Hard drive file allocation

[derik999]

I just built a new desktop and am going to do fresh installs of Reaper, Addictive Drummer 2, and Thermionik 5/Recabinet 5.

I have a 500gb SSD for my main drive, a 2TB 7,200 RPM (Sata 6) secondary internal HD, and a 8TB WD My Book Duo, which is 2 4TB's running RAID 1 for backup.

I've read some threads on the subject and just wanted to check with you guys to make sure I'm going to allocate the files where they need to be.

Main SSD gets the main files, secondary drive gets plug-ins/sound sample libraries, and the drive running RAID gets the actual project files.

Does this sound right?

[msuscorpio]

With that size of a main SSD I probably wouldn't even bother putting your plugins and sound libraries on the 2nd drive unless you have a huge anmount of sound data.

[derik999]

Sounds good. I can always relocate that stuff if I get close to filling it up. They will work as long as Reaper can scan the path to where they are located correct?

[msuscorpio]

Yes. your sound libraries will load much faster from the SSD anyway.

[serr]

OS and apps on the SSD.

Ideally the sample libraries that come with those instrument plugins should go in the Library folder (or whatever default directory) on the SSD as well. But... if they're too huge, then put them on a data drive instead.

The free space on your SSD (after the system and apps) will be your high performance audio workspace. Use this for current "big" projects. Move them to a data drive when you're finished. You'll be able to still get away with a lot for "normal" projects if you have to run one from one of the 7200rpm data drives in a pinch.

Use the USB connected drive for backups only.
Partition it into 2 volumes so you can clone your 500GB & 2TB drives 1:1 for backup.

The SSD has I/O speeds such that adding a standard HDD (even 7200rpm) to the mix would only slow things down. If you needed multiple drives for space but wanted the same performance, you'd need multiple SSDs. So just use the standard drives for data drives and backup. Working on a project with files based on the USB backup drive would be the lowest performance you could make the system do. You don't want to do that.

I'd actually get a 4TB for the data drive. Then maybe only a 4TB for the backup drive too. Partition it to a 500GB volume and a 3.5TB volume. When your data drive gets up to 3.5TB of stuff, it's time for more/bigger drives all around. You'd pretty much have 6TB of unused space on your backup drive with the configuration you mentioned. (Unless the idea was to keep an archive of any/all deleted files. Such a thing could get silly large with audio files.)

[derik999]

I'm doing some video editing and Photoshop stuff as well so it will have some of those files also on the USB drive.