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Drive Space Estimates

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aoresteen
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September 29, 08 10:27 PM (permalink)

Drive Space Estimates

I know that drive space used will vary depending on the number of audio tracks but is there any rough rule of thumb for planning hard drive space with Sonar?

If you were going to record 6 audio tracks for a 4 minute song, about how much drive space would that suck up?

I was able to get four 36 GB 10,000 UltraSCSI drives from work with an Adaptec Ultra SCSI PCI controller. We replaced a couple of old servers so I got them for free (I just had to pull them).

I'm planing on using one of the drives for recording and was wondering about drive space. Thoughts?

Thanks!




Tony
Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Win XP Pro SP3
Sonar PE 8.5
Dual Acer 22" Monitors
Alesis QSR, E-MU Proteus 2000 & lots of guitars
Newnan, GA 30265
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    space_cowboy
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    RE: Drive Space Estimates September 30, 08 0:00 PM (permalink)
    The math is pretty simple
    If you are sampling at 16bits at 44.2k
    There are 2 bytes per 16 bit word
    *44200 Bytes per second
    *60 seconds per minute
    *4 minutes
    = about 21Mega Bytes for a mono 4 minute track
    *6 tracks
    =about 130 Mega Bytes

    If you go to 24 bit sampling there are 50% more bytes so about 200Mega Bytes.

    A 36 GB drive would hold 180 to 275 songs plus or minus.

    However, you would need to get rid of all the older takes and only save the audio that was associated with the songs. If you had multiple takes and didnt delete, that number of songs would drop rapidly

    Some people call me Maurice
     
    SPLAT Pro lifetime, ADK 6 core 3.6Ghz with 32 GB RAM, SSD 1TB system drive, 3 3TB regular drives for samples, recordings and misc.  Behringer X Touch, UAD Apollo Quad.  2 UAD2 Quads PCI (i think - inside the box whatever that is), Console 1.  More guitars (40??) and synths (hard and soft) than talent.  Zendrum!!!
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    altima_boy_2001
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    RE: Drive Space Estimates September 30, 08 0:43 PM (permalink)
    This PDF file may help. It shows data rates and space requirements for various bit depths, sample rates, and track counts.

    recording-data-rates.pdf

    You can use me as your eSoundz referral (altima_boy_2001).
    #3
    aoresteen
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    RE: Drive Space Estimates September 30, 08 8:26 AM (permalink)
    Thanks guys! Just what I was looking for!

    Tony
    Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Win XP Pro SP3
    Sonar PE 8.5
    Dual Acer 22" Monitors
    Alesis QSR, E-MU Proteus 2000 & lots of guitars
    Newnan, GA 30265
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    Fog
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    RE: Drive Space Estimates September 30, 08 8:49 AM (permalink)
    Anthony, something that should be mentioned it but hopefully you have factored for it.. your psu on your pc is beefy enough to deal with the drain?. I found this when using an scsi card. as well as the normal drives. I guess your running 2 normal IDE drives on top of that also?

    I fit a 600 watt psu as standard these days on all machines I use.

    #5
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