Hi,

Do you still really need to 2 harddisks or is it also perfectly possible to work with just 1 harddisk, especially if you have a recent CPU and a recent 7200rpm SATA harddisk?! Doesn't the harddisk that has the OS and sequencer (Cubase for example) have enough bandwidth to run a fair amount of audio tracks, effects and VSTi's? Do VSTi's and effects even need harddisk bandwidth, as I thought they only use CPU power and RAM? When and why do you really need a second harddiks and when is 1 harddisk enough?!

PS: is access time of 17s fast enough (AAM enabled) or should I disable AAM to get 13/14ms?

Thanks for all good replies! Please also mention which and how many VSTi' etc.. you can normally run at the same time with your setup!!

Last edited by Dance123 on Apr-26-2006 at 18:15

i rekon that you should have one for primary usage (like OS etc.) and another for storage, then setup it up in a format that works best for that setup.

if your going for good smooth data processing then its ideal, but not a must.

ohh yeah and it always good to get a good program(cant think of the name?) that backs up your selected files on your hard drive again.

Hi,

If 2 harddisks are required, in case you use Cubase SX, VA VSTi's, sample-based VSTi's, samples and audio tracks, what precisely should go on disk 1 and what on disk 2?!

Anyway, if you only use a couple of audio tracks and VA VSTi's (not sample-based ones), can this work perfectly fine with one recent harddisk?!

three hard disks.

one for windows/osx and your program files.

one for all audio samples and mixdowns etc

one for all internet stuff(if you use one pc for everything) - porn/music by other people and other media etc....

thats my opinion..

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I use two hard disks for quite some time now; one for the OS, FL Studio and all other apps, the latter merely actually for data storage and personal files.

This has worked really well for now, if the OS screws up, I can reformat and start with a fresh setup without having to load everything up from a CD/DVD again.

From the second harddisk, I regularly make backups so I won't loose the data if that one should crash (which has NEVER ever happened to me to be honest, though you never know I guess).

I'm not sure whether this is really an issue though for producing, or rather an 'ease-of-use' principle...

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I have three in mine, then again mine is a multi purpose system.

I have 3 installations of windows.
1. For general use like internet, photo/vid editing and the wife.
2. For Gaming. Stripped down and optimised/overclocked for gaming.
3. Music Production. Again stripped down to bare minimum for maximum performance.

As for 2 drives in RAID if tahts what you mean, i had my system like this for a while but didnt really notice that much benefit. The fact that 2 in raid0 means its twice as likely to fail, if 1 drive fails all the data is gone.

While you could certainly get by with 1 drive for music production, all the shite that gets installed on a multi use system sacrifices performance IMO.

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like most of these guys have already said, it's recommended to have at least 2 drives, 1 for the system drive and 1 for samples/sessions/tracks. that way each drive is essentially only being worked once, instead of having everything on one drive and make that drive work double/triple-time.

Yeah its handy to keep a backup copy of recent files on the other drive until you back em up to CD/DVD ... cuz you never know

So everybody here uses a 2-harddisk setup or are there also people here who work with just 1 harddisk. What stuff (which VSTi's etc..) can you run?!

i have a 160 gb hdd and 2 partitions:

one for OS (aprox 10gb)
and another one full of shit and work i do

no need for 2 hdd imo, if something screws up i just format the OS partition and reinstall all applications.


edit: if you're a pro i still don't think u need two hdd on one pc, but u need to computers instead. one for your usual stuff (movies, dox, games, documents, internet, etc) and another one only for music production no other shit on it (without internet connection either).

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Last edited by djsphere on Apr-26-2006 at 20:05

i only use 1 and have been for years. I will be going after another one soon. A one disk system works fine as long as you dont have lots of shit running and dont have anything uploading or downloading while you in production.

2hdd at least in my opinion...

i have been running stuff on 1 hdd and i find my comp process speed being slowed down considerably