Reinstalation of windows 7x64 advice please on how best to do it......

Hi guys

First off thanks for any help I am given on this

I am also sorry that this will be such a Noob question but I just dont want to get it wrong and its not something I have ever done before

Ok so after problems upon problems of driver conflicts etc causeing problems/ crashes etc in my DAW I have decided its time to start over( I wont bore you with all the details) I Just feel its best and will save time to start over.

I want to wipe everything on my OS Drive clean and start again

How exactly would I do this ?

I have windows 7 x 64 Home

I have 3 hard drives all 1TB WD caviar blacks

My C:/ is for my windows/ sonar/plugins etc etc
I record to my D:/ and my E:/ is for my samples and anything else I want out of the way

So basicaly all my drivers/ programs etc for everything are on C:/

How would I go about geting the drive wiped clean and my windows put back on it ?

Do I just put the disk in and follow commands or do I have to reformat the drive ?

Will doing any of this alter anything on my D:/ drive or will that all still stay there?
Since its my audio only drive I would like to try keep it there rather than have to clean it off on to an external hard drive.

I hope I have explained this ok I am sorry If I havent.

Thanks again to any one who can help I plan to do this first thing in the morning.

I dont have the funds to pay some one to do it for me so I really cant thank you all enough right now for any help and advice.

One last thing is could anyone point me in the direction of what tweeks to do for windows 7 home x64 ?

Norrie

I hope the previous post answered your questions....because I want to use your thread as an opportunity to ask a quick question...

What are the advantages/ disadvantages of recording your audio to a drive (a slave drive) other than the one with your OS on it?

Yeah I've heard that too before.

On my old machine I used to do that until I started getting errors...I had some kind of dodgy read happening to my slave drive.

If you record your audio to a slave...would that mean that your Cakewalk projects would all reside on the slave too?

So if it's recording to the slave/ second drive.....then am I right in saying that the Cakewalk Project folder will be over on that second drive too? You know what I mean? Your entire project including the audio data will be housed on the second drive...

Is that right?

I suppose it makes sense to have all that on a second drive...and your main drive should be left alone to handle system processes and all that

A physical HDD has ONE set of read/write heads that fly back and forth over the surface of the disk(s) as it spins, just like those old record players I've read about but much faster.
This obviously means that a HDD can only ever read (or write) one file at a time.  To read two or more files at once, the read head has to constantly switch back and forth between the different areas of the disk surface where the different files are stored.  This takes time.  In a worst case situation it can spend more time moving around than it uses to actually read the data.

So for time critical applications like playing back 48+ tracks of audio you do not want other processes (like Windows background tasks) hijacking the HDD just as your prima-donna guitarist launches into his latest 10 minute solo... [;P]

The answer is to keep things seperated on different physical HDDs.  Dividing a large HDD into two or three smaller partitions is no good.  It may look like two or three HDDs in Windows, but you still only have the one set of read/write heads.  Likewise, joining several small HDDs together with RAID does not give much advantage as all the read/write heads are then linked to act as one, (though you do get faster data transfer once its found the data).

The way to work is to seperate your data files into three groups.
HDD 1.  Small numbers of large files, serial file access.  ie, sample Libs.
HDD 2.  Large numbers of small files, random file access.  ie audio clips, project data files.
HDD 3.  Random files, random access.  Windows system files, program files, etc.

Yeah thats exacttly what I ment that way your OS driveis just useing what it needs and all over info is being used from another drive :)

Yeah I use mine like this 3x 1TB WD caviar blacks

C:\ OS , Sonar, programs etc.....
D:\ Projects and audio only
E:\ Samples amd other random things like video etc

I only have a sample drive because I have a extra hard drive its not needed really

You have the right Idea though

Are you going to set it up ?

Thats all my drivers back on and tweeks done so nearly time to reinstall sonar :D

Norrie

The term "slave drive" harks back to IDE days when HDDs were connected by a wide (40 or 80 wire) cable.  An IDE controller could control two HDDs on one cable, set as Master and Slave by small 'jumper' plugs on each drive.

Most modern motherboards have 6, 8 or 10 SATA connectors built in, you plug in whatever HDDs you have and assign whatever drive letter you wish to them.  It is still convention to call your first boot (system) drive 'C:' but it's not a requirement.

If you have 2 drives, then seperate out windows and program files to 1 and your audio files and libs to the second.
If you have 3 drives then also seperate the audio files (project folders) from your sample libs.

A 4th drive is usefull as a backup for your projects drive as that is the drive that contains the actual work you're doing and can't be re-installed from downloads or boxed disks.   An easy 'set and forget' backup option is to use two identical drives with raid mirroring for you project and backup HDDs.  You don't gain any extra space, but if you have a HDD failure you just carry on untill you get the time (and money) to replace the failed unit.

Your's is the newer version with USB3. I think that's the only difference.  (That is the A in the model number)

As for updates,  if it works I tend to leave mobo drivers alone.  If I ever need to re-install from scratch and I can't find the driver disks (most times) THEN I'll go to the manufacturers site and download the drivers.

I decided last night it would be quicker to start over than try and find whats causeing the problem and save my self a lot of time

I got up early and wiped my C:/ Drive clean and have done a full fresh install of windows 7 X64 home

I then installed all the drivers for my motherboard, video card etc etc......

I then checked for any updates on everything the only thing there was an update for was the Video card

I followed this up by doing every single windows tweek

I disabled evverything that wasnt needed like on board lan and sound etc....

I have now Installed all the Vs700 drivers got sonar back on and up to 8.5.3 and loaded a few of the sample tracks then loaded the Dpc latency checker I am geting a absalute maximum of 600 and an average of 100

This is a huge difference to what I was geting before

Could any one confurm is this what I should be exspecting from a system with my specs ? Or should I be aiming for lower?

My playback and record are both on 256 buffer settings and I am useing the asio drivers is this the best you would recomend for my system or what would you advise ?

I shall reinstall toontrack and pod farm tomorow and run a few of my own songs and see how the Dpc is looking after that aswell.

Its looking good so far though I think but like I said I am not sure how low I should be aiming for with my system specs ?  I hope Karyn can answer this as her specs are about the same as mine.....

If any one could advice on what setings to have my system / sonar producer 8.5.3 setings that would be awesome

I am still new to this so all help is good

Thanks so much to every one

Norrie

Geez I have no IDea what to try now to get it lower

This is not good ;(

Any ideas ? ive disabled everything I can

What about sonar setings could that make a difference ?

My personal experience with the gigabyte board is that if you overclock it by just a tad then the DPC latency plumets.  Go into the bios setings at bootup and increase the system clock speed by a little, just 5% or so.  The DPC latency in my system dropped from 150/600 down to 12/50 with no spikes at all just by doing that.
I repeated the test on a similar machine at work that has the same board. I got the same result.
Don't go mad trying to tweek Win7. It's not worth it. It works just fine as standard.
I can't help with your VS-700. I don't have one.

Karyn


My personal experience with the gigabyte board is that if you overclock it by just a tad then the DPC latency plumets.  Go into the bios setings at bootup and increase the system clock speed by a little, just 5% or so.  The DPC latency in my system dropped from 150/600 down to 12/50 with no spikes at all just by doing that.
I repeated the test on a similar machine at work that has the same board. I got the same result.
Don't go mad trying to tweek Win7. It's not worth it. It works just fine as standard.
I can't help with your VS-700. I don't have one.

You are a star karyn that sounds like just what I need thats exactly whats going on :)

If you dont mind I am just going to send you a pm

Just Windows running, a little higher with Sonar with a track playing.

Hi Norrie.
 
You access the bios by pressing 'DEL' when you first turn on the power and the spash screen appears.
 
Select the first option "MB Intelligent Tweaker"
 
You should see this screen.. 
 
 
Hopefully your screen won't have my reflection in it !!!!
 
You need to tweak the BCLK  (Base clock).  Don't tweak it a lot. It's marked in RED on my screen pic.
You may also need to set ENABLE in the box just above, as mine is.
 
DO NOT RANDOMLY COPY MY SETTINGS they may not work for you and could cause your machine to fail.
 
Once again,  the only thing I tweaked was the BCLK to speed the machine up a little  (This is my work machine,  i7-920) and as you can see it is running at 3.1G and the DPC Lat now shows an average reading around 25 - 30 with no spikes.
 
Edit for emphasis : DO NOT JUST COPY MY SETTINGS,  increase the bclk A LITTLE, save the changes and test it.  Re-boot, increase A LITTLE more, save, test.
 
Once it's made a difference and you notice lower dpc lat.  STOP

Norrie


This should still be ok for recording though shouldnt it ? With no problems ?

Try it and find out for yourself