Most of us have utilized separate capture & storage drives with our DAW's since the mid-1990s. This is most obviously because the operating system and programs we are using needs to be constantly accessed. So trying to access the programs while trying to read and write data simultaneously generally over taxes a single hard drive with the operating system upon it. So your operating system drive should only handle the operating system, your programs, your plug-ins, room for a fixed paging file and some frequently unused storage.

Most software allows you to choose the drive you want to capture to. I assume you know how to already " Save As" what you want i.e. ".wav", ".AIF/AIFF", " .MP3", etc..And so you direct that to your storage drive, i.e. " D:MartyParty.wav " (assuming you have a PC). You can even tell your multitrack software which drive to use for its " temp" folders such as your larger and perhaps faster storage drive such as " D:temp ". This is what we all have to do with our computers to make them viable A./V. production devices. That plus switching off all automatically scheduled events, virus scanners, etc. must be disabled along with any programs running in the background that don't need to be running. There's plenty more where that came from also. All of this is necessary to create a lean mean audio machine. Hey I'm still running Pentium 4's and early 32-bit CoreDuo's without problems. If one needs some super processing and you are bogging down your CPU with it, just render that particular effect out to a separate track. Then you bring that stereo track back in. That way, the processor doesn't have to do all sorts of gobbledygook. And since with most of our software, you have an unlimited amount of tracks you can create and play back, you aren't restricted to 24 analog tracks like we used to be. And back in the old analog days when everything cost an arm and a leg, we had to print some of our effects to yet still available open tracks. Then we also had to deal with the increased element of analog tape noise. You've got it easy now. Just think out of the box when thinking inside the box.

No boxed sets for me
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 379200 wrote: ....... If one needs some super processing and you are bogging down your CPU with it, just render that particular effect out to a separate track. Then you bring that stereo track back in. That way, the processor doesn't have to do all sorts of gobbledygook. ......

Ah. so it's not just me then. :) If you're going to do this guys, render the full 100% wet signal, none of the dry - you already have the dry signal in the original track. Then you can just turn up or drop down the rendered track to get the desired level of effect - just like having the effect itself, but without the cpu loading. Until you want to change your effects parameters of course. That's a bit tricky......

All this is really based upon how powerful a computer you have and how much memory is installed. Since most multitrack software allows for nearly unlimited track counts, your effects are just another stereo track.

It's simpler when you know what your computer can't do
Mx. Remy Ann David