Hello... DAW setup

stoo

stoo

stoo

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10 Sep 2006
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Have spent the last few months researching how to build my own computer. It is to be used for music production... (and a little video)

Its actualy built already too...

Sonata 2
Asus P5B
Core2 E6600
2 x seagate 250 7200.10
Geforce 7300 gt
M-Audio Delta 44.

I have XP sitting here but still a lot to learn before diving in

There are a few options available regarding how to set up my hard drives and was hoping to come back to this thread during my research for some pointers.

First rough thoughts are...

1 drive for OS/Programs and the other for samples/projects. Might be better in a Raid as I will only use Ableton/Reason which is far from 250 gb

Any advice from you lot would be great. Im off to scroll through all your old posts now!

cheers
 
Using Cuebase SX with 4 audio tracks and 11 midi tracks (my maximum sized project so far) all 11 midi tracks using VST instruments presents no problem on my system with non raid SATA drives. In an ideal situation I would use a mirrored system drive (RAID 1) and 4 drives in RAID 5 for data/samples etc. However, I just back up my data to a RAID5 file server after each cuebase session and to DAT from the RAID server weekly.

I would see how it goes with fast SATA drives without RAID, whilst backing up regularly.

RAID is good for speed and redundancy, depending on which RAID level you choose. If you back up after each session, then the redundancy part becomes less important. Raid 0 is very fast but also risky. Data is split across drives, so if one develops a fault you lose everything.

This link will help with RAID definition and uses:

http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html

With just two disks, your idea of a drive for OS and programs and the other for DATA is cool and imho the way to go. If you find there are disk performance issues when your audio projects get larger, then look to a RAID 5 disk system. If you are prepared to do a back up of your data after every session then RAID 0 for data drives will be OK. But if you go the RAID 0 route, back up often. Mirroring (RAID 1) for data has both advantages and disadvantages. It provides very good read speeds, almost 2x a single drive but write speeds are slower than just using a single drive.

I would recommend 2Gb RAM.
Disable everything that is not used in the BIOS.

These Core2Duos are awesome for music production. My projects killed my AMD XP3200+. Now using C2D I'm a happy bunny with less than 25% CPU used even in my largest projects.

Here's wishing you fun and inspiration :)
 
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So I guess now my question is how best and if at all should I partition my drives?

2x 250 gb........ one for OS/programs and the other for samples/audio.

Should I partition the OS from Ableton/Reason etc?

Should I partition my samples/audio project drive

Im actualy lucky to have got my hands on a DAT drive from my old man... pinched it from a broken server at work that was gathering dust! :cool: Should come in handy for back ups and I have loads of old DAT recordings from college/sound engineering days.

Cheers folks
 
I always partition system disk, and use separate partition on that disk for Apps. It makes imaging/restores and defrags quicker. Separate disk for data and samples.

A DAT drive for data storage will not play audio DAT sorry :(
 
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