Best drive configuration for Sonar

An internally connected drive will usually provide faster performance so I would go with that, if possible.

Scott

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SATA rulez. You can even go eSATA and use an external with no real penalty to performance. The drive setup you posted is what most of us run on our DAWs.

Studious Thanks Scott! Is there any issue using SATA drives for Sonar audio files?  Or is this outdated information? http://editthis.info/sonar/Optimizing_Your_DAW#Hard_Drive_Configuration

What else would you use? The fact is that there are no drives that are faster at this point than SATA3 and most likely won't be for a long time. Oh,and that partition crap isn't true. The reason why you might want you audio data somewhere else is because you don't want the read/record head doing anything but reading and recording audio. A separate partition on your OS drive would still use the same head as the OS. That being said, these things are pretty good at figuring out what they are supposed to be doing and making sure the data gets dealt with properly.

Fat32 is a fine file format, it just doesn't handle files of 4gb. It is easier to repair if you have problems though.

You rarely need to defragment audio drives with NTFS.

RAID writes slower than a single drive.

You can't really buy IDE drives anymore.

Disc space is cheap.

It's an old guide. Ignore it. There are also a lot of people around here that are old guides. Ignore them as well.

Studious So is this the consensus? 1) SATA is fine for Sonar audio files 2) Best scenario is to have all 3 drives internal What about:  any heat issues with 3 drives in one computer?  (need extra fan, etc...?)

Those questions have been answered. The only difference would be if you do a lot of projects that go between computers. I do and all of my working projects are on external drives. I also use a lot of tracks and don't really have any issues, but internal is better if you can do it.

Studious


Sorry to keep tagging on questions, but:
Are there any heat issues realted to having three drives in one computer?  Does it require an extra fan or anything?

Like, Scott, I have four drives, but I use the fourth drive primarily for my swap file. Probably overkill but it hasn't introduced any problems with performance. I have five fans in my PC - one in the power supply, one on the CPU, one general "exhaust" fan, one blowing on the video cards (I use three monitors) and one on the drives, which tend to get too hot otherwise. I also leave the side covers off of my PC, though it is in a larger enclosure open at both ends. Not too noisy either, though I keep it in a separate room than in the one I record.

tis depends on how much capacity your hdd has.
my mainboard can adopte 5 sata hdd. but I use only one which is 200G and several 100g for interchange of materials.

With SSD drives all this information has changed. 
Once a sample is loaded into memory it doesn't matter which drive it was on. It's all about speed and I do't think you'll notice a difference between loading a sample from any given drive.
I would say an SSD drive for your C drive and a   2TB  7200 RPM drive is going to replace the old 3 drive system nicely. That's what I have.  
I use a third 1 TB drive strictly as a safety back up. I keep extras of everything in there cakewalk files, software and all things to do with music. It's more of a clone of the 2nd drive. 

J3D
 
I picked up a 2nd  2T internal hdd  is it best to put samples or my projects (or both) on this new drive??
Should I format in Fat32 or NTFS?
thanks for the advice  in advance Jon

It's probably best to place your samples and your projects on this new drive.  That way you keep the data separate from your operating system.  Also, if your OS drive fails you still have your projects and samples intact.  Of course, you should still do your daily scheduled backups - preferably to a third external drive connected to a USB port (USB3.0 for the speed).

As regards formatting, definitely choose NTFS.  Fat32 is an old file structure that usually has maximum file size of a limit of 2 gig.