setting up a second drive for audio

longb wrote on 5/21/2002, 11:55 AM
Hello, I currently have a 10 gig 7200 Maxtor in my system. It has Win98SE, Acid Pro and Vegas audio 2.0

I,ve been recording audio to it as well - Im looking at a 20 or 40 gig version of the same drive. Will this second drive be for audio only? or should I reinstall programs on it as well? Master or Slave? Im also clueless about formatting, but heard that you have to format it with the z:64 command

Thanks

Comments

inspector wrote on 5/21/2002, 12:12 PM
Install the new drive on the secondary IDE controller as a master - no programs need to be installed on it. While it may or may not be optimal, I use fat32 in win2000.

Steve
stickstr wrote on 5/23/2002, 10:30 AM
Inspector's answer is spot-on... by putting the second drive on the other IDE controller you minimize the effects of disk access to the first drive on the second drive's throughput. By using FAT32 you minimize the overhead needed for tracking the file system (NTFS incurs a small hit for this when you are dealing with large files, e.g. audio files). By using the /Z:64 with your format command you set a large allocation block (cluster) size that normally wouldn't be used.

When you read or write files, the operating system has to track the space on the disk that they use -- in other words which clusters they occupy. By setting the cluster size to the upper limit (using /Z:64) you are minimizing the number of clusters that have to be used for any specific file. If you had a lot of very small files this would waste space on the disk, which is why Windows doesn't do this by default. (Most users aren't doing DAW work!) But for audio files which are usually very large -- even short ones! -- setting a big cluster size like this is a real boost.

Hope this helps.
longb wrote on 5/24/2002, 10:20 AM
Hey Stickstr, could you walk me through formating this. I have no idea where to start. So far, I've got this.....hook it up to the other IDE controller. Then boot up into Windows.....NOW WHAT?
stickstr wrote on 5/30/2002, 8:52 PM
Hey longb, sorry about the wait. I didn't know you were looking for more help (I don't hang out here regularly, it's too repetitive).

Here it is in a nutshell, easiest way possible:
1. Boot your computer. After the BIOS screen goes by (where your motherboard and drives are identified - make sure the new drive is there!), you'll see "Starting Windows 98..." At this point, hit the [F8] key repeatedly until you get a nice menu.
2. Select "Command Prompt Only" on the menu.
3. When the prompt finally comes up, type FDISK.
4. You'll get a screen asking you about large drive support. Answer "YES".
5. By default you will be looking at your FIRST hard disk. Using the menu, select the "Change Disk" menu. Choose your SECOND hard disk.
6. Make a new primary partition, and go ahead and make it the maximum size possible. (This part will take a little while to finish.)
7. When you're through, exit FDISK.
8. Hit [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] to reboot.
9. Repeat Step 1.
10. Repeat Step 2.
11. When the prompt comes up, do an FDISK /STATUS to check your partitions. Look at the SECOND drive entry, where you should see one big partition. Check the drive letter there. I'm going to assume it's D: for the next step.
12. Type FORMAT D: /Z:64 to format the partition. (Remember, if you got a different letter, make sure you use *that* one!)
13. When done, reboot again -- this time let the machine come up into Windows 98 normally.
14. Check "My Computer." You now should see your new drive and be able to write/read files there.

Good luck!