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Posted by: JVM Apr 27 2009, 09:30 PM

I have heard here and there that moving my music related programs and such to a seperate hard drive from the one running your OS can benefit you. Is this true? I have a secondary D drive built into my laptop with 80 gigs.

Posted by: David Wallimann Apr 27 2009, 11:10 PM

I don't know about music programs, but I would keep all the samples on a different hard drive.
The way I am setup:
One drive for OS+programs
One drive for Audio Data (All the recordings)
One drive for samples (soundfounts, giga, etc.)

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Apr 28 2009, 12:00 AM

It will definitely be good to separate applications that you use often to other drives, regardless what kind of application you use. If you have a bulky modern game for example, by putting it on secondary drive, OS will have more headroom. Same goes for audio software. DAW usually writes and reads a lot from the disc, so keeping the DAW isolated and defragmenting all HDs after every recording session (or once a week) will keep the computer at decent performance level.

My config:

1. HD1 (OS & small programs)
2. HD2 (DAW Projects )
3. HD3 (Video Projects, VST instruments, various other things)

Posted by: Dejan Farkas Apr 29 2009, 08:13 AM

It will benefit for sure to have separate hard disk drives, and to keep OS and programs on one drive and data on another since if you have all of them on one and when you render audio or video files a hard disk drive's head have to constantly jump from a part where DAW is installed to the part the file is being rendered and it slows down the performance.

And just to mention, separating one HDD to more logical drives won't help in this case so you really need physical drives, and make sure you are using 80 pin IDE cables

Posted by: JVM Apr 29 2009, 05:17 PM

I believe I have two physically seperate drives in the laptop. Here's how I have it set up at the moment: C for the OS and most of my other programs, and D:/program files now contains my Line 6 files, Reaper, ToonTrack (ez drummer) folder and a .dll for an addictive drums demo. However, when I bring up ez drummer in Reaper, it says it can't locate the sound files, and to move them back to where they were previously (in the C drive). Is there a way around this, or do the sound files not need to be on this hard drive, or what?

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Apr 30 2009, 12:57 PM

Did you move the files manually after the installation of EZD?

Posted by: JVM Apr 30 2009, 12:57 PM

Yeah, I did.

Posted by: Dejan Farkas May 7 2009, 09:18 AM

Sorry for the late answer

Are you sure that you have two Hard Disk Drives in the laptop? Due to the limited space in laptops they come with one disk, and making two or more partitions (logical drives) will not increase the performance like having two separate disks

Posted by: Gilmore May 7 2009, 10:09 AM

It´s not recomended to move any vst.dll manually after install, that can cause problems, both running the programs and update.

Also if you have a seaperate disk for samples and things like that, then it´s better to have it installed inside the computer with sATA connection rather than external drive with USB connection, sATA runs at 3.0mb/s but USB 400 kb/s. But there are also external drives with eSATA connections, so you can plug your external drive straight into your motherboard. If you have a laptop you can get firewire casing for your harddrive, but they can be expensive.

Posted by: enforcer May 7 2009, 12:33 PM

You could 2 very fast sata drives identical one to other, you may RAID 0 Stripe them, then prepare 3 partitions, one for SYSTEM and PROGRAM FILES(windows) the second for STORAGE and the last one for SWAP file and TEMP only. If you are intrested I may help you how to do so. Just pm me. I am very satisfied with the results.

Posted by: Pedja Simovic May 7 2009, 01:26 PM

I was actually wondering about the same thing !

I have over 500 gbs of hard drive space but its all on one partition. Any advice what I need to do to split it ? I know this can be done when formatting computer and installing new operating system, but is it too late to do it now when all the programs are already installed ?

Thanks

Posted by: opeth.db May 7 2009, 01:33 PM

Is it one physical hard drive? Separating the HD into partitions is a good idea but does not save from HD failure.

I recomend just installing another HD, they are super cheap these days.

Posted by: Dejan Farkas May 7 2009, 03:26 PM

I also recommend additional HDD instead of partitioning

When partitioned it looks like you have more drives but instead you just limit each 'logical drive' to certain space on physical drive'. So if you have two partitioned drives, and on one you have system and programs, and on another you have data (videos and music) there is only one physical HDD head that read data, and have to jump all the time between those partitions and it slows down the performance. If you have two physical HDDs than you have two heads and it goes much faster

edit: There are some software for partitioning like Partition Magic that can work without reinstalling windows, but advice you to make backup of important files before it

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion May 7 2009, 03:39 PM

I agree with this. I have all my Videos and Music on one hard drive that I ripped from my CD collection (before anyone says anything ) as well as recordings from Sonar. I have one other hard drive for samples and VSTs etc and one hard drive for OS and programs. It runs very smoothly. The main thing you don't want is to have your music or video collection on the same drive as your OS and programs as it'll soon run very slowly.

Posted by: Pedja Simovic May 7 2009, 03:56 PM

I have one hard drive in actual computer and another one outside of it as external. One is 500gb inside and 300gb outside one.
The problem is I have everything everywhere. For my work I use everything with the one thats in my computer. For Music I use the one outside. Any suggestions what I should do ?
Its 4gb ram dual core working great but I believe it can fly faster

Posted by: Gilmore May 8 2009, 01:25 PM

I recomend to all of you with 64 byte processor to go to Microsoft website and download final beta release of Windows 7 RC x64 version. That will make your computers superfast, you can use 4 - 128 GB of RAM instead of just 3.5 GB in 32 byte systems. Everything opperates at least twice as fast than in Vista. This release expires June 2010, but by then the final version will be out.

Posted by: Marcus Siepen May 29 2009, 12:25 PM

I also use several hard drives, one for my OS, one for my software, in this case Pro Tools, and another one for the audio files. To be honest, I don't know how much better this system is compared to using only one drive since I always used several drives, but since all the manufacturers tell you to do so there must be some kind of benefit. (Unless the manufactureres also sell hard drives of course )