Good Question Rok..
You should really have two "internal" drives at the most..here's why..when you put two hard drives on one IDE cable you cause the bandwitdth to be sucked up tremendously thus taking away from the hard drive's true performance. So, what you should do is have one drive for your OS AND applications and another drive for you audio data.
The best way to go about this is to have your Main OS and App drive on the Primary IDE cable and put it on the connector closest to your motherboard and make sure the jumper is set to Master..with the other end of that cable put your CDROM/CDRW there and put that as Slave. On the Secondary IDE cable do the same exact thing, Hard drive in Maser mode and on the connector closest to the motherboard and if you have a second CDROM/CDRW then put it there as well with the jumper set to Slave. If you want a third drive I would get either a new PCI controller card or get a SCSI external drive.

Opus :D

I've heard that some people like to partition the C:/ drive and have the operating sys on the new C:/ the apps on the Partitioned D:/ and the audio files yet still on separate scsi or ata100 drive..
I've also been looking at buying a perconfigured for music machine.. I'm thinking of opening it up.. Voiding my warranty and seeing whats inside...
I'm hearing that a good C:/ drive is also suggested(7200/ata100).
Don't know if this helps..
Brian :cool:

The problem with partitioning is that it does not make your drive two drives..it just makes one drive work twice as hard..it is ok to partition your secondary drive as long as it doesnt contain your swap file or any applications that need to be run off of Windows or your MacOS..Again, the head mechanismm will work twice as hard on a partition because it has to think about two different sectors at the same time..this can and will wear a drive out..especially the new 10,000 RPM SCSI drives.
Seclusion is absolutely right about the ATA100 drives as well as making sure they are 7200RPM..5400RPM drives just dont cut it these days. Also depending on what chipset you have for the PC's you may be limited to only ATA66 or ATA33. Also depending on what type of Mac you are on you may be limited to ATA66..but the new G4's have ATA100. Since there is ATA100 the use of SCSI is almost not needed and there are many a people who will argue that point of course!!
More info..more info..more info...this is getting good folks!!

Opus :D

On a PC, if you really want to "up your track count" you could put a controller card that supports IDE ATA100 raid (Promise makes one)with 2 drives attached just for your audio, smokin'. As far as your "preconfigured system" info, what brand system is it? I work in a PC service environment and (if it's a Compaq or HP) usually find out what's under the hood without actually needing to open the case up. For Compaq a serial number is all I need, for HP the model number is what's needed. Usually. YMMV ;)

Well I've had my win Me on the C:/ partioned in 2 drives just with an operating system...
Then I have Logic/Sound forge 4.5/CD creator/my scsi card divers,setup/moxa card setup/video cards setup all on the other half of the main dive set as D:/....
#1 If I need to lo reformat the C:/ partion I can do that without affcting any of the Applications on the D:/
#2 Wow is it ever nice to see what I've added in to screw things up..
I burn the whole D:/ to Cd once I make any new major changes...
I've never reloaded from Cd yet as I haven't needed too.. But I think you can do that...

Just makes life a little easier to keep track of..
I applications aren't really heavy streaming info on and off like the audio drive so I don't think partioning is an issue...
Just organized..
My 2 cents..
Brian

:roll: :roll: :roll:

The information about how to connect the drives and CDROM/RW's in the two IDE channels is something I have been looking for and thanks to Opus2000 for that. I just want to get some additional infornmation about this. I have been using Asus CUSL2-C motherboards in the systems we build for Nuendo. This mobo has an ATA-100 driver for each channel and we use ATA-100, 7200 RPM drives in the system, one for OS/apps and one for audio only. My question is does the CDROM or CDRW have any effect on the performance of the drive which is connected on the same channel? I have seen conflicting information about this and of course I want the maximum performance for the audio drive. I had previously used an Abit BE6-2 motherboard for my DAW system and this was not a consideration since the BE6-2 has an onboard ATA-66 controller with two additional channels. The system drive and the audio drive each had their own channel and the CDRW and CDROM used the regular IDE connectors. Please clarify this for me.

Well..I understand where you are coming from on that question mac..
CDROMs definately "can" take your performance away but once you disable auto insert notification you reduce that issue..windows will constantly spin the CDROM/CDR when auto insert is ON..thus taking your bus speed and performance away for that time it takes to spin and detect a CD..when you put more than one drive on a single IDE cable you reduce your bus speed to half of what you have..putting the drive closest to the mainboard makes it so the processor doesnt have to go thru the CDROM to get to the drive thus geting quicker and more reliable performance from the drive and the system OS..thus putting a secondary drive on a secondary IDE cable you get more performance since both drives have their own buses to deal with and dont get surpressed..having a CDROM in your system is not going to cause any issues that will bog you down..not unless they have auto insert ON!!!
Hope that answers your question!
Opus :D

It certainly does answer the question and thanks. I setup the two DAW's in question the way you suggested and so far everything is working very well.