Hi guys,
 
The parts of my new pc are on their way as I type, and once its up and running, I want to upgrade from Sonar X1 Essential to X3 Studio. I've got a pair of 1TB hard drives ordered, and have the possibilty of getting an additional 500 GB one from my old pc.
 
As I understand it, the main program should go on my C drive, the plug-ins etc on the second drive (and - if I get the third drive, my songs on that). Correct so far?
 
Should I partition the C drive at all, are things going to be any more efficient on a 250GB partition than on 1TB drive?
 
My memory of installing X1 essential is that I wasn't entirely clear on what was going where (might just have been me) is it pretty straightforward assigning the various components to the appropriate destinations when you install X3?
 
Any other thoughts? Many thanks.
 

Your old hard drive might be an IDE drive which will not be able to connect with the new, most certain, SATA hard drives.
The SATA drives are quicker and less hassle than the old IDE drives.
 
A 250Gb partition is fine for Windows as your C drive.  Then I would do a 500Gb D partition for your program installs and then the rest for an E partition for downloads etc.
 
A second drive could hold your Cakewalk Content and synth plugins, doing an E and F partition.
 
Scott's book Sonar X2 Power! has good recommends using 3 hard drives for Sonar to work at a top level.  He recommends putting all your synth plugins on a 3rd drive, if possible.  He is working on the new Sonar X3 Power book.
 
See Scott at http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/
 
 
 

Drive 1: Operating System & Programs
Drive 2: Cakewalk Projects
Drive 3: Sample Libraries
 
It's a bit subjective as to where you store your plugins - mine are on my system drive, but I know of people who install them to one of their other drives. In the above scenario, I would choose Drive 2.

I have OS and applications on 1 drive, and sound libraries and projects on a 2nd drive, and have no performance bottlenecks.
 
It is largely a matter of choice.  Some methodologies yield better performance, but I think the biggest yields are really keep OS and applications separate from sample libs and projects.  (and by separate, I mean separate physical drives, not just separate partitions).
 
Bob Bone

If the sample player is not streaming samples, it does not matter where the sample library is located. The location of plug-ins generally will not affect performance either for the same reason as non-streaming sample libraries, they are read into memory, the disk is only accessed when the project is loaded (or a patch is loaded). Having dedicated drives for the OS/Programs and another for audio projects is always a good idea unless projects are small. Of course all this goes out the window with SSDs, the assumption with most of these recommendations is the drives have moving parts.

For speed sake, I recommend getting an SSD for your boot/OS drive, and using regular 7200rpm sata drives for everything else. I have a 120GB SSD, which is enough for Windows 8.1, Sonar X3 (base program), and a few other applications. All other libraries and such go on a seconds 1TB drive. I use that drive for my projects as well.
 
With all the holiday sales going around, you should have no problem finding a moderately sized SSD for a reasonable price. I recently found a 128GB one for $65 online. You'll be happy you did.

I concur on picking up a solid-state drive, if funding is available.
 
I had a massively expensive 512 GB one, 2 years ago, but 6 months into it, it failed.  I subsequently replaced it with a regular SATA III 2 TB drive, and have never looked back.  My system runs just fine with the regular SATA III drives.  (I have 2 of them).
 
Still, the OS and applications would run perform better on an SSD, as would accessing data, such as sample libraries and such.
 
Bob Bone
 

 
 I can certainly see the benefits of SSD in looking at performance compared to the more standard SATA 7200rpm drives. I have some reservation though in going to one because of info I have heard that may not be confirmed. SSD seems to wear out but in a different way, mainly in either a complete failure or a reduced memory capacity. I have read that after 2 years an SSD is on shaky ground. I would hope that this information is wrong.
 
 If I'm only going to get 2 years out of an SSD drive, then I'm not feeling the love entirely. Can anyone here confirm or deny this? At least we can reasonably expect 5 years plus with a good platter drive. I have seen some go for much longer than that. A percentage of the people who have bought SSD report failures that seem to be much more common than a good 7200 rpm drive.
 
 

This is one of the threads that should go into the SONAR wiki - covers practically every angle of DAW HD's issues.  At the moment, anyway.
 
@

I happened to notice recently that Seagate, which USED to have 5-year warranties on their regular drives, have changed that to now only 2-years.
 
Even so, since I got SCORCHED with a 6-month failure on the expensive SSD that I bought, I too will be sticking to regular SATA III drives for a long while.
 
Bob Bone