Really Fast Hard Drives?

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 07:58 AM

I haven't had any issues thus far but I'm getting Superior Drummer 2.0 and Omnisphere which I hear are tough on the cpu and that a fast hard drive would help matters.

This is what I have now: http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668232.php

It's a Vista 64 bit, Quad core, 8 GB RAM PC and the hard drive is a 7200 RPM SATA II drive with 16 MB cache.

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Hard drive speed is something I'm just starting to look into and I'm having a hard time figuring out whether there'd be an easy way to add an additional hard drive that is very fast (I don't want to replace the one I have now, I want to add an extra one.)

I guess my idea is that I could add an extra hard drive that is very fast that I could place my omnisphere samples and superior drummer 2.0 samples so they could be pulled up faster?

Does this seem necessary?

And if I were to do that, would it also make sense to record to that drive?

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Again I have yet to have any problems ... maybe I should wait for a problem before I try to fix a problem, eh? I'm just trying to get my head wrapped around this.

What are the options? A firewire external hard drive ... are those as fast (or faster?) than the internal kind?

I'm going to be getting an E-MU 1616M audio interface which will be PCI so firewire would be open for a hard drive...

I've also heard a bit about these new SSD drives - how do they hook up? They are extremely expensive too...

So then, does anyone have something wise to say about speedy hard drives? I'm looking for something I can add to my existing setup easily (which is why I'm afraid of adding a second internal drive... I've done that before (about 5 years ago) but if external would work that would be great.

bullshark · 04-10-2009, 08:11 AM

It is a good idea to have a drive for OS, another to record to and another for samples since the hard drives are the slowest part of any system. It also make backing up easier since you only need to ghost the OS drive once, and then backup the content of your recording drive(which should contain your projects file, personal files and recorded files).

The problem you might run into with your system is the capacity of the power supply; those Gatweway system are made with the lowest cost components it's possible to get at build time, and using the lowest spec of those component possible that will get the system to actually boot up. My own experience with those is that adding too many components usually fry something, so, either check the spec of the power supply yourself by opening the case(do not go by published spec, those are worthless), bring it to a competent shop, or just add the components without checking anything and pray that no smoke come up at boot up.

Oh, about external, if you can connect to eSata that would work just as well as internal; anything else will be quite a bit slower.

SSD? Cost per GB is just to high right now for very little benefit.

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 08:35 AM

Thanks for the tips. I don't know anything about connecting via eSata - I'll have to look into that. With the external drives I wouldn't need to worry about the power supply thing you mention right? It seems that would be the case as they would have their own external power supply...

bullshark · 04-10-2009, 08:54 AM

ESata is just a Sata port that you can connect externally. If your pc doesn't have those connection in the back you can just purchase an extender, which is basically just a backplate with Sata connection on one side and cables on the other. And yes, going externally like that you'd go around the power supply completely since HD housing come with their own.

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 12:31 PM

This is what I've settled on (unless someone tells me it's crap - I wanted to run this by people here before I actually bought)

http://www.goharddrive.com/GoHardDri...p/g03-0243.htm

Western Digital
USB 2.0/ESATA (with cables for both)
1TB
32MB Buffer
9ms Seek Time

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I don't have a spare PCI slot left - could I use something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-P95...9395023&sr=8-2 or this: http://www.amazon.com/SATA-ES2P-Inte...395409&sr=1-15 to hook up the drive through eSATA?

shockwave199 · 04-10-2009, 02:37 PM

For what it's worth, I think you're putting the carrige before the horse...or is it the horse before the carrige...well it's something before something!

DON'T fix something that doesn't need fixing, is my opinion. Every time I do something like this to a working setup, with the best of intentions mind you, it becomes a disaster- an EXPENSIVE disaster. Your current pc specs make me envious as they stand. My opinion- get Superior and Omnishpere and see if you even hit a wall. You may have no problems at all. In fact, you'll certainly have no problems running them singly. Together? You don't know until you try it, or even need to. But I wouldn't mess with a working setup until that setup PROVES to me that it needs help.

That's my opinion. Good luck to you.

Dan

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 02:57 PM

Shockwave - you make a very good point... Very good. I should wait to see if I have a problem first. Thanks for talking some sense into me.

bullshark · 04-10-2009, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shockwave199

For what it's worth, I think you're putting the carrige before the horse...or is it the horse before the carrige...well it's something before something!

DON'T fix something that doesn't need fixing, is my opinion. Every time I do something like this to a working setup, with the best of intentions mind you, it becomes a disaster- an EXPENSIVE disaster. Your current pc specs make me envious as they stand. My opinion- get Superior and Omnishpere and see if you even hit a wall. You may have no problems at all. In fact, you'll certainly have no problems running them singly. Together? You don't know until you try it, or even need to. But I wouldn't mess with a working setup until that setup PROVES to me that it needs help.

That's my opinion. Good luck to you.

Dan

That generally good advice, except in the case of hard drive when it become extremely bad advice.

As it stands, he has no backup capability whatsoever. How many post of peoples crying because they lost months of work due to HD failure will it take before it sink in that a working system need at the very least 2 HD before it become operational? It's the bare minimum to backup one to the other, so when one of them fail(notice I said "when" and not "if"), your data is safe on the other.

You can say "backup to DVD", but it such a slow and unreliable process that nobody does it, nobody. People who rely on DVD for backup are often months behind in their backing up, while it should be a daily process.

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 05:04 PM

I do actually have a USB 2.0 external hard drive already for backup - I should have mentioned that earlier...

Honestly I'm just starting to wrap my head around this whole hard drive speed thing. I'm starting to look at these internal hard drive numbers and they seem to be lower than the numbers via USB 2.0? I'm surprised and confused by that. I'm also confused as to why the eSATA connections appear to be 10 times faster than the internal SATA connections... If there's this much better option why don't they just connect the internal drive to it? I must be missing something.

bullshark · 04-10-2009, 05:32 PM

The numbers for USB2 and Firewire theoretical transfer rate are given in Megabit/sec so as to look more impressive, you have to divide by 8 to get figures in Megabyte/sec so, for USB2 you get 60 MB/sec in theory, in real life you'd be lucky to get 30-33 MB/sec sustained rate, and that's with lot's of CPU overhead. Firewire has less overhead and, while in theory it's slightly slower than USB2, in real life it's slightly faster in sustained transfer rate.

eSata is the same exact thing as Sata, in fact they connect to the same headers on the motherboard. Expect 90-110 MB/sec with a modern good quality drive on either eSata or Sata. In this case, the barrier is the limit of the mechanics of the drive itself.

JonnyHomes · 04-10-2009, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bullshark

The numbers for USB2 and Firewire theoretical transfer rate are given in Megabit/sec so as to look more impressive, you have to divide by 8 to get figures in Megabyte/sec

That's devilish.

Thanks for clearing this up for me, it makes more sense now.

shockwave199 · 04-10-2009, 06:08 PM

Quote:

That generally good advice, except in the case of hard drive when it become extremely bad advice.

As I understood it, JH here was looking to add some muscle to his setup for two programs that he knows nothing about how much they'll actually tax his existing system- NOT backing up. However, I certainly do agree that backup is paramount...when we're talking about backing up. I use a 500gb usb drive for backups and it's fast to dump projects and files to. I view it as a traitor frankly- waiting to screw me, but you have to trust something. I use the three places backup rule and hope for the best.

Let me be clear- I know shit about most of this. And I get the feeling JH doesn't know much more. Your advice and knowledge is great bullshark. I certainly don't disagree with it, on face value it sounds right on. But from MY experience [I stress ME], you get something like this stuck in your head as something you MUST do before carrying on, you hop on a forum and get very good and well intentioned advice, you follow it, your system gets fucked up, you can't get out of it, you hop back on the forum for desperate help, they try and try to no avail and in the end say 'huh, that shouldn't happen and mine works....sorry!' And now you're standing there with your dick in your hand, recording nothing.

Sound like an alarmist? Perhaps. But those in the know, know. Those who are stabbing in the dark keep stabbing. Backing up is a WORTHY, WORTHY cause. But decking out your working rig to run a couple of programs you don't know much about? Not to mention, not knowing much about the process? Use caution is all I'm suggesting. See if you need to do it, first. Is that bad advice? If so, sorry!

Dan

shockwave199 · 04-10-2009, 06:29 PM

Btw- I'm not trying to play the 'I'm right' game, especially since I only know enough about this topic to totally screw myself up. I'm simply offering an opinion, is all. JH- good luck. One thing I AM pretty sure of- you're gonna love Superior!

Dan

bullshark · 04-10-2009, 06:39 PM

In view that the OP already has an acceptable backup solution, the point is moot as anything past that is a matter of personal preference and convenience. Drives are so fast nowadays that load dissemination isn't as much an issue as it once was.

stang_2003 · 04-10-2009, 11:44 PM

One word...Cache...
32mb is fine.

I use Seagate 1.0tb SATA internal drives for everything except boot/OS.
One for audio and one for samples like Ivory for example.

Seagate has had some problems with firmware on some of these drives, the early ones, so be careful.
They have been extremely helpful, even including free data recovery if needed, to early adopters who had problems.
All of mine are fine and the drive is very fast, very quiet and a good deal at about $100.00 or so.

Ivory is a killer for streaming and it simply will not tolerate slow drives, especially the way I use it which is balls out.
I play a lot of notes.....

The RTAS version is particularly sensetive to slower drives.

Since switching to Seagates I have not had a single problem and I went from fast WD (PATA) 16mb Cache drives so they were no slouches either.

The guys over in the Protools groups swear by large cache drives for streaming synths/samplers.
My experience agrees with them.

Enjoy!

carbon · 04-11-2009, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonnyHomes

I haven't had any issues thus far but I'm getting Superior Drummer 2.0 and Omnisphere which I hear are tough on the cpu and that a fast hard drive would help matters.

To my knowledge Superior 2 loads all the samples into RAM.
So the drive speed isn't important after the initial load.