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  • Sample storage drive. External vs. Internal?

    Using: Dell Studio XPS 8100 Intel Core i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93 GHz 1.2TB hard drive 8.00 GB Ram 64 bit OS.

     

    I just purchased Cubase 5 since it seemed to be popular with VSL. I have read many recommendations here about storing samples on a dedicated HD. I will be focusing on composing for string quartet, piano duos, trios, etc.

    I am planning on using the Solo Strings Bundle, and probably will get the Vienna Imperial Grand Piano.

     

    1. which is preferred, an internal or external hard drive?

    2. what are some recommended HDs?

    3. My current HD is 1.2TB. Do I really need a second drive?

    4. I've seen a bit of talk here about SSDs, (solid state drive?) Is there some advantage to this?

    5. Finally, a question concerning Cubase. When I set it up I chose to run in 32 bit mode because it said some VST instruments may not work right. Was this the right choice for me?

     

    thanks for answering these noob type questions! I am not very "techy," in fact I find Cubase 5 to be a bit intimidating. I can only imagine what it will be like when I start using VSL! So, my aim is to keep everything as simple as possible. (why do I hear some snickering?)


    1. Internal
    2. So many choices, and recommendations change from month to month, so I can't really help you here. As long as it's at least 7200 most will be fine.
    3. You should never stream from your OS drive, nor from the drive that you intend to record to (if you do intend to do any recording).
    4. The only advantage is that your samples will load faster. You won't get any better performance with the type of work that you describe.
    5. Yes, if you run out of memory, just use Vienna Ensemble, rather than plugging VI straight into Cubase.

    DG 


  • Thank you DG! Really big help to me!

     

    I plan on getting Vienna Instruments Pro as well since it seems to have such great features for expression/dynamics, etc. I assume that will load as a vst instrument into Cubase 5, right?


  •  Yes, VI Pro is great and it will load fine into Cubase 5.

    DG


  • Woo hoo!

     

    I'm so excited! I can't wait to get all these pieces together.

     

    Just one more thing, which bank is the easiest one to rob in order to afford this stuff? Or, which State Lottery...

     

    Anyway, I seriously am grateful for the help. thanks again!


  • You don´t need a second drive at once. It also works on one HD, given it is not extremely old. When you speak of 1.2 TByte we can almost be sure that it is an actual SATA disc, isn´t it ?

    But sooner or later life gets easier with a second drive. You gain speed and overview, because you don´t get lost in the question " Where are all my samples?". I recommend to put all your libraries VSL or any other to the second drive. This way it is independent of the boot disc. Now the operation system and applications are free to do what they want, while the pipeline to your samples still is free.

    It is not just about xy MB/s data stream performance, what you can read in different test magazines. For me the most attractive improvement is better reaction time and silent operation

    ( We all know about the access delays and noise when the harddiscs move the head over the platter.  zrzgg  zrgg   zrgg  zrggg .... Especially if the disc gets older, this can drive you nuts....)

    The best way out of this of course is a SSD. Zero noise operation, low temperature and extremely short access times. The biggest drawback at the moment is the cost factor. Also there still are some open points regarding lifetime, TRIM, fragmentation, alignment, operation system compatibility etc. etc.

    But I have to say, that I got mine just after christmas and it worked more or less out of the box, even under Win XP.

    For samples it is an expensive solution, but for the boot disc a 60GB can be enough and you can get these now for under 100 Euro. Over 120 GB they tend towards 200 Euro and everything above is still space tech..... :)

    So in case you don´t want to overstretch your budget, I´d buy a SSD, clone your boot partition onto it and use the old harddisc for the samples, audio and other data mining stuff.

    If you are too afraid of disc cloning, repartitioning, partition resizing, evetually AHCI reconfiguration etc.etc., take the easy way and just wait until they get cheaper.

    In the time between, try to not cluster and expand your C partition for easy migration later on. Also try to streamline your program paths for the same reason. if you have many partitions on your 1.2TB disc and the VSL player gets its samples from D partition, Native instrumemts battery on E, Cubase audiofiles on F, Wavelab on G ....... it can get very complicated in the future , unless you buy an 1.2TB SSD :)

    Puting everything on C is also a bad idea.

    I´d put the Windows boot stuff and the programs on C, other big library, audio, video etc files on D.

    When you switch to SSD in the future,  it is easy to transfer the C partition to a solid state drive. Even the data paths stay the same if you keep drive letters.


  • just to add my 2c: if you are recording (=writing) to the same disk from which you are stzreaming sample content from (=reading) you will reach the limit much earlier.

    just partitioning a drive (to get 2 volumes) doesn't help - the heads of the disk would have to move intensively between the various sections of the platters.


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • Thanks for all the great information.

    I am planning on getting a second drive. Just waiting for my ship to come in...


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    @cm said:

    just to add my 2c: if you are recording (=writing) to the same disk from which you are stzreaming sample content from (=reading) you will reach the limit much earlier.

    just partitioning a drive (to get 2 volumes) doesn't help - the heads of the disk would have to move intensively between the various sections of the platters.

    Hmm. . . I'm planning to move from an older XP machine to a new 7 one, and this makes me wonder if I should be buying three HD's:  one for the OS and apps, another for the sample libraries, and a third for all my files (which will include a mix of midi and audio).  Is this what you are recommending?   I've been using only 2 HD's for years, with no (noticeable) problems, but I'd like to do it right. . .

    If so, would it make sense to make the OS HD solid state, while leaving the other two as non-SSDs?   Would there be any incompatibilities this way?

    Thanks for your feedback!


  • recommendation for sample streaming (Vienna Instruments, but also others) is a fast seperate harddrive for storing sample content.

    if you prefer to have OS and applications also seperated from your other files is a matter of taste so to speak, recording to this system drive depends on recommendations for your recording software ...

     

    having an SSD as system drive is not a must, but we found the boot time to be significantly shorter especially running windows 7 when using SSD.


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
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    @Another User said:

    recording to this system drive depends on recommendations for your recording software ...

    I'll be using Cubase 5, and (possibly Sound Forge).  Do you happen to know what Cubase recommends?

    Thanks again!


  • the *virus could destroy my system drive* argument is somehow valid ... especially since havin an antivirus program on an audio computer can sometimes be a bad idea. i for myself create an image from my system drive now and then to have a backup which can be restored quickly just in case.

    on the other hand default project files and temporary cubase files also reside on the system drive by default, so if you didn't change that ...

     

    my recommendation above was for a setup where you have only 2 drives and need to record and steam samples simultaneously ...


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
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    @Another User said:

    on the other hand default project files and temporary cubase files also reside on the system drive by default, so if you didn't change that ...

    I always save all files -- for all apps -- on a non-system drive.  However, all the temporary files -- and certainly all the app settings -- are in the C:/documents and settings -- not much I can do about that, aside from taking your tip about creating system drive images.

    Can a server-type Windows 7 computer (I've been told that I must buy a server-type machine in order to use more than 24 GB RAM -- is that true?) accept two non-SSDs plus one SSD?  Would I require anything special to do that?

    Thanks again!


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    for imaging i'm using Acronis True Image ... home edition 😉 boots from CD, recognizes almost all kind of drives. of course you can also use ghost, i just don't like it ...

    @michael_maberly said:

    Can a server-type Windows 7 computer (I've been told that I must buy a server-type machine in order to use more than 24 GB RAM -- is that true?) accept two non-SSDs plus one SSD?

    i7 motherboards usually have 6 memory slots and i'm not aware of any i7 motherboard taking more than 6 x 4 GB RAM ....

    so if you want to get more you need a dual processor (socket) motherboard and some XEON processors - but hey, you can go very far with 24 GB RAM.

    number of SSDs and non-SSDs only depends on the number of sATA ports you have on the motherboard (subtract one for the DVD-drive and on some motherboards there is one dedicated to eSATA (external SATA) ... eg my X58 motherboard here has 5 ports + 1 eSATA, so i can add 4 drives (plus the DVD) of whatever type i like (as long as they are sATA of course)


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
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    Thanks very much for all this help!

    @Another User said:

    so if you want to get more you need a dual processor (socket) motherboard and some XEON processors

    Yes, that's what my retailer is proposing.  Will I need the two CPUs to access more than 24GB RAM, or can I use only one XEON processor, and leave the other socket empty, and still have access to all the RAM?

    Thanks again!


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    you might be on the road to the overkill-mode 😉

    @michael_maberly said:

    Will I need the two CPUs to access more than 24GB RAM, or can I use only one XEON processor, and leave the other socket empty, and still have access to all the RAM?

    no, at least the motherboards i know don't support that ... exception: there are 8 GB sticks for XEON boards (DDR3 ECC buffered) -> 6 x 8 = 48 GB ...

    there *should* be also 8 GB sticks for i7 boards, but if you would even find them (and a motherboard which supports it) they would be _very_ expensive ...


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • [quote=michael_maberly]Will I need the

    Hmm. . . and my retailer was even suggesting that I use a much less expensive Intel E5504 Quad Core, 2 Ghz, 4MB cache for it . . . I'm now wondering whether two of those would even access all the RAM!

    If I were to go the i7 route, would you recommend trying to find ECC RAM for it -- I've heard it makes for a more stable system -- or does ECC not make much difference?

    Thanks again!


  • for a - somehow futureproof - audio machine i wouldn't go below a 5620 ... i7 doesn't take ECC, XEON requires ECC memory


    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
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    @cm said:

    for a - somehow futureproof - audio machine i wouldn't go below a 5620 ... i7 doesn't take ECC, XEON requires ECC memory

    Thanks for this very helpful advice!


  • I think "overkill mode" is the right statement here .)

    The question for me would be if you do this as your core business (film/score...) on a professional basis where you need 100% performance, stability and backup security. At the same time can you profit from expenditures speaking of tax deductions and stuff like that ?

    Also, how many performance heavy instruments do you plan to use at the same time ?

    i mean, we still speak about music production, not NASA´s mission to Mars. In our company we have some computers running heavy duty simulation tasks (Synopsis and stuff like that). Even they run with non ECC RAM out of the box.

    If you care for stability, I´d buy a good motherboard with excellent cooling, and wouldn´t overclock the system, even if you loose a few % of possible performance.