What good is a single large internal drive (iMac/Mini/etc.)?

[mhschmieder]

New Mac Minis and iMacs are out. LOTS of internal hard drive space. What's the point?

What sort of data is it OK to put on an internal hard drive, other than applications (and associated data, plus system data and files)?

I've always thought one needs to strictly use external hard drives for audio data, sample streaming, etc.

Isn't it a recipe for bad performance, to put ANY of that data on the internal hard drive; even if on a separate partition?

For instance, even the iTunes Library is best run from an external hard drive, correct?

I do notice that Adobe recommends storing Lightroom data on the internal drive for best performance (I'm out of space so use external).

[BradLyons]

For 99% of the users, that large drive is fine....but for we audio and video type people, it really doesn't matter.

[mattymac1000]

New Mac Minis and iMacs are out. LOTS of internal hard drive space. What's the point?

What sort of data is it OK to put on an internal hard drive, other than applications (and associated data, plus system data and files)?

I've always thought one needs to strictly use external hard drives for audio data, sample streaming, etc.

Isn't it a recipe for bad performance, to put ANY of that data on the internal hard drive; even if on a separate partition?

For instance, even the iTunes Library is best run from an external hard drive, correct?

I do notice that Adobe recommends storing Lightroom data on the internal drive for best performance (I'm out of space so use external).

Ideally yes, but it wasn't but a few years ago our band multi-tracked our entire album on a iMac G3 (circa 2001) on a 20gig hard drive. We'd consistently have six tracks recording simultaneously on DP 3.xx. When the hard drive got full, I'd bring over my "massive" 40gig drive and back up the session.

This is what we had to work with at the time, so we made it work. Again, would I recommend this? No. Did we finish the album? Yes.

Remember, there are plenty of people on this board who don't need anything more than the hard drive that's in their computer.

You DEFINITELY do not need a seperate hard drive for iTunes - that's just overkill.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Don't confuse boot drive with internal drive. One of the best reasons (aside for the obvious performance factors) to have a desktop Mac as opposed to an iMac, Mini or laptop is that you can have a second internal drive. The bus speed for an internal drive is going to be faster than an external drive. So if you have a 1TB or even a lowly 500GB drive as your 2nd drive, you can partition it to effectively have several additional drives. I have two 500GB drives divided like this.


I can boot off several partitions, so if one goes out or I need to drop back to an earlier OS, it's a simple matter.

[mhschmieder]

Hey MLC, I'm clearly not confusing the two; otherwise I would have included MacPro's as part of my question about internal vs. external drives.

I just want to make sure this doesn't go O.T. There are plenty of other topics related to MacPro's already.

Thanks to all for the feedback; especially regarding iTunes Library, as that would be a good candidate for filling up (to within 20% of capacity over the long haul) the internal drive and saving external drive space for sample libraries and audio data.

I backup all data anyway, except for stuff like VSL and BFD. I probably should back that up too in case I ever have to reinstall, as installation is extremely slow vs. direct-copy of the resulting files (the installer files are in a special format).

Sometime this weekend, I'm going to try daisy-chaining my FF800 and external HD's to see how that holds up. My theory is it's close to 100% throughput so no different than using a separate port. Regarding this topic though, it's a bit of a moot point "how many" external hard drives I can use at once.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Hey MLC, I'm clearly not confusing the two; otherwise I would have included MacPro's as part of my question about internal vs. external drives.

Sorry - I was responding to the etc...

[mhschmieder]

Haha... etc.

[Jim]

New Mac Minis and iMacs are out. LOTS of internal hard drive space. What's the point?

What sort of data is it OK to put on an internal hard drive, other than applications (and associated data, plus system data and files)?

I've always thought one needs to strictly use external hard drives for audio data, sample streaming, etc.

Isn't it a recipe for bad performance, to put ANY of that data on the internal hard drive; even if on a separate partition?

For instance, even the iTunes Library is best run from an external hard drive, correct?

I do notice that Adobe recommends storing Lightroom data on the internal drive for best performance (I'm out of space so use external).

It's ok to use one drive for everything these days, as drives have gotten faster, more RAM doesn't require as many disk swaps, better ballistics on read/write heads, etc. This advice is old hat... like the expression "old hat." Apple and Avid have even recommended using the internal disk for video capture and playback, and video takes much more data than audio, so there ya' go. You still should use another drive for your backups, though.

[mhschmieder]

Well, I still believe in separate drives for data and apps, and preferably libraries, but given the daisy-chaining of external firewire drives, one would think it might be better to partition the system drive and store streamed libraries there, since they will load into memory asynchronously anyway.

Most reports I read over the weekend indicated that it is still extremely inadvisable to use the system drive for any reason other than dual-boot. I thought multiple-platter drives had multiple read/write heads, but I guess that only applies to certain RAID categories (I printed out Shooshie's earlier links to read later this week).

With 1TB internal/system drives on the new iMacs, it really seems like a waste. I am wondering if it is safe, performance-wise, to move the iTunes library back to the internal/system drive. Definitely Adobe Lightroom as they recommend that, but I mean its application files and not the actual photos. Yet maybe it's OK to have the photos on the system drive as well?

Adobe apps are my biggest problem on my current computer, so anything would be an improvement and therefore I'm not sure I'd notice the difference between a new computer's system drive and an external drive as my current external drive doesn't seem to be helping the performance of Adobe's apps much if at all.

From a theoretical point of view, I can't understand how it could be advisable to have anything other than system data and applications on the system drive. But I know that certain applications make assumptions and/or optimizations that turn the natural world on its head.

[mhschmieder]

After some discussions with a co-worker (who is also working late) tonight, I concluded that photos are the best candidate for the internal system drive in terms of performance and risk.

My reasoning is that photos aren't edited very much or often, and don't impose the real-time penalty of static audio files (such as iTunes) or the task-priority risk of streamed sample libraries (too unpredictable), and also because most Adobe apps are highly inefficient (on Macs at least) and thus the biggest impact is RAM (and lots of it).

So that pretty much answers my question, if I still get a Mac whose base configuration ships with a huge internal system drive as the bare minimum, and might even improve performance for photos vs. external FW.

[NazRat]

There was some talk about using the server version of the mini with two internal drives and installing the client version of OSX. That way you'd have seperate drives both on the SATA bus and free up the firewire bus for audio, but need an external CD/DVD drive. There's also been a mod around for a while to remove the CD/DVD drive from the standard mini and replace it with a second hard drive. I don't know anyone whose done either of these, but interesting alternatives.

[mhschmieder]

Yep, I'm actually still investigating various options with the new Mini today, but it's a bit harder to find info on reconfiguring the Server version this early in its release cycle -- especially as I am partially distracted by other discussions involving striped RAID on the non-server version.

It does seem an expensive option, and less bang-for-buck than an iMac, but I will make final judgment after feeling confident of the viability and cost of the best reconfiguration options of the stock products. I don't think anyone sells them reconfigured, and I don't have a workbench for doing this sort of work, so am not sure I want to do a Mac Mini refitting on my own (although some articles say it is easier than the iMac, which I had no qualms about opening up and tweaking).

At any rate, I do like the idea of a two-disc small-form-factor Mac, and what it could mean for app performance, storage choices, and off-loading the number of devices on the FW bus. And certainly an external Superdrive is no big deal, since it's mostly used for installing programs and maybe uploading audio to iTunes. For playing DVD's, I'm not sure if there would be an issue going external vs. internal for the Superdrive.

I doubt the iMac can take this sort of retrofit with its Superdrive slot being sacrificed, whereas the MacBook Pro has been proven to be upgradable to a two-drive system sans media drive.

And of course once one has two internal drives, the choices magnify by quite a bit, in terms of where to put data, whether to partition, what the performance will be for certain apps that don't do a lot of memory caching and even those that do.

[HCMarkus]

I'll chime in and concur with those who aren't worried about iTunes on the internal drive. The data rate required to keep iTunes happy is nominal... I don't know anyone who plays more than one song on iTunes at a time... but maybe I'm missing something.

It is only when you get into multitrack and VI work (and video!) that disc data rate is potentially an issue. My strategy has been to maintain system and applications, plus mail files, photos, iTunes files and various documents on a single internal drive, and all VI's and multitrack projects on external drives; separate drives for audio and VI's, and splitting VI's across multiple drives as much as possible as well. Sure, Jim has a point: Drives are faster than ever, and large RAM caches can minimize disc access requirements, but let's face it: Multiple sustaining notes in a single VI can be streaming as much data as a complete large multitrack audio project. Drives are cheap, and my time is... cheap, (but you know what I mean. )

One really good use for uber-large internal drives is to partition them into multiple system drives. It is always nice to have a backup of your dialed-in OS, just in case that new plugin you add brings your system to its knees. Another really cool use is to set up a large partition to use for BACKUP of your external Audio and VI drives. The data just sits there except when backing up, so it doesn't place any extra demands on the drive while you are working. Just don't use that internal partition for your Time Machine backup of the system files that reside on the same physical disk!

[Phil O]

One of my concerns with the iMacs and minis is that HD replacement is a PIA. I haven't seen the new iMacs, so I don't know if this is still the case. Audio has high HD use and I like to keep audio separate (one reason being wear and tear). I don't know if my reasoning is valid or not, but I thought I'd just throw that out there.

Phil

[mhschmieder]

HC, some very good points there.

It is looking more and more as though it is better to take the strain off the firewire bus and keep things internal when they do not do a lot of disc i/o, and iTunes does way less than DP for the reasons you mentioned so is a good candidate for having its audio files stored internally when space and bandwidth are at a premium via firewire drives.

And yes, video is a lot different than still photography, just as multi-track recording is a lot different than playing a single stereo pre-recorded song at a time. It's good to keep that in mind, that not all audio and visual media are created equal in terms of resource and bandwidth. It's really the creative process of video and audio editing that puts the most strain on the system and the busses.