Reformating my 2nd Drive for Gold

[Lerue]

Hey Guys

I am thinking about re-formatting my 2nd hard Drive in preparation for Installing S.O. Gold edition this week (Tuesday!) and am wondering whether there is a better configuration than what I have right now.

This is how my drive is currently set up
MAXTOR 7200rpm/ 80 Gig Drive

NTFS
4096 bytes allocation unit size

3 partitions

E. Audio Samples 12 gig
F. Music 32 gig
G. EWS.O. drive 33 gig

Now, would it be of any benefit to reformat the whole drive and repartition everything, or does this setup look alright already? Not too sure about the kernal size (4k) or the NTFS setup, so there are a few questions I have.

Thanks for any advice

Le' rue

[Marko]

Why partition your second drive at all?

Marko

[Magpie]

Hi Le' rue,

I'm not to sure but friom what I have heard the start of the drive is the fastest and I am
guessing that is the part that is formated as "E" and so really you would need Gold on the fastest part if you are streaming with DFD

[scarr]

I'm not sure what you're labeling "music", so I'll just say this more generally:

Any partitioning between pieces that will be used at the same time will mean that the head with have to constantly jump back and forth across the disk to read things. Partitioning to keep audio stuff together while keeping other files (mp3s, photos, etc.) seperate is good. Partitioning that will force space between common items isn't really.

Personally, I have a main drive with system/sequencer/general files on it, a second drive for my audio recordings (guitar, vox, etc.) and a third for samples. That way I can keep one even tighter on a single part of the hard drive as it does the critical recording, while the other drive dances about for different samples. If I were you, I'd just dump all the stuff related to your music creation in a common partition.

[Lerue]

Thanks for the reply's everyone. I have decided to Reinstall WindowsXP, so I did a reinstall today. Everything worked out fine, and I now have My OS and Sequencer all on my C drive, I made another Partition for misc. Files named D, and that leaves me with 120 Gigs free on my 2nd hard drive now.

Now, what I could do, is use the 120 drive for Samples, and use a 3rd drive I have sitting in my closet. However, I have to ask...How do you put a third drive in the IDE chain? I have a master and a slave drive already but the IDE cable does not have room for a third drive.

Is it just a different Cable I would need?

If so, I would be more than happy to have a third drive on my system just for Audio files.

Any ideas on how to attach a third drive?

thanks

Le' rue

[AndyFinkenstadt]

You do not put three drives on 1 IDE chain. The electrical specification for IDE says 2, and only 2. (Same as what Noah had to tell the rabbits... only two, only two.)

Many (perhaps Most, but I don't have enough experience to say it more affirmatively) motherboards have two IDE connectors, each of which support two IDE devices. My memory seems to say that for any one IDE chain attached to a connector, each device on the chain runs at the highest COMMON speed between the two (if two there are). And the same, very very tired memory seems to recall that most CD- or DVD- devices run at a relatively slow pace compared to hard drives.

Which would mean that a hard drive sharing a cable with another device would slow down to the speed of the slower device. Which would be probably not what you intended.

Some modern motherboards have both IDE cables and SATA connectors. SATA hard drives are now very comparably in price & performance to IDE hard drives, and they are "point to point" , which means there's one drive per connection. . . and my own motherboard has 4 SATA connections. I use all four. And have lovely performance.

andy

[Marko]

You could purchase a hard drive controller card (about $50). Iit will provide you with two more master sockets from which to run hard drives. The card installs easily into a PCI slot.

Andy's points about memory and SATA drives are informative.

[RokGeetar]

I recently added a third drive (Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA 200gb) to my system. I used the spare IDE connector on the IDE2 channel. My CDR is also on IDE2, but setup as the slave. The Barracuda is the master, and the read/write/transfer speeds are slightly quicker than my existing drives. I was worried how this would turn out, but I'm well happy now! :)

80gb OS/Apps
80gb Samples
200gb Projects/Audio

[matthew82475]

Andy, If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that, if you have the option, pair up hard drives on the same cable, rather than mixing a CDR or DVD device with a HD on the same cable.

However, if what RokGeetar says is true, if you weren't using your CDR or DVD device while using the HD, would the data transfer speed run at its maximum? Thereby, nullifying the potential drawback mentioned above?

Matt

[scarr]

This is my first time hearing the claim about the transfer rates of an optical drive slowing down the bus, but I suppose the bus can only run as quickly as it's slowest drive. (In the same way, USB drops from 2.0 to 1.0 and 802.11 drops from g to b if an older device is connected)

With that being said, you're probably better off seperating the two drives that are going to be doing the most work onto two different lines (cables). If they're on the same bus you're only getting half of each of their potential output. The highway's only so big.

[matthew82475]

Scarr, was that an answer to my questions or just a comment?

My question is whether or not the data rate would be adjusted down if an optical device is not sending or receiving data. It would seem that the system would only need to synchronize the data rates when more than one device is sending or receiving information at the same time.

I have a CD-RW and DVD Drive and a single HD. Right now, the CD-RW and DVD are on the same IDE cable and the HD is on its own. I'd like to get a second HD, but if the data transfer rates on the HD cable would have to be matched, there would be no sense in purchasing an HD with a faster data transfer rate than the one I already have.

However, if the data rate slow down only occurs when data is being transfered to both devices simultaneously, I could get an HD with a faster data transfer rate as long as I put it on the same cable as one of the optical devices and don't use the optical device at the same time I'm using the HD. That seems to be what I got out of RokGeetar's comment.

Just trying to clarify, thanks,

Matt

[AndyFinkenstadt]

It might be "cargo cult voodoo", but my understanding is that the IDE bus itself slows down at all times to the fastest negotiated common speed of the devices on it.

[scarr]

It wasn't really an answer because I'm not sure if the IDE bus actually slows down or not.

Ok, I did the Google footwork on this. From The PC Guide (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance-c.html) :
Independent Master/Slave Device Timing: Hard disk controllers on modern systems support running the master and slave device at different speeds, if one supports faster transfer modes than the other. Some systems, however, especially older ones, do not. If you are using two devices with radically different maximum transfer rates, and the chipset doesn't support independent timing, you will slow down the faster device to the speed of the slower one.

So on a modern comp (which most of us are probably using since this was written in 2001), it's not an issue. (I'll claim that's why I wasn't familiar with it. :p ) As such, the best configuration would be "main" HD + aux. audio HD on one bus and CD/DVD + primary audio HD on the second bus. Personally, I'd use "primary" for my audio recording and "aux" for samples, but that's because I'm mainly doing audio recording. If you're mostly doing sequencing, I'd make "primary" the samples drive.

[matthew82475]

Thanks for that post scarr. I'm not a real tech savvy kind of person and it's real helpful to have someone who can help translate a lot of the technical jargon into plain english.

Matt

[RokGeetar]

So I was right then? Wonders will never cease! ;)