Audio Hard Drives

[Carl Fuehrer]

Hello all! It's been quit a while since I've been on the DUC. I opening a new studio and we are in the process of upgrading our computer from the very outdated DUC-designed Windows machine running PTLE 6.9 to a Mac Pro quad-core and PTLE 8. I need to get some current info on what to filter by when looking for dedicated internal audio hard drives. What issues might there be with highest drive capacity and performance? Should I be looking at drives with 8, 16 or 32Mb cache? Does SATA 3Gb thru improve PTLE performance?

And while I am on system performance, would moving from 4Gb RAM to 8Gb or more give me more success with plug-ins and performance?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

[Craig F]

Drives- personally I don't like running 1 TB for sessions (all eggs in one basket theory mostly), so 500 to 640 GB drives, I'm liking the WD Black drives right now (I would consider my self a Seagate man but I've had some bad experiences lately), 32 MB cache, I don't know if 3 Gb improves but it doesn't hurt. You still need 7200 RPM or better rotation.

RAM- Right now 4 GB is the most RAM that can be access from within the app. When the app is running 64 bit it (not just 64 bit compliant) it will be able to access much more. Now having more than 4 GB lets the OS leave 4 GB for PT when it does other things (in theory)

[Carl Fuehrer]

I remember people complaining about 1Tb drives and that's why I asked. I also remember reading somewhere about the 4Gb RAM limit. Glad to see my memory actually still works!

Thanks so much for the information. I had been considering 500Gb drives.

[fasttraxx]

I to have had probelms with Seagate as of late. I think they have went to quanity, not quality lately. I do use a 1T Seagate Barracuda SATA drive for sessions, and it seems to run hot, and I do experince lock ups form time to time. Can't say it's all the Seagate, but I am thinking of going to smaller drives and external SATA or Firewire.
My old 911 oxford chipset Firewires starting getting really funny, thus I wentto SATA. Not sure which is going to be better, but I do seem to like the SATA drives a bit better.