Its only a 7,200RPM, What good is it? I'd rather cop the 10,000RPM drive. But I guess for that price and if some person that doesnt know any better then they should go for it.

have you ever been to a black friday sale. if your not in line by 9pm tonight you wont get anything on the sale list. I've worked at circuit city and best buy. people start camping out pretty early for those deals. I actually saw one best buy on the news were they were already camped out yesterday, had a tent and all that shit. The way it works is they have a ticket for all the sale items which is usually between 20 to 50 depending on what it is. So what they do when they open is walk out the front door and go down the massive line and ask each person what they want to but and give them a ticket for the item. when they run out thats it then the other 150 people that have been there for 5 hours pitch a fit and then buy a 20 dollar dvd player

Mr-Nice wrote: Its only a 7,200RPM, What good is it? I'd rather cop the 10,000RPM drive. But I guess for that price and if some person that doesnt know any better then they should go for it.

"Its only a 10,000RPM, What good is it? You'd probably rather cop the 15,000RPM drive."

7,200rpm drives are fine for some peoples use you know. I record only 2 channels at a time most of the time. I've used a 5,400rpm drive in teh past to record 8channels at once and playback 24+ tracks. No problems if you put the files on the first partition of the drive.

Vince Jaeger wrote: [quote=Mr-Nice]Its only a 7,200RPM, What good is it? I'd rather cop the 10,000RPM drive. But I guess for that price and if some person that doesnt know any better then they should go for it.

"Its only a 10,000RPM, What good is it? You'd probably rather cop the 15,000RPM drive."

7,200rpm drives are fine for some peoples use you know. I record only 2 channels at a time most of the time.

For audio a 7200RPM drive is slightly incorrect to use. You may be only recording 2 channels at a time but what about when you have to playback 20 or so at a time? My projects average around 20 to 30 tracks easy and that is being conservative. And yes 20 to 30 tracks played back simultaneously, a 7200RPM drive would only barely make the grade with that kind of load on it. Vocals alone can eat up almost 8 tracks, then your kick, snare, high hats and other percussive sounds that you should all keep separate for better control, will easily eat up another 15 tracks. And that is basically talking about monaural tracks, things recoreded in stereo like synth sounds is like using 2 tracks each sound.

I've used a 5,400rpm drive in teh past to record 8channels at once and playback 24+ tracks. No problems if you put the files on the first partition of the drive.

I find that hard to believe! A 7200RPM drive would have problems spinning 24+ tracks all within the same time position in a DAW, so a 5400RPM couldnt possibly do it. If thats the case i'll sell my expensive SCSI drive right now and cop me a $15 20GB 5400RPM drive.

Yeah of course anyone would rather cop a 15000RPM so that goes without saying, but it can be costly for that speed, and a 10000RPM is still super effecient in recording. What I meant to say is that any audio drive should be 10000RPM or better.

For audio a 7200RPM drive is slightly incorrect to use. You may be only recording 2 channels at a time but what about when you have to playback 20 or so at a time? My projects average around 20 to 30 tracks easy and that is being conservative. And yes 20 to 30 tracks played back simultaneously, a 7200RPM drive would only barely make the grade with that kind of load on it. Vocals alone can eat up almost 8 tracks, then your kick, snare, high hats and other percussive sounds that you should all keep separate for better control, will easily eat up another 15 tracks. And that is basically talking about monaural tracks, things recoreded in stereo like synth sounds is like using 2 tracks each sound.

...and by two tracks, I mean only recording two tracks for a stereo recording and thats that. (sfx, not music recording) Now when doing sound design I sometimes use 8-10 tracks for an ambience track or a very complex sound... The 5400rpm drive served me well over the years (from 1998) and I still use the drive for my disc cache. (I use 7,200rpm WD drives with 8mb caches now, they do the job well for what I do)

I find that hard to believe! A 7200RPM drive would have problems spinning 24+ tracks all within the same time position in a DAW, so a 5400RPM couldnt possibly do it. If thats the case i'll sell my expensive SCSI drive right now and cop me a $15 20GB 5400RPM drive.

Dont know how I did it but I had around 24 mono tracks playing back in vegas from a 5400rpm 2mb cache maxtor a few years back and it worked flawlessly...

Yeah of course anyone would rather cop a 15000RPM so that goes without saying, but it can be costly for that speed, and a 10000RPM is still super effecient in recording. What I meant to say is that any audio drive should be 10000RPM or better.

I completely agree with you, when working with music. 10,000rpm drives do the job and THEN some... "This one goes to 11."

Anywho either way, its a pretty good deal if anyone is in the need of a 7200rpm drive... I drove buy Circuit City on the way back from TG dinner and saw 50 people camping outside @ 9pm. I'll probably go at 5am.

ps: Forgive the typos if any, im all turkey'ed out. :)

Mr-Nice wrote: 7200RPM drive would have problems spinning 24+ tracks all within the same time position in a DAW, so a 5400RPM couldnt possibly do it. If thats the case i'll sell my expensive SCSI drive right now and cop me a $15 20GB 5400RPM drive.

Better log on to Ebay.

What you've said is incorrect. This is just math. Have you done the math? 24 tracks at 16/44.1 is only asking about 2 MB/sec. Even at 24/96 it's only asking about 6.6 MB/sec. Even an older ATA100 5,400 RPM drive with a 2MB cache can pull 20 MB/sec. A modern ATA133 or SATA150 7,200 RPM drive can pull about 30. I use a SATA150 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda with an 8MB cache as my audio files drive and I've never had a problem even with 40 or so tracks of 24 bit 44.1 kHz audio.

David French wrote: Better log on to Ebay.

Why? What is ebay going to tell me about drive performance?

What you've said is incorrect. This is just math. Have you done the math? 24 tracks at 16/44.1 is only asking about 2 MB/sec. Even at 24/96 it's only asking about 6.6 MB/sec. Even an older ATA100 5,400 RPM drive with a 2MB cache can pull 20 MB/sec.

A drives performance has to do with its throughput. I never said a 7200RPM drive couldnt do it, I said "it barely makes the grade".

I had a Seagate 7200RPM IDE for my first audio drive and you know as I started adding more tracks (around 20 or so, 24@48k) the drive meter in Cubase started reading 60% + drive use. If your drive is pushing that percentage output then its safe to say that the drive isnt 'making the grade'. Seriously I think if you sit here and say a 7200RPM IDE drive none the less is a fine drive to use for serious audio recording is a bit misleading. Thats like a car salesman saying to some young 17 y/o kid "Yeah a 4 cylinder engine is fine for drag racing".

My data disc is a Maxtor 7200RPM drive but for my audio I went with a 10000RPM SCSI ultra160 Seagate Cheetah (drive meter always at 0). I highly doubt your drive is playing 40 tracks at the same exact time. Yeah you can have 40 or even a 100 tracks for the whole project but they definitely arent going to play back at the same time, not on a 7200RPM IDE and definitely not on a 5400RPM disc.

I have seen a fair amount of questions pertaining to this on other forums, e.g. "Why does my audio drop out? I have a 7200RPM IDE and I was trying to playback 24 tracks".

There's more to throughput than drive speed. There is also bus speed. In which case many of the older intel boards would not support ATA133. As stupid as that was when the standard was ATA 133. Even at higher RPM the throughput is bound by the system bus bandwidth. If your IDE channel is only capable of 133Mb per sec. that is what you are stuck with. Even if you have an SATA drive, you are bound by the limitations of the system bus.

Mr. Nice, you said, "If thats the case i'll sell my expensive SCSI drive right now and cop me a $15 20GB 5400RPM drive." That's why I mentioned Ebay.

I understand that transfer rate is not the only deciding factor, but it's a good indicator, and when streaming 40 tracks of audio at 16/44.1 is only asking for about 4 MB/sec, in the face of a 30+ MB/sec trasfer rate, this is not asking too much.

Also, why bring up bus speed, which is many times faster in the first place?

The figures I listed aren't arbitrary; they are from the benchmark stats in SiSoft Sandra.

Believe it or not, I do in fact get 40+ simultaneous tracks of 16/44.1 offf of my 7,200 SATA150 Barracuda without a hitch.

I'm not arguing with you. I totally agree that 7200rpm is sufficient. Just bringing another aspect into view.

Mr-Nice wrote: Its only a 7,200RPM, What good is it? I'd rather cop the 10,000RPM drive. But I guess for that price and if some person that doesnt know any better then they should go for it.

LMAO.......

tell that to U2 who records every night 80-100 tracks (depends on if shooting video or not that night)

or the Grand Ole Oprey doing 56 of 96k. and i could go on.

let me set you straight on the facts, so you dont post eronously anymore.

a 10K wd Raptor 51-52 meg (SiSoft)
a 200-300G maxtor 16meg cache 49-50 (SS)
a wd 250G 8 meg caache 46-48 (SS)
either of the 2 IDE or Sata 7200 will do minimum 40 tracks 96k

@48K 150 no problem.

wd Raptor 10k drive $200 only 74G loud, hot
wd 250G $100

so i am failing to see the benefit here.

oh yeah i remember, slightly better seek time for rapid punch-in
and zoom to track.

and thats it.

Scott
ADK

Well, hearing it from me is one thing, but hearing it from a professional DAW builder is quite another.

Thank you Scott.