Hi guys, this is not specific to manchester but has been happening since day one for me. I open sonar go to open a project and it takes around 30 secs or longer for my project to open, in that time sonar goes to 'not responding' then it starts responding and another few secs later my project opens. I never asked before as I just got on with it and it wasn't a big deal. But I'd hate to think something is not as it should be. I'm running Windows 10 64 and sonar 64 on Intel i5, 8 gig ram and 3,10Hz. I store all my projects on an external hard drive while all the other sonar stuff is on the C drive.
Is there anything I should check or is this common enough and it shouldn't worry me.
Thanks,
Andrew

The specs on the external drive would be my first concern. Also how is the external attached to the PC? A slow drive on a USB2 connection probably will not perform well.

Thanks Scook, What you say makes sense, the external hard drive is 5+ yrs old and is connected via usb 2. I am gonna get a new external hard drive that is usb3 and then copy everything over to the new drive and use the old one as a back up. As you seem to have good knowledge of this and I don't can I ask a further question regarding this. Well my PC has it's hard drive divided into 2 drives, a C drive and a D drive, It came like that, it has 1tb alltogether, 500gig in each drive, the D drive is blank and I am now wondering would I be as well off having my projects on that D drive. I am thinking I could have my C drive which runs the programs etc. The D drive with my projects and the external hard drive has all my reference tracks and samples and stuff like that...
Thanks for your help Scook.
Andrew

I'll jump in and say yes, you should move your projects to the D: partition of your internal drive. Performance will likely still be significantly better than with an external drive on USB3.

You really need to know a little more about the existing internal drive. Hopefully the internal drive is not a "green" drive and is running at 7200RPM. Unfortunately, there are slow internal drives too. If it a conventional spinning HD, it may be running at 5400RPM. It would not be a good idea to use the partition as a project drive. That said, the partition may still perform better than your current solution. It won't hurt to test it.
 
When selecting a new external drive, I would purchase either an external SSD or a conventional HD designed to go into a PC drive bay with published specs so that I know exactly what that I am getting and put the HD drive in an external enclosure.

Cheers for the info man, Much appreciated, I'm not much of a techie when it comes down to it, I really just know the basics.
Andrew

scook
You really need to know a little more about the existing internal drive. Hopefully the internal drive is not a "green" drive and is running at 7200RPM. Unfortunately, there are slow internal drives too. If it a conventional spinning HD, it may be running at 5400RPM. It would not be a good idea to use the partition as a project drive. That said, the partition may still perform better than your current solution. It won't hurt to test it.
 
When selecting a new external drive, I would purchase either an external SSD or a conventional HD designed to go into a PC drive bay with published specs so that I know exactly what that I am getting and put the HD drive in an external enclosure.

Thanks for you help skook, I did copy my projects to my partition drive, it's labeled 'data' and I think the recovery partition is elsewhere. I still kept the original project files on my external drive just in case. Anyhow I copied over the projects and opened a couple to see if there was any change and unfortunately things are still the same. Here are the full specs of the pc, unfortunately I can't locate the specs for the external hard drive.

 

• Operating system: Genuine Windows 10 or Windows 8.1 (Please detail which you require at checkout)
• Processor - Intel Core i5-3340 3.1GHz 6MB Smart Cache - Quad-core
• Turbo Speed upto 3.3GHz
• Storage: 1TB HDD, 7200 rpm
• Memory: 8 GB DDR3
• NVIDIA GeForce GT620 - HDMI & DVI Output
• Motherboard: Custom Packard Bell
• Wireless 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000)
• USB: USB 2.0 x 8
• Video interface: HDMI x 1 & DVI x 1
• Audio interface:
  • 3.5 mm jack (output)
  • 3.5 mm jack (input)
  • Optical drive: DVD/RW
• Memory card reader: 6-in-1 memory card reader
• Sound: Integrated Sound Controller
• Colour: Matt Black
• Dimensions: 265 x 100 x 378 mm (H x W x D)
• Weight: 9.87 kg.

I'm not sure whether my global audio folder is set up right, I just set it at the drive where my projects are on, everything else in the list of folder locations is for C:cakewalkcontent/platinum/project templates. I also for got to mention I have done al the usual windows optimization stuff for a DAW.
Really appreciate your help,
Andrew

If you are not using per-project audio folders, moving projects around is not going to affect performance. All the audio would still be loading from the global audio folder.

scook
If you are not using per-project audio folders, moving projects around is not going to affect performance. All the audio would still be loading from the global audio folder.

Sorry man I should have mentioned that I do use per project audio folders.

That being the case, you have your answer WRT running the projects on a separate partition. I am guessing this is not a laptop, the best solution is another internal drive either 7200RPM HD or SSD. There are no USB3 ports so an external drive is not a good solution.