Setup: It's in my signature. basically 3 different HDs(from older,slower,smaller to bigger,newer,faster). Uses: I use my DAW to record jazz/funk/rock sometimes I like to play with a lot of VSTs on top, Bust mostly it's just several tracks of audio, mostly guitars and such with Superior Drummer and some Keyboard or bass VST. Questions: 1) The basic question is: on which drive should I place my OS, Software(plugins) Samples. Audio & Projects etc... 2) I think that most of the heavy use is porbebly VST(I might be wrong though) and my questions is how does the RAM and HD work? 'cause I know VSTs are loaded to the RAM, so maybe having the samples on a fast drive will just shorten Loading time and not make "Working Time" smoother and I should use the faster HD for audio, but does the audio load to the vst? Thanks in advance.

C:      OS/Applications/Plugins
D:      Audio (Projects and Wav files)
E:      Sample libraries

Jim answered your drive location question. As for VSTs loading samples, that depends on the VST. Some load samples into memory and other stream samples from the hard drive. All the synths that come with SONAR just load samples, so you can put those samples anywhere. If you have other VSTs that stream samples, those samples should go on the E drive, like Jim suggested.

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
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Do you know the RPM speed of the 160 GB drive? That green drive is going to cause problems. The WD would be good for the OS/Sonar drive (I'm assuming it's a Caviar Black) but usually you want it smaller than that (like 500GB... not sure why but that seems to be standard). At this point I'd say try to snag a 500GB Caviar Black and use that for the OS, then the 1 TB to write your audio to and perhaps store your samples and stuff on (this is how I have my two drive system set up) then use the other two for extra storage/backup. If the 160 GB drive is high speed (7200 RPM) then maybe use that for your samples if they will all fit easily on the drive (remember you have to leave free space on the drive or it will cause problems).

I'm not a tech though. Just stuff I've picked up poking around the tubes. Cheers.

Oops... you got the really smart dudes here already. Listen to them. ;-p

Hi Guys. I use sonar, superior drummer and komplete(kontakt...) I understand the c,d,e but did you mean this? 160GB - C green - audio black - samples ?

Personally I would partition the 1tb drive into 3 partitions rather than use the three drives looking at the spec. Don't put the OS on the green drive (bad idea!), definitely put it on the 1tb drive. Invest in a backup solution, maybe your other hard drives will come in useful for this or when your 1tb drive gets full.

I heard that partitioning a drive means squad when it comes to accessing the data simultaneous, isn't it true? this should be the hierarchy right? fastest for samples->audio->os

CakeAlexS


Personally I would partition the 1tb drive into 3 partitions rather than use the three drives looking at the spec. Don't put the OS on the green drive (bad idea!), definitely put it on the 1tb drive. Invest in a backup solution, maybe your other hard drives will come in useful for this or when your 1tb drive gets full.

Whaaa? No, don't partition. It's gonna have to constantly be trying to retrieve/write data from multiple spots on the drive. Bad idea.

Seriously if you can scrape up some extra dough get another smaller 7200 RPM HDD to put your OS and software on. Doesn't even have to be all that big. The main program doesn't take up a lot of space. It's all the samples and stuff that eat up the drive space and you can put that on the other drives anyway. It's worth dropping the extra $60-100 for another Caviar Black.

Use the Green drive for backups... it's not a good choice for performance.