can anyone elaborate on this?

[Timeline]

Thats true with DW but TechTool pro can do a complete optimization. Every bit. That's why you really need both. I do this more often than once a year on my laptop.

DW does repairs much deeper than TechTool though.

[Aramis]

Thats true with DW but TechTool pro can do a complete optimization. Every bit. That's why you really need both. I do this more often than once a year on my laptop.

DW does repairs much deeper than TechTool though.

I am using IDefrag

Aramis

[emulatorloo]

Is the general concensus that this is a stupid thing to do for Drive/computer health and audio performance. Because I want to stop then and take the time to clear out my 7200 Firewire Drive and start recording to it!

Why not add another internal IDE drive to your G4 and dedicate it to audio? That is how my system is set up and it works well for me.

It will be faster than recording to an external firewire drive.

Note that you are limited with that mac to 120GB internal drives or less. If you shop around you can get a 120 IDE for around 40 bucks or so.

[stickwolf]

Seeing as many macs, including my iMac from 2004 come with internal drives much larger than 120GB, I have no idea where you got the idea that there's some limit like that to internal drives on macs...

[kelldammit]

i think he was referring to laptop 7200rpm hard drives someday breaking the 100gb limit.

[emulatorloo]

Seeing as many macs, including my iMac from 2004 come with internal drives much larger than 120GB, I have no idea where you got the idea that there's some limit like that to internal drives on macs...

Because it is true -- Pre Quicksilver 2002 towers and G3s had trouble w internal drives larger than 128GB (my mistake that it was 120)

From XLR8yrmac faq:

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/action.la ... 88&-search

Q: What Macs natively support large IDE drives? (over 128GB formatted)

A: I duplicated a past FAQ item here ("why does my large drive (over 128GB) format to only 128GB") since some missed the point of that posting - which macs natively support big drives and options for macs that don't.

Mac towers before the 2002 Quicksilver models do not natively support large drives on the onboard IDE (i.e. drives larger than 128GB will be limited to 128GB formatted regardless of the number of partitions used.) The 2001 Quicksilver and older Macs (Digital Audio, Gigabit, Sawtooth, B&W G3, Beige G3, etc. as well as iMacs before the iMac G4 model) do not have big drive support.

(See below for options to add support).
As noted in drive database reports, the main site IDE topics page, Hard Drive section article, etc. - the 2002 QS, iMac G4, eMac, Mirror Drive Door and later models (including the G5 tower and Xserves of course) have native big drive support (with drives formatted in disk utility in 10.2.x and later).

For macs w/o native big drive support - options like Intech's drivers, a Mac PCI IDE card w/big drive support, or a Firewire case with bridge board that has big drive support are options. (see below)

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Here's the software utility that lets you get arround it.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Intech%20USA/SPEEDHCCD/

Personally that makes me a little nervous, so I just stick w 120GB internal drives on my 2001 Quicksilver and Sawtooth.


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