Recording Hard Drive partitioning question...

[Lucky #9]

Here's the deal...

 

With the C drive set up for the usual (Windows OS, programs, etc.) I would like to set up the 2nd hard drive for recording only, but partition it for:

 

1 - active tunes I am working on, and

2 - storage area for finished songs or work that I am not currently dealing with

 

So...I have read that there is a falling transfer rate from the outside of the hard disk to the inside.

Therefore, I assume it is better to record on the outside partition of a 2-partition HD for better transfer rate, etc.

 

When partitioning then, if I divide the recording HD as a D and E drive (just to use as an example, as I know the CD/DVD and other factors come into play), which partition will be the outside, and hence, faster section of the HD, D or E?

 

I have not been able to locate this information on the web.

I would think the D partition, off-hand, but am unsure.

 

Many thanks and Merry Christmas!

(I just saw Santa and his mushers sail past the Red Planet on a bee-line towards Earth. I hope you have all been good boys and girls.)

[WRGKMC]

The second drive cant be a partition of the first. The heads have to work to hard jumping between the partitions writing data and reading the OS info on the first drive.

 

The best way (and fastest) is to use a second "Master" hard drive. This way you have two independant sets of write heads. The fiestdoes whatever the operating system needs it to do the second just reads or writes data. This second drive can have partitions but, you want to use the first partition (outside of the platters) so the wave files are placed on the fastest spinning part of the drive. The other partitions will be slower because they are on the inside of the platters making data read write slower.

 

The second drive also needs to be on a cable by itself without CD roms if you're using IDE drives with the Flat cable connections. ATA arent a problem because the CD roms wont be on the same cable. Dont forget proper jumper connections to make the drive.

 

How well External drives like Firewire and USB will be dependant on your communication bus speed. If its an older computer the data can get bottelnecked and require alot of buffering amnd latency to get it to work right, especially if you are also using those ports to record through.

[AwayEam]

 

The second drive also needs to be on a cable by itself without CD roms if you're using IDE drives with the Flat cable connections. ATA arent a problem because the CD roms wont be on the same cable. Dont forget proper jumper connections to make the drive.

 

 

HEY BRO

 

I was all agreeing with your post until I got to this mess. It's a bit unclear what you're trying to say.

 

Parallel ATA drives (old hard drives, CD-ROMs, etc.) use IDE cables that can be shared by multiple devices.

 

Serial ATA drives (new hard drives, Blu-Ray drives, etc.) use a dedicated serial line to the mothaboard.

 

OP:

The answer to this type of question is almost always "don't partition". Like my bro says above, the drive has only one read head. Partitioning doesn't buy you anything.

 

Anyway, assuming you're using a USB/Firewire interface for recording, the data rates of an internal hard drive will not be the bottleneck in your chain. Not by a long shot.

[TimOBrien]

I'll add a paste from my setup notes, too:

 

 

Partitioning will NOT help you and is, in fact, bad. The arm has to stop what its doing on one partition, lift up and go alllllll the way across the disc to the other side, set down to do its job and then go alllllllll the way back again EVERY time the OS or an app needs to do housework. This mechanical movement is GLACIAL in computer terms and will lead to pops, clicks and dropouts in your audio. AVOID PARTITIONING and go to SEPARATE DRIVES.

 

Audio processing streams a LOT of data. Drives need to give you quick, uninterrupted access. Separate dedicated drives help a lot to let you stream more tracks with less problems. The goal is SMOOTH UNINTERRUPTED THROUGHPUT of data so you wont get clicks, pops or worse, dropouts. Your sample libraries and audio projects should be on separate drives so they can stream without interruption.

 

Here's how you want your system set up:

 

C: (Boot) OS, apps and vsts - your applications and vsts are generally only loaded once and don't hit the disk thereafter HOWEVER your OS will need to do occasional housekeeping work.

(order of secondary drives doesn't matter)

D: Sample libraries

E: thru Z: Music projects and misc data

[veracohr]

I'm pretty sure the OP was asking about partitioning a second physical drive separate from the OS drive into active/storage partitions.

 

I'm also pretty sure that partitioning a drive doesn't set up separate physical domains on the platters, negating the idea of inner/outer portion performance differences. The bits are all over the place, it's the index table the drive uses to look up the bits that is partitioned.

[kurfu]

Separate physical drives are the only way to go: one for the OS, the other for data.

[Lucky #9]

Uh, fellas...I think ya'll might want to read my post again.

 

Thought it was clear that I am talking about using two separate hard drives, one for the OS/Programs, etc, and one for recording and archiving files (hence the 2 partition question on the 2nd or recording drive).

 

Just want to know if I partition/split/divide the 2nd (recording) drive into two partitions, which partition will be the outside partition and hence faster partition. I assume the D partition of the 2nd drive would be considered the outside/faster partition that I would use for recording, and the E partition of that same 2nd drive the slower partition I would use for archiving material. Is this so? Forget CD/DVD drives and any other partitions, swap drives, VSTs, etc. for this example

 

One reply seems to indicate that the partitioning of the 2nd drive (recording drive) into D Recording and E Archive would actually interfere with the actual speed of the D Recording partition, even though the E partition would exist only for archive purposes.

 

Are you saying that the E partition slows the whole operation down even though it is not being used?

 

Based on a Sound-On-Sound Mag article, the outside of a partitioned drive is the faster of a 2 partition drive. No mention is made that the second partition, used for archive purposes only, would actually have the ability to slow down recording in the recording partition of the 2nd hard drive.

 

Again, I assume the D partition would be the outside partition of a D/E split of the 2nd drive. Just need to verify if that is so.

[WRGKMC]

I have my second recording drive setup with partitions. Its a 250G with 4 partitions. The first partition (D Drive) is 150G and it is used for recording the wave files. E,F and G are for storage. You want to use the D Drive (First and largest partition) for recording because its the fastest and you'll have less problems with dropouts.

 

Again, If the drive is on a flat, multi pin cable, You cannot have a CD rom on that cable too. Put it on the cable with the C drive. If your computer uses the small single serial cables, then it wont matter because theres only one drive per cable.

[AwayEam]

 

One reply seems to indicate that the partitioning of the 2nd drive (recording drive) into D Recording and E Archive would actually interfere with the actual speed of the D Recording partition, even though the E partition would exist only for archive purposes. Are you saying that the E partition slows the whole operation down even though it is not being used?

 

 

We're saying that it won't speed it up, and can certainly slow it down tons if the partitions are ever accessed concurrently, which is more likely to happen than you might think.

 

Basically, the E partition will probably be used even when you think it's not. This will cause the disk head to thrash and your performance on both partitions goes right down the tubes.

 

 

Based on a Sound-On-Sound Mag article, the outside of a partitioned drive is the faster of a 2 partition drive. No mention is made that the second partition, used for archive purposes only, would actually have the ability to slow down recording in the recording partition of the 2nd hard drive.

 

 

Can you cite the article? I'd be extremely surprised if it actually said that.

[AwayEam]

HEY BROS

 

I think I found the article.

 

This goofball is actually suggesting you should partition a single-drive system and install your OS on the "slower" partition :facepalm:

 

Please don't listen to what this guy says. And if you do decide to do something weird with partitioning, at least do some profiling to make sure you're not losing too much performance.

 

EDIT: I just read on a bit. His analysis of drive usage consists of running Filemon on the DAW and the DAW alone. As if no other processes are running on the system.

[Phil O'Keefe]

AVOID PARTITIONING and go to SEPARATE DRIVES.

 

This.

 

I see no real benefit to partitioning at all; especially since drives are dirt cheap these days. You won't see "better performance", and if the drive fails, it won't matter that there are two partitions on it - you won't be able to access either one.

[nice keetee]

Isn't partitioning vestigial from the dinosaur days of using a computer to record audio?

[veracohr]

 

Partitions are contiguous. The partition info is stored in the Master Boot Record. The "index table" you're probably thinking of is part of the file system, and therefore local to a given partition.

 

 

That's interesting. I know I'm getting off topic, but can you point me toward any technical documents about that? The physical placements of the bits are determined by the on-drive circuits, right? Is it then the same for all manufacturers? That's the "index table" (for lack of a better term) I referred to, meaning the record that tells the head where to physically move to to begin reading a word.

[AwayEam]

 

That's interesting. I know I'm getting off topic, but can you point me toward any technical documents about that? The physical placements of the bits are determined by the on-drive circuits, right? Is it then the same for all manufacturers? That's the "index table" (for lack of a better term) I referred to, meaning the record that tells the head where to physically move to to begin reading a word.

 

 

HEY BRO

 

Yeah that's all in the firmware. It's not the same for all manufacturers, or even all drives by a manufacturer. It's important to remember that most drives have more than one platter, and therefore more than one "inside/outside" area.

 

It used to be a lot more standardized. Here's a quick description of how the whole mess works on a higher level. The "cylinder" part is the key measure of how far out the data is on the platter.

 

Honestly, the physical location of the bits on the platter is the very last thing I'd look into when optimizing my system. If I really needed that last bit of speed, I'd look at some RAID configurations or I'd worry more about the drive's cache and rotation speed.