system requirements

[aubreyz]

Quote:Aub,I have my two harddrives on an ATA 100 bus... My second drive in the chain is dedicated to storing audio, etc. I dual boot XP on my main drive... 3 partitions... 1 for XP for stuff like this, 1 for my DAW, and one for storage.My question is:I bought the secondary "audio" drive, which is 7200 rpm, and have it set as the slave on the main bus with the primary drive (with the OS's) as the master. The primary drive, however, is only 5400rpm. Now someone at Futureshop who seemed fairly knowledgeable told me that my secondary drive's effective speed will be limited to the speed of the main drive, 5400rpm. If this made sense, is this true? Am I not getting my 7200 rpm's worth from the audio drive because my master drive is slower?Thanks!DaveDrive speed of one drive doesn't change the drive speed of the other. The ATA buss is agnostic to drive speed anyway. As I understand it Master and Slave are only location markers. However if two drives are in a RAID configuration then the lowest speed is shared by both. Maybe that's what he was thinking about.Aub

[hummingbird]

Quote:Quote:Thanks for the suggestion.... like Nomi, I'm struggling to understand all this... what's a sata drive? Should I look for an external hard drive with 10,000 rpm? I hope this isn't too detailed, but I've had a rough day and spitting out some techno talk is a great mind escape So... hard drives 101All hard drives work the same way, however there is quite a difference in how those drives connect to transfer data. The rpm and seek time of a drive is an indicator of how fast it can locate a particular data chunk. The cache is a small amount of memory that the drive can deposit data into if it gets ahead of the actual transfer capacity. That let's the drive be able to "look ahead" in a sense.So a drive gets a request for some data, it locates the first chunk, and for whatever reason the computer isn't ready to receive data as fast as the drive can read it back. Without cache, the drive would have to sit and wait for the computer to receive all of it's data finds in real time. But with cache it can drop off chunks, and then go look for the next chunk while the cache memory is transferring. So faster rpm, better seek time, and more cache mean better efficiency (as a general rule). The next important thing is the way the drive connects. That's what sata refers to. Each different type of connection has a particular transfer rate. Think of it like a speed limit for data. Here are the main flavors in order of bus speed.SCSI - from 160 to 320 MB/sec (older scsi specs range from 5 to 80 MB/sec)Serial ATA (SATA) - 150 MB/sec (SATA II is around 300 MB/sec)ATA100 (ATA is the same as IDE) - 100 MB/secATA133 - 133 MB/secThese are maximum rates, and the real world seldom sees maximum. Now what about external drives? Firewire and USB drives use one of these types of drives (usually ATA) and convert the connection so it will work on another bus. So now the drive connection is not as important as the bus limitations it is being converted to. Here are the transfer speeds of usb and firewire. It can get confusing because usb and firewire specs are in Mbits per second - much smaller than MB (mega bytes):USB 1.0 - 12 Mbits/secUSB 2.0 - 480 Mbits (about 34MB/sec)Firewire 400 - 400 Mbits (about 49MB)Firewire 800 - 800 Mbits (around 100 MB/sec)Something to remember is that with USB and firewire, you don't get the transfer speed per device, that is a total for the whole bus. Many times a computer will have several usb or firewire connections, but they all share the same bandwidth or bus.My point is this... with an external usb drive you are going to get a max of 34MB of transfer - a 10,000 rpm drive would be like driving a racecar on a gocart track. With an internal connection, like SATA you are going to get more like 150 MB/sec max transfer rate. It's a huge difference. Do you need that much of a difference? Maybe, maybe not. If you are not confused already, now I'm going to really confuse you.Just because a drive is connected to a fast bus system doesn't necessarily mean that it will do better. Drive specs are based around the external transfer rate, but there is an internal sustained transfer rate that is more important, and much more limiting. There is no drive that can, in the real world, live up to it's transfer spec. Most can't even do half in the best case scenario.So let's say an external usb 2.0 drive has an ata 100 drive in it. The usb spec is 34MB/sec and the drive is 100MB/sec. Seems like usb would choke the drive. Actually, it would be difficult for such a drive to ever be pushing out more than 34MB/sec because it has to look around for data, etc. The problem however is that in many cases, any other drive, keyboard, mouse or usb device is going to share that 34MB pipe.Even with a 10,000 rpm SATA drive, you aren't going to get close to the actual SATA spec. So what's the point? It's about headroom and allocating resources. If I could use a SATA drive that has a wide open pipe of 150MB, then I could even have two drives on that bus and still never get close to the real world transfer limit.Not true for USB or FW400. (unless you have dedicated busses for each drive).I noticed with the quick glance at your motherboard specs that it had SATA. If you could add another SATA drive, that's how I would go. Sample playback takes a lot of bandwidth. I would always go with the biggest pipe available.A 10,000 rpm SATA drive can be faster, but if you have a reasonably sized (150g or so) 7200 rpm SATA drive, the real world specs are not so dramatically different that the extra expense would be justified in every situation.If you've read all this, then you may still be wondering what is the best solution . That's the problem. There's no one size fits all answer. I would set a budget, and get the fastest drive on the fastest bus you can within that margin. Maybe all this techno mumbo jumbo will help a little in at least understanding the difference in the options.wow I appreciate this info, but it does make me confused. I'm already having a system built with specs noted above. It comes iwth 250GB of memory, & it's costing me 1600 with taxes. I don't think I can go any higher, that's the extent of my savings! Are you saying it would be faster & more efficient for me to install the samples on the main drive? I thought the point of having them on an external hard drive was to use the memory effectively & not have too much on your primary drive.

[aubreyz]

Quote:wow I appreciate this info, but it does make me confused. I'm already having a system built with specs noted above. It comes iwth 250GB of memory, & it's costing me 1600 with taxes. I don't think I can go any higher, that's the extent of my savings! Are you saying it would be faster & more efficient for me to install the samples on the main drive? I thought the point of having them on an external hard drive was to use the memory effectively & not have too much on your primary drive. Sorry for the confusion. I'm not at all suggesting using samples on the primary drive. You had mentioned adding an external usb drive, but from the earlier posted system specs, it already has an internal sata drive. That more than likely means you could install ANOTHER internal sata drive for probably less expense than the extra usb drive you were talking about. (a decent 320gig sata drive is going for around US$100) It's a trade off though. External drives are pretty convenient if you ever move from system to system.. Another internal sata drive would give you much better performance, but you would lose the flexibility of a removable drive.It might be worth checking on how much it would cost to have whoever is building your system simply add another sata drive.btw - sata drives are very easy to install.

[hummingbird]

Quote:Quote:wow I appreciate this info, but it does make me confused. I'm already having a system built with specs noted above. It comes iwth 250GB of memory, & it's costing me 1600 with taxes. I don't think I can go any higher, that's the extent of my savings! Are you saying it would be faster & more efficient for me to install the samples on the main drive? I thought the point of having them on an external hard drive was to use the memory effectively & not have too much on your primary drive. Sorry for the confusion. I'm not at all suggesting using samples on the primary drive. You had mentioned adding an external usb drive, but from the earlier posted system specs, it already has an internal sata drive. That more than likely means you could install ANOTHER internal sata drive for probably less expense than the extra usb drive you were talking about. (a decent 320gig sata drive is going for around US$100) It's a trade off though. External drives are pretty convenient if you ever move from system to system.. Another internal sata drive would give you much better performance, but you would lose the flexibility of a removable drive.It might be worth checking on how much it would cost to have whoever is building your system simply add another sata drive.btw - sata drives are very easy to install. thanks for your help, I really appreciate it.

[hummingbird]

Good news!!! Since I hadn't heard anything from the folks who are building my system, I contacted them to see if we could add a couple things. Well, turned out they finished it yesterday, and had neglected to call and let me know (duh)... anyway, I asked...Q: Could we take the Hard Drive -- 250GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) and divide it into primary & secondary driveA: - yes, absolutely, and no chargeQ: Could we add another SATA drive... 320GB preferredA: -yes, and it will cost $145CAQ: When will it be readyA: Late tomorrow or first thing Monday.So it will look like this:Internal Drive #1 - Programs (80GB)Internal Drive #2 - Recording (160BG)Internal Drive #3 - Sample Library (320GB)External Drive #4 - Back-up/Archive (160GB)(I'll have a DVD drive for backing up individual songs, too)So thanks Aub for all your help! I'm happy