Harddrives for Music Production (brands/size/partitioning)

[Tesselator]

Yeah, I bought an xslimmer license once, but my mac sortof started to act wierd after that. Don't remember what exactly anymore, but still, kinda stayed away from that since!

Anyways, I think I'm going to get the drives tomorrow! But comments are still welcome! I'm not going to the store for another 10 hours

xslimmer type apps (there are several) are good but you have to go on an app by app basis. Using the automatic option and letting strip everything from all apps is not a good idea I think.

Sort all your apps by size. then strip, load, and test each. By the time you get to the smaller apps you'll have probably saved yourself a gig or two and caused no damage.

 

[nicolasmasset]

Sort all your apps by size. then strip, load, and test each. By the time you get to the smaller apps you'll have probably saved yourself a gig or two and caused no damage.

That's another thing, do you really think a gig or two is worth it with an octo mac pro? I would think it could handle a bit of extra luggage for the sake of keeping everything working!

 

[clownjuggles]

Yeah, I bought an xslimmer license once, but my mac sortof started to act wierd after that. Don't remember what exactly anymore, but still, kinda stayed away from that since!

Anyways, I think I'm going to get the drives tomorrow! But comments are still welcome! I'm not going to the store for another 10 hours

I have never cared for XSlimmer myself either. I figure trust in mac and run a pared down original OS and wait for them to pare it down in Snow Leopard. What prices have you gotten on your drives yet?

 

[nicolasmasset]

I have never cared for XSlimmer myself either. I figure trust in mac and run a pared down original OS and wait for them to pare it down in Snow Leopard. What prices have you gotten on your drives yet?

Well here in belgium these are the prices in dollars:
- WD black 640 = 100$
- WD black 1TB = 150$
- WD green 1TB = 135$
- Seagate 1.5TB = 180$

And I think I'm just going to add 2x2gb ram to the stock 2x1gb for the time being. I have a feeling 6gb will be more than enough for now. That'll set me back 160$, whereas if I were to put in 8gb, for 10 in total, it would cost me double, and I'd have 6 slots filled instead of the "more optimal" 4 or 8 with 4gb extra ram that I'd most likely not use.

EDIT: Hmm, seeing those prices listed like that makes me wonder if I should just get the Seagates for the 30 bucks more. Their throughput is quite a bit bigger in tomshardware test and seek time just a tad slower than the blacks, but they do eat alot more power! Darnit! I hate having too much choice!

 

[DoFoT9]

Hi guys,

...

So after reading all your informative posts, the plan has reformed itself to this:
1) Boot drive
I don't really want to spend the money on raptor drives now that ssd's are maybe only a year away from becoming affordable, so I think I'm going to stick with the stock 320gb as boot disk, leave the home folder as is, and as DoFoT9 said, just move the itunes libraries to another drive. I'm sure you're right in that that small amount of documents or images I have isn't going to make or break the performance. Should I move iPhoto library too?
Partition question alert!: I should probably just leave it as one partition, right?

ok so raptors arent on the list, fair enough. give the SSD's a year and a 256gb SSD will be half the price, if not more! how big is your iPhoto library?? if its any bigger then say 20GB then it might be worth moving, otherwise i would just leave it as is.

2) Samples drive with seperate itunes, movies and general data storage partition
I think loading in the samples could benefit from a fast access time, so keeping Tesselator's comments about 10-15% fastest partition and my current total of 130gb's of samples in mind, I think I'll go for a 1TB drive (13% samples). I though about a 640 drive because of the 320 platter technology, but that would give me only 100gbs within the 15% region.
Partition question alert!: So my 130gb samples are in the 15% fastzone, but how much breathing room should I give them? Say I get more samples in the future, with 300gb in total, how much should that partition be? A straight 300? Or a bit more room, say 400? That'll still leave me with a whopping 600gb for itunes and movies etc.
Sometimes though, I do run iTunes alongside logic, but that's to listen to a song I like to compare the sound. But then it's more of a "play itunes, pauze logic .... pauze itunes, play logic" type of thing, so I guess that's alright?

sounds good, nothing wrong with that. the playing itunes, pause itunes, play logic, pause logic thing wouldnt be that demanding... the config now is perfect.

3) Project drive with scratch partition, project storage
DoFoT9, the scratch partition would really only be for the project I'm currently working on, and I've yet to make a song that's more than a few gigs big, so I think 10gb will suffice. This drive however will need to be fast, as thats the one logic or ableton will constantly be writing to when recording audio and saving or undoing stuff while I'm working on the song. So keeping Tesselators 10% and my mesely 40gbs of projects in mind, going from 10% to 100% would be 10gb fast scratch x 10 = 100gb drive would initially suffice. But for futureproofing I'll probably want to go bigger for more project storage, and so with the better 320-640 platter technology in mind and Tomshardware's WD black's victory in acces times, I have two choices: A 320gb WD RE3 WD3202ABYS 320GB S-ATA II 16Mb Raid Edition (which "only" has 16mb cache, or a 640gb WD Black which would cost exactly the same (they don't make the 320's anymore!)

as long as the scratch is on the inside then you will be fine. performance will be lightning! no complaints there.

4) Time machine
As DoFoT9 pointed out, Timemachine is exponential, which I totally forgot! So perhaps I should go for the 1.5TB seagate instead of the 1TB efficent caviar green? On the other hand, the most important thing for me are my projects and documents. I can always install rip my cd's and movies again. So perhaps the 1TB will suffice. I'd really like the Caviar green to compromise for the power hungry Caviar blacks in power consumption..
Partition question alert!: If I make a backup boot drive partition like DoFoT9 suggest, will that partition automatically have to be 320gb like the boot partition. Or can you it be just the net size of the os and apps?

this is more of a 'you' thing, do what you want.. but id go the 1.5TB, because if your boot drive takes up.. say 100gb (including documents and photos etc) as soon as you backup there is 100gb gone, the monthly back ups are the same again (it re-backs-up the whole drive) so thats another 100gb every month (+ say 5gb extra things that are added over the month). in 2 months you have already used 200gb of the 1.5TB hard drive. (the hard drive will be formatted as 1.32TB 9 think because of formatting). that will pretty much fill up in a year.

if you take 320gb for the "clone" then you have even less space to utilise. it is not necessary to make a clone disc the same size as the drive you are cloning from, but it is recommended-so that you dont have to change the partitions later on...

hope that makes sense!

What do you guys think? Sounds solid? Good choice to go WD Black for performance and an easy going green for time machine? I'm a bit worried about having 2 of them, as people say they're noisy.

sounding very good...thinking green is pretty good, im not sure about the difference the difference in power consumption though...

 

[Tesselator]

That's another thing, do you really think a gig or two is worth it with an octo mac pro? I would think it could handle a bit of extra luggage for the sake of keeping everything working!

Well, that's up to you. Everything will remain working which ever you decide.

As I understand it .APP files are actually folders - most (all?) of them. Inside that folder are occasionally two executables. One for Intel and one for PPC. AFAIK loading an app on an Intel machine will never look at or even know about, the PPC executable. If indeed this is true then all it will do is free up some space - it won't even load the apps faster.

As for what I think; I slimmed four or five apps once just to see if it would matter. Besides the space it didn't seem to. I guess if you're trying to fit OS X into a small space it could be useful. <shrug>

 

[byrgenar]

Well, that's up to you. Everything will remain working which ever you decide.

As I understand it .APP files are actually folders - most (all?) of them. Inside that folder are occasionally two executables. One for Intel and one for PPC. AFAIK loading an app on an Intel machine will never look at or even know about, the PPC executable. If indeed this is true then all it will do is free up some space - it won't even load the apps faster.

As for what I think; I slimmed four or five apps once just to see if it would matter. Besides the space it didn't seem to. I guess if you're trying to fit OS X into a small space it could be useful. <shrug>

+1

There was a time when Slimming down a OS was essential. Now... the main reason for me is to have a smaller clone image. 4 or 5 permanent backups at between 10-25GB. I just figure, why duplicate data you don't need in the first place. So out it comes. Now, speed is more in the fingers. Get quicksilver.

Good luck

 

[DoFoT9]

+1

There was a time when Slimming down a OS was essential. Now... the main reason for me is to have a smaller clone image. 4 or 5 permanent backups at between 10-25GB. I just figure, why duplicate data you don't need in the first place. So out it comes. Now, speed is more in the fingers. Get quicksilver.

Good luck

thats where time machine comes in handy (and some very smart cloning programs)

wont backup anything that hasnt been backed up already

 

[nicolasmasset]

as long as the scratch is on the inside then you will be fine. performance will be lightning! no complaints there.

Don't you mean the outside of the disc?

this is more of a 'you' thing, do what you want.. but id go the 1.5TB, because if your boot drive takes up.. say 100gb (including documents and photos etc) as soon as you backup there is 100gb gone, the monthly back ups are the same again (it re-backs-up the whole drive) so thats another 100gb every month (+ say 5gb extra things that are added over the month). in 2 months you have already used 200gb of the 1.5TB hard drive. (the hard drive will be formatted as 1.32TB 9 think because of formatting). that will pretty much fill up in a yea.

It doubles up every month?! Wow, I guess I might just back things up manually then... Or whenever time machine fills up and I don't think I need anything from the past, reformat the drive and start over.

I think I'm going to get my drives today!

 

[Mac Husky]

I don't really want to spend the money on raptor drives now that ssd's are maybe only a year away from becoming affordable, so I think I'm going to stick with the stock 320gb as boot disk (...)

I hope they do Right now an Intel X25-M 160 costs three times more than a VelociRaptor 300.
Maybe it is worth waiting

 

[DoFoT9]

Don't you mean the outside of the disc?

well what do you know, you learn something new everyday lol!! i had them muddled up the whole entire time!

It doubles up every month?! Wow, I guess I might just back things up manually then... Or whenever time machine fills up and I don't think I need anything from the past, reformat the drive and start over.

I think I'm going to get my drives today!

im fairly certain it does :-S (quotes from the apple site)

"Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours,

so any files changed within the last 24 hours are backed up..

daily backups for the past month,..

every file is backed up that has been changed within the last month..

and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term."

everything older then a month is backed up every week!!!!!!!! wow ok, so every week your space will virtually double??? that doesnt make sense....

im getting confused.