On the OS drive. Keep the registry path clean!

Opus :D

Gabriel,

My recent series in Keyboard magazine explains a lot about this and other related issues. It's now on my Articles page:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

--Ethan

what about vst instruments and plugins...should i install them in the data drive?...i mean with the samplings and stuff?
thank you!!!

Well, remember this. Most samples are typically read only, as well as most VSTi's and plug ins.

What I have found is that if you disable the Write Caching on the OS drive it doubles your performance on the read time. In essence, the OS and the application does not involve any disk writing on the OS drive, once loaded they are loaded and that's it!

So, putting samples, plug ins and VST applications on the OS drive will be just fine.

Leave the write time alone for the audio data only and you'll be good to go!

Opus :D

thanks opus you are a brilliant...but i'm a very newbbie in pc audio recording...and i have a lot to learn from profi guys like you and others...and one more thing is my english is pretty bad about computer language...
pls...just tell me how to do this step by step in the easyest way...so...
i have 2 drives one ''C'' for op and main programs like cubase,frutty loops.wavelab etc...and ''D'' for what is it?...for waves for vocals for what more?...where should i install the plugg'ins and vsti's,in ''C'' or ''D''?
and i have a question...i've bought a wd 80 gb 7200 rpm 8 mb cache for data...and i' thinking to buy a seagate 40 gb 7200 rpm with 2 mb cache for op...is it a good idea?...you think they will work well together?...
thanks...gabriel

Opus,
If I will disable write caching on c drive would that affect swap file writing? if so then wouldn't that slow down my whole pc? could you help me optimizing my pc for logic audio? I'm using lot's of samples (akai), some midi instruments that I'll convert to waves and waves. I also have UAD-1 card. I'm recording in 96/24.

My setup is:

P4 3.06 (overclocked to 3.3)
1 gig dual 400 ddr (samsung)
msi mobo (da best!)
seagate sata 120gb drive (audio)
wd 40g/8mb buffer (os)
wd 40g/8mb buffer (just sits there - should I flush it?)
yamaha cr-1w (or whatever it is..don't remember cdwr

that's it

tnx in advance :)

chris

P.S. I forgot to add that I'm trying to get about 50 audio track running smoothly with fx :) am I nuts? heheheh

If you have 1GB of ram the swap file isn't being used in any way!

I do hope you set the swap file the same amount for the min and max, correct?

Don't know why you need to OC the 3.06Ghz CPU, but that's up to you.

C Drive is where the OS, Apps, Plug ins and VSTi's live. You can put the samples on that drive as well.

Opus :D

Gab,

> what about vst instruments and plugins

The general rule is that programs and Windows and other things that don't change once installed should go on C:, and data should go on a separate drive. For samplers that include both the program and the sampled sounds, it's best to split them to the separate drives if the program allows that. For example, you'd install GigaSampler on C: and put all your .gig files on a separate drive.

The reason for this rule is simple: You can use Norton Ghost or a similar imaging program to back up the entire state of Windows and your programs only occasionally. Then you can use other backup utilities, or just copying in Windows Explorer, to back up only the data that changes more frequently. A full image backup takes a fair amount of time - especially if it includes huge amounts of audio data - and you have to boot into DOS to run an imaging program.

--Ethan

Ethan

Read my signature...lol!! Rules were meant to be broken!! ha ha ha ha! Just kidding!

IMHO, after doing some serious testing on data pull from drives I found that the samples were loading faster when on the OS drive and the write cache was disabled.

For ghosting purposes you could load them off of the storage drive after you image the C Drive.

If you use Ghost 2003 and you are going disk to disk, then the imaging takes no time at all!

I have one of my 80GB disks that houses the image files as well as mixdowns and songs I don't load that much.

In the long run you can do what you feel is better for you. You could partition, although I'm not a big fan of it in the long run, or you could install and run everything off of one drive if that's your thing.

Opus :D

sorry for the late reply...but i work as waiter in a restaurant here in the old center of lisbon...thanks guys for all the infos and help...
i think i've understood some...
but how can i disabeled the writing cache of the C?...from the properties of the drive and then disabeled from the security?...
thank you!!!

To disable write caching...
Right click on any hard drive and select properties..go to the hardware tab..double click on the C drive..it will be labeled as the drive model...once there you will see the Write Caching option!!

Simple as that!

Enjoy

Opus :D

Opus,

> after doing some serious testing on data pull from drives I found that the samples were loading faster when on the OS drive and the write cache was disabled.

One likely explanation is that your C: partition is closer to the outer edge of the platters where the overall throughput is faster. And if you are talking about two separate drives, where C: was one drive and D: was another, and both drives are the same model, then the speed depends on where on the drives that test data happened to be located.

> If you use Ghost 2003 and you are going disk to disk, then the imaging takes no time at all!

It depends on how you define "no time at all." :D Using an older version of Ghost it takes about 15 minutes for me to clone C: to a compressed file on another drive, where C: has only Windows and programs. The result file is small - about 2 GB - which lets me retain backups of the last several states. If I had everything all on one huge partition - let's say 60 GB worth of data - the backup would take many hours, and even compressed it would be too large to save more than one copy.

I've never used the newer versions of Ghost, so if I misunderstood something in your reply please let me know.

--Ethan

Ethan,

I don't partition at all! That and the swap file being set to the min and max sets it to the outter part of the platter...blah blah blah blah..you know the rest! :D

Indeed, Ghost 2003 is a hell of a lot faster on disk to disk imaging. when I image my drive, which has all the programs installed, even Reason Refills, can't remember the total amount, but it takes no more than 5 minutes to image and about 2 to restore!

Cheers

Opus(One happy camper after winning some good amount of moolah in Vegas this weekend :D )