hard drive setup for analog recording

longb wrote on 5/3/2002, 1:26 PM

I've heard that its best to get another hard drive for recording - I currently have a 10 gig 7200 rpm drive for apps - I would like to add another drive, but I dont know the specifics on how it should be installed - should it be set as slave or master? how do I format it? Im running win 98 SE

Thanks!

Comments

inspector wrote on 5/6/2002, 8:25 AM

I would put the second drive on your secondary IDE controller as Master and as for the format I have been using fat32 without any problems.

Steve

jbrazier wrote on 5/6/2002, 11:33 AM

I use NTFS under WinXP professional without any problems. Just make sure you get a fast hard drive. Personally I would recommend the special edition ATA drives from Western Digital. I purchased the 100 GB Special Edition WD drive about two months ago and I love it. It has an 8 MB buffer instead of the usual 2 MB with every other drive. This makes it perfect for A/V uses if you don't have the money for full blown SCSI. Quite frankly, it out-performs alot of the 10K RPM and even some of the 15K SCSI drives in comparision. Going with your secondary master is the best way to configure any drive you'll use for data. Good luck.

jbrooks wrote on 5/8/2002, 12:15 PM

you are likely to see no difference in performance with an 8mb buffer for audio apps. it really only makes a difference with small files and multiple access.

I would say the recommended drive would have the following properties:
7200rpm

ata66 or 100 doesnt matter so much

If youre serious about recording, you need to ditch win98 for win2k which is light years more stable.

drbam wrote on 5/8/2002, 2:55 PM

<If youre serious about recording, you need to ditch win98 for win2k which is light years more stable.>

This statement is not really accurate. There are way too many other variables related to stability than just the OS. Although *generally speaking* win2k may show better stability in *some* real world situations, 98SE still dominates most PC based DAWs but this is beginning to change because of winXP, not 2k. I've been using 98SE for over 3 years with hardly a hiccup. 99% of any problems I've encountered were related to other issues (drivers, bad files, or something stupid I did, etc). Keep the system lean (no unnecessary apps, etc) and 98SE can be rock solid. I hope a SF rep will also comment on this.

drbam

doctorfish wrote on 5/9/2002, 11:17 PM

I have 2 extra drives (60 gig and 40 gig) for data storage, but they are set up as primary slave (60 gig) and secondary slave (40 gig). Would it be better to have one set up as a secondary master? If so, why? I'm using Win 98SE.

I've only had this set up for a few weeks but even in that amount of time it's seen a fair amount of action without any problems at all.

Also, when I bought these drives, I was told that Win 98 can only use drives up to 60 gigabytes. Is this true? I had wanted to buy an 80 gig drive but was told it wouldn't work. The sales rep said Win ME can do 80 gigs and that Win XP is needed for anything larger. Any ideas about this?

Dave