Need help with HDD setup please

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bryanmartin
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2012/11/13 22:53:18 (permalink)

Need help with HDD setup please

Hi, I'm looking to improve the hard drive configuration for my wife's DAW. I built the computer for her about a year ago, and it seems to freeze up and crash fairly regularly. I am a video producer/editor and have build my editing workstation with the best setup for video, but I'm afraid I don't know the best setup for audio for her computer. For example, for my video workstation, My setup is as follows: C: 1TB WD Caviar Black 7200rpm OS and programs B: 2x 300GB WD Velociraptors 10,000rpm in RAID 0 for media assets D: 2x 450GB WD Velociraptors 10,000rpm in RAID 0 for final renders For her DAW, I have C: 500GB WD Caviar Black 7200rpm for OS and programs D: 1TB WD Caviar Black 7200rpm backup (though she uses it to save her projects) I feel as though I under-built her computer, but I am only just now gaining an appreciation for how large audio projects can be, so I need to upgrade her system. Please help. Other specs for her DAW incl: Asus Sabertooth X58 mobo 12GB DDR3 RAM Plus she's got other fancy audio stuff such as Delta 1010 sound card, etc. I'm just concentrating on the computers internals. Any other recommendations for OS setup? (Windows 7)
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    fireberd
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    Re:Need help with HDD setup please 2012/11/14 06:48:39 (permalink)
    One thing that I don't like about Raid 0, and I don't know if you considered this or not,  but data is spread over both discs in a Raid 0 configuration, thus there is no "backup" in Raid 0.  You still need data backups to some other media.  With Raid 1 the same data is on both drives, thus if one drive dies you still have the data on the other drive. 

    I had a Raid 1 setup on an old PC and had a problem.  As I still had the data on the other drive I didn't lose anything.  But as I did periodic (full hard drive) backups I saw no need for Raid and did away with it.

    This is one issue to consider.

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    Bristol_Jonesey
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    Re:Need help with HDD setup please 2012/11/14 08:53:22 (permalink)
    I don't think there's much to tweak on your wife's machine at all.

    The WD Caviars are about as reliable as you can get - there are 2 of them which is good. You might want to add a 3rd but only if she's running heavy sample libraries.

    2TB is a massive amount of space, even for us muso's

    If there's any specific problem, please get back to us.



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    gibsongs
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    Re:Need help with HDD setup please 2012/11/14 08:55:14 (permalink)
    Hi, As Fireberd points out RAID is a solution, however, if you want to be sure of having your data safe, you need to consider the level of RAID you use (RAID 5 at the least costly highly redundant level). Unfortunately, RAID 5 requires 3 disks minimum. There are some fancy solutions that allow you to start off with less disks and add others as the disks populates (sometimes referred to as "Thin Provisioning"). Disks are cheap these days, however, one of the biggest complaints with any RAID solution, is you don't know where your data is located since it is parsed across disks. You can't open the RAID disk and drag and drop you data back to the corrupted disk. Bottom line, the subject of RAID can get pretty complicated to the novice. The simpler solution is to use a good backup program and duplicate data to a separate physical disk. Make sure you do the backup after each session and use an auto backup setting to run it for you automatically at a convenient time. To make you sleep at night, you could put the backup drive under your pillow :-) gs
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