i have three barracuda 7200 1TB hard drives, and need some help configuring them for X2

on drive#1  i already have my OS,(Windows7) X2 and my programs=Superior Drummer, Kontakt 5 and libraries, UAD2, Amplitube and stuff like that.

drive#2 i use a different DAW ProTools 10 set up the same, but everything is 32bit.

drive#3 is blank. drive#4 (external) blank

i have read many times folks have their audio, projects/sessions, and samples on seperate drives. i'm confused as to what goes where and why and how. Can anyone shed some light or post a link, that would get me in the right direction?

how exactly does Sonar write/read and store your project/session to a seperate drive? i'm not having any issues, i would just like to clean house a little, and get better organized, and maybe get a little performance boost. and can you recall your projects with ease? and do they load up correctly? everybody!! give your thoughts and experience.   aleef..   

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.

aleef

i have three barracuda 7200 1TB hard drives, and need some help configuring them for X2

Hi Al... I talked about this a little in the current issue of the DigiFreq music recording newsletter. You can find the current issue (#44) at... 
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/issues.asp


Inside of SONAR, you can press P to access Preferences. Then under the File - Folder Locations category, you can set the Project Files field to the drive/location where you want to store your project/audio files.


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
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
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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.

i have a laptop with 2hdds.  my os is on a 150gb partition.  i don't have write caching enabled.  i use the next partition as a backup partition to hdd2, and the third partition is a media drive (mp3s, etc.)
hdd no. 2 (a wdc 7500bpkt) has 3 partitions... no 1 is for recording (where i keep my sonar project files), no 2 is my sample libraries (mostly loops, komplete, and cakewalk multisamples), no 3 is a backup to hdd1. 
i use a smallish (200gb) or so recording part on hdd2 so i can defrag quickly when i am going to be recording to it.  my komplete samples load about 30% faster from the wdc drive and my recording hits the disk about 12% lower based on cake's performance meters. 
I install all program locations using default values and then creating symbolic links to the second drive, or a different partition.  that way i never have to keep track of a) changing a parameter in sonar and b) what the move was  - i only have to know that i linked to a different location.  makes file management a lot easier. 

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). 

Mine -

• 240 GB SSD for OS and programs
• 1 TB HD with SSD cache for some of larger, slower loading Kontakt libraries such as the Kirk Hunter stuff and the Orange Tree guitars. This is really showing a order of magnitude improvment in load times over my old DAW. I won't catagorically say its due to the SSD cache, but I am very happy with the preformance.
• 2 TB HD - Other samples. Komplete, Toontrack, Independence etc.
• 2 TB HD - Sonar projects and Audio

I use a couple of external USB hard drives for backups

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

all tests ive run point to keep the os and sonar on a smaller 500gb or under 7200 HD
the terebytes should only have sample librarys and project files.

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.