MOTUnation.com

Hey folks,

I'm looking for way to optimize my setup. I also hear my main drive - which worries me that it may be on it's last leg.

My current setup is 1 TB main drive, 500gig audio recording drive, 500gig samples drive.

So I was thinking of changing things up to to be 750gig Seagate Momentus XT drive for a main drive, 180gig SSD drive for recording, and maybe another 180ish drive or so for samples. In addition to this I was thinking of putting in a 2 TB backup drive.

I'd love a SSD drive for my main drive - but I just can't afford it and right now - I have nearly 500 gigs on it (some of that is a few backups of important projects). Hard to find a SSD at that size without totally breaking the bank.

I have used the Momentus in my Mac Pro - no problems (a little vibratey - but otherwise decent). I've also used them in a PC for only sample back (in retro spect I probably should have just got a small SSD in that application).

My thought would be to move active files from the backup drive to the SSD and then archive it back again to the backup drive.

I imagine this would make a pretty snappy setup - especially given that I will likely have to change out my drives pretty soon anyway.

Thoughts?

CC

I highly recommend the WD Raptor drives for samples. They have a new 1TB Velociraptor, spinning at 10,000 rpm, which is currently housing my VSL samples. I try to split my samples up so that libraries likely to be used simultaneously will reside on different drives, but there's a pretty quick limit to how much of that you can do unless you've got a trailer full of servers.

I also have a 4TB WD "Black" drive, which is pretty highly rated by Western Digital, but still new, so there aren't many reviews. That drive is in a drawer. I haven't installed it yet, but will do so when there arises a need. Currently all 5 slots in my Mac Pro are filled. (Four in the main body, and 1 right below the DVD drive)

I didn't used to trust large drives, but what I consider a small drive now (500 GB to 1TB) was inconceivable a few years ago, so the 4TB drive no longer scares me. Some day we'll probably be installing Petabyte drives.

Anyway, all my internal drives are 1TB to 3TB currently, with the Velociraptor currently the baby of the bunch, but also the fastest.

Shooshie

Whatever you use for Time Machine can be big and slow.

DP likes fast drives - and the fastest are SSD. Background processing seems to benefit the most.

I am not so certain that samples benefit by having the fastest drives around. FireWire is pretty slow yet suffices for many. SATA internal up to the rated bus and transfer speeds is much faster. If your SATA bus is rated 3G (all Mac Pros), there is no advantage to having a 6G rated drive.

OWC's 3G SSDs:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal ... State_Pro/

Although there is no 6G for the SATA bus (yet) OWC has a PCIe solution for the MacPro that does achieve 6G speeds. If you want The fastest possible drive possible: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe ... lsior/RAID