Desktpop: what is your internal Hard drive setup??

Conventional wisdom has been that you keep your programs on one drive...you record to another...and you store samples on yet another.

In my system, my C drive holds Sonar X2, soft synth programs, etc. Drive D is the drive devoted to my project/audio files. Drive E holds various sample libraries, like those for Alicias Keys, Kontakt, SampleTank, Superior Drummer, etc.

I recently added a new 512GB SSD drive (drive F) to hold the Hollywood Strings library. Hollywood Strings used to bog my system down, but now that the samples are flowing from an SSD, I can utilize the most intense sample sets without a single glitch.

Sonar handles this kind of set up with ease. Never a problem with recalling or loading up projects. If you'll search this forum, you'll find the topic has been covered a number of times.

Mine's set up similar to Mel's. Drive C: (500GB) is the OS and music software including SONAR. It's also where I save my exported files. Drive D: (500GB) contains project files and their audio. Drive G: is 1TB and contains all my sample libraries. An external 1TB USB drive is where everything's backed up to (plus redundant backups on a separate computer).

Don't be tempted to partition those large drives. That will give you more storage, but at the expense of efficiency. 32/64-bit doesn't matter as far as organizing software and data.

If you do end up having to partition a drive, it's worth knowing that data access is faster from the outside edge of the disc (as I understand it). Therefore, the partition onto which you're going to be recording, or from which you're going to be streaming, should be the first partition (the leftmost partition on a partition diagram). 

So do you guys copy the sample libraries that came with Sonar - and installed onto your program drive - onto a different drive?

FullBug


So do you guys copy the sample libraries that came with Sonar - and installed onto your program drive - onto a different drive?

it all depends, you don't need to, if you have a very large library then yes, you can move them to another drive with all your sample librarys.

The thing is, several components of Sonar, and third parties like Native Instruments, just go ahead and stick their stuff wherever _they_ feel like it.

This is incorrect and bad advice.

I have all of my libraries installed exactly where I want them without having to move them after installation.

You shouldn't have any sample material in c:\ProgramData\Cakewalk\all_sorts_of_place, and it's my suspicion that c:\Multismaples is your Dimension Pro library, the location of which is determined - by you - on installation


To the OP:

Drive 1 "C:\" - Operating System, Programs & Plugins
Drive 2 "D:\" - Cakewalk Projects, including Exports (Mixdowns)
Drive 3 "E:\" - Sample Libraries

Yeah - stuff gets put all over the place - sometimes you can control it during install.  Other times you can manually move things and then tell the various synths where they can find their samples.  And sometimes there is nothing you can do about it.

I have 2 hard drives on my primary computer (and an external drive used just for backups).

My primary drive contains Windows, and all applications, along with some of the things like Multisamples and the stuff in ProgramData (hidden folder), and programs for things like SI-Drummer and such.

The Multisamples folder is for Dim Pro.  I believe that can be moved, but since I am not having any performance issues with those samples, I don't worry about it.  Same goes for the SI-Drummer SI-Bass etc. programs, which are in the ProgramData folder.  I don't worry about those because each prog file is around 30k in size and they just do not cause any problems for me.

The bulk of all of my samples, like Session Drummer 3 and all of my Native Instruments Komplete 8 Ultimate libraries, are on my second drive.

I do NOT recommend partitioning.  Just add another physical drive if you need one - they are pretty cheap these days.

I also store all Cakewalk Project folders on the second drive - alongside of the sample libraries, and do not experience any issues.  If I ever feel a need to change that I will simply add another physical drive and split the project folders to be on the new one and the samples to remain on the current drive.

Bob Bone

I have 2 2TB HDD on my system, and as many do here I have C:\ for software/OS and D:\ for file storage and samples etc.

More recently I installed a RAID 1 3TB NAS (Synlogy 212j) on the network, which in turn gets a regular USB drive backup stored in a firesafe.  I might move the samples and content to that NAS directly once I'm comfortable with it.

robert_e_bone

+1 - I never worry about any of the placement of the non-streaming samples, although if given a choice as to where to install them, I would normally choose my second drive. 

Bob Bone

Hi Bob... yeah, I agree. It's nice to have things organized when possible.


Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
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Streaming is a function of the sampler, not the sample. Rather than loading the entire sample library into RAM when the sampler first launches, it will load the appropriate sample(s) from disk (typically in buffered chunks) upon the note being struck. This makes sense for the larger gigabyte-plus libraries, which would quickly fill up available RAM if loaded entirely at startup.
 
So, to answer you question, you need to look at the documentation of your sampler to know for sure. Some samplers actually do both, switching only for larger sample sets (or IIRC sometimes under manual control, depending).