Hi folks,

My PC components arrived today and I have built the new machine I'll
be using for multi-track recording. It seems to be running fine (touch
wood) and I've taken a look at the BIOS, which is correctly
identifying my drives (one primary master HD and a Secondary master HD
with a slaved CD-RW)

I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it still
necessary to use DOS' FDISC - or does the awindows XP installation CD
do this for you? If this is the case, do I need to set my CD drive as
the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from the XP CD?

My hard drives a
Primary: SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A 120Gb 7200rpm 8mb cache (OEM)
Secondary master: Maxtor6Y080P0 Plus 9 80Gb 7200rpm 8mb cache ATA 133
(OEM)

I figure on using the Primary drive (Seagate) for
a) the OS
b) programs
c) data storage

And the Secondary drive (Maxtor) for:
Backup of the data files stored on Primary drive.

As the drives are OEM's there was no disc supplied with them and no
instructions on setting them up.

Is there any point in partitioning my drives into a number of smaller
'virtual drives?

Thanks for any guidance...

Ally

"Ally" wrote in message

Hi folks,

My PC components arrived today and I have built the new machine I'll
be using for multi-track recording. It seems to be running fine (touch
wood) and I've taken a look at the BIOS, which is correctly
identifying my drives (one primary master HD and a Secondary master HD
with a slaved CD-RW)

I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it still
necessary to use DOS' FDISC -

No, windows software discs have been self-booting since no later than
Win98SE.

or does the awindows XP installation CD do this for you?

....at your direction.

If this is the case, do I need to set my CD drive as
the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from the XP CD?

Yes. I use the following boot order for installing XP:

CDROM
HD
FLOPPY

My hard drives a Primary: SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A 120Gb 7200rpm
8mb cache (OEM)
Secondary master: Maxtor6Y080P0 Plus 9 80Gb 7200rpm 8mb cache ATA 133
(OEM)

I figure on using the Primary drive (Seagate) for
a) the OS
b) programs
c) data storage

And the Secondary drive (Maxtor) for:
Backup of the data files stored on Primary drive.

As the drives are OEM's there was no disc supplied with them and no
instructions on setting them up.

Is there any point in partitioning my drives into a number of smaller
'virtual drives?

Not in my opinion.

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:15:51 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it still
necessary to use DOS' FDISC - or does the awindows XP installation CD
do this for you? If this is the case, do I need to set my CD drive as
the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from the XP CD?

I recommend you format NTFS, not FAT32. So DOS and FDISK won't come
into the picture. NTFS is a more robust system. And, despite
possible small theoretical differences, no-one can ever show any
practical evidence of different performance between the two systems.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

I've never installed XP Home. But if it's the same as XP Pro, just
put the CD in and let it do the job on a raw disk.

Did you end up with SATA drives? If so, you may have to install a
driver early in the setup process. If this is a problem, ask.

"Laurence Payne" wrote in
message
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:15:51 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it
still necessary to use DOS' FDISC - or does the awindows XP
installation CD do this for you? If this is the case, do I need to
set my CD drive as the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from
the XP CD?

I recommend you format NTFS, not FAT32.

Agreed.

So DOS and FDISK won't come into the picture.

Once upon a time in the dark ages, you installed NT on a FAT drive that got
converted to NTFS along the way. But you still didn't use DOS FDISK or
FORMAT.

NTFS is a more robust system. And, despite
possible small theoretical differences, no-one can ever show any
practical evidence of different performance between the two systems.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

You should change that one right away, because it promotes booting floppies,
which is a common means for virus infection.

I've never installed XP Home. But if it's the same as XP Pro, just
put the CD in and let it do the job on a raw disk.

The installation procedures for the two are exceedingly similar.

Did you end up with SATA drives? If so, you may have to install a
driver early in the setup process. If this is a problem, ask.

Good point.

Ally wrote:
Hi folks,

My PC components arrived today and I have built the new machine I'll
be using for multi-track recording. It seems to be running fine (touch
wood) and I've taken a look at the BIOS, which is correctly
identifying my drives (one primary master HD and a Secondary master HD
with a slaved CD-RW)

I'd put the CD-RW onto the channel the data drive is not on - could affect
the UMDA speed the audio drive will configure to.


I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it still
necessary to use DOS' FDISC - or does the awindows XP installation CD
do this for you? If this is the case, do I need to set my CD drive as
the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from the XP CD?

If you boot from CD you can format directly from the install. If already
formatted FAT32 (or FAT) the XP install will prompt you to convert to NTFS.
Probably the way to go these days - no 4GB filesize restriction. Definitely
do NOT use FAT.

I figure on using the Primary drive (Seagate) for
a) the OS
b) programs
c) data storage

And the Secondary drive (Maxtor) for:
Backup of the data files stored on Primary drive.

I would use the C: for OS programs and backup, and use the other drive as
data. Less chance of glitching should the pagefile or whatever be accessed
during recording, and more chance of getting clean unfragmented space.

As the drives are OEM's there was no disc supplied with them and no
instructions on setting them up.

Is there any point in partitioning my drives into a number of smaller
'virtual drives?

No, unless you're anal about tidiness !

Laurence Payne wrote:
..

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

With A: first you'll continually be inadvertently trying to boot from
floppies which you've left in. If you are formnatting NTFS, there is NO
POINT in the system ever trying to boot from floppy, 'cos there is no such
thing as an XP boot floppy, and with a FAT floppy you can't see the NTFS
volume anyway. (there actually are utilities to access an NTFS volumes from
DOS/Win16, but these are for when you are in deep deep poo).

geoff

Ally, do feel free to join the PCDAW email list if you feel inclined.
(spam and address-miner filtered
!).

geoff

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:26:18 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:15:51 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


I'd appreciate some advice on setting up my hard drives... What is
necessary and/or advisable, these days, in the way of formatting and
partitioning, prior to loading Windows XP (oem, Home Edn)? Is it still
necessary to use DOS' FDISC - or does the awindows XP installation CD
do this for you? If this is the case, do I need to set my CD drive as
the boot drive in th BIOS, in order to boot from the XP CD?

I recommend you format NTFS, not FAT32. So DOS and FDISK won't come
into the picture. NTFS is a more robust system. And, despite
possible small theoretical differences, no-one can ever show any
practical evidence of different performance between the two systems.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

Hello, L. THanks for the help.. Can you clarify why I'd want to
specify the A drive as the first boot drive? Would I ever want to boot
from the A drive?

I've never installed XP Home. But if it's the same as XP Pro, just
put the CD in and let it do the job on a raw disk.

Did you end up with SATA drives? If so, you may have to install a
driver early in the setup process. If this is a problem, ask.

No, I went for an ATA setup.

Cheers,

ALly

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:52:54 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Ally wrote:
Hi folks,

My PC components arrived today and I have built the new machine I'll
be using for multi-track recording. It seems to be running fine (touch
wood) and I've taken a look at the BIOS, which is correctly
identifying my drives (one primary master HD and a Secondary master HD
with a slaved CD-RW)

I'd put the CD-RW onto the channel the data drive is not on - could affect
the UMDA speed the audio drive will configure to.

Hello Geoff,
Thank you for the suggestion, but could you clarify? By "the data
drive", do you mean the first drive, ised for recording programs and
saving datsa, rather than the second drive which I'm thinking of using
for backup? In which case, that is how I have it set up already: CD-RW
slaved to second HD.

Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

I'm also probably going to need to run some non-recording-related
programs on the PC (MS Office, etc). Where should I install them? Not
on the same drive as the sequencer programs, I suspect...

Regards

Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 20:00:14 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Ally, do feel free to join the PCDAW email list if you feel inclined.
(spam and address-miner filtered
!).

geoff

I may well do that - thanks for the tip.

BTW, if you have unpartitioned drives, doesn't that mean it'll take
ages for Scandisc to run? Isn't that one of the best reasons for
partitioning a drive? Then you haven't got to scandisc the whole
drive; just the relevant partition(s), yes?

Ally

Ally wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:52:54 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Ally wrote:
Hi folks,

My PC components arrived today and I have built the new machine
I'll be using for multi-track recording. It seems to be running
fine (touch wood) and I've taken a look at the BIOS, which is
correctly identifying my drives (one primary master HD and a
Secondary master HD with a slaved CD-RW)

I'd put the CD-RW onto the channel the data drive is not on - could
affect the UMDA speed the audio drive will configure to.

Hello Geoff,
Thank you for the suggestion, but could you clarify? By "the data
drive", do you mean the first drive, ised for recording programs and
saving datsa, rather than the second drive which I'm thinking of using
for backup? In which case, that is how I have it set up already: CD-RW
slaved to second HD.

Despite a previous discussion regarding c: drive access during an
application's session or not, I would be inclined to have my audio data
drive the same as the OS/pagefile drive. There is just no reason TO have
the active audio data on C:, if you have 2 drives. If you want backups,
put them on the C: drive.

Oh yeah, and partitioning - scandisk doesn't take hat long on a 80G
drive.... I'd say not worth the complication.



Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

That's something I hadn't thought of. No reason why not to I guess. Unless
used, that second install will remain totally static, and not promote
fragmentation. Handy in case of a C: crapout, but equally you can do almost
as much from a bootable XP CD-ROM as you would from.

I'm also probably going to need to run some non-recording-related
programs on the PC (MS Office, etc). Where should I install them? Not
on the same drive as the sequencer programs, I suspect...

Yes, all apps on the same drive. Just make sure you don't leave the various
'hepler' applets enabled, like Fastfind, or Office Quickstart. Don't install
MSN Messenger - that can be a pain to get rid of.

XP 'tuning' tips on the following to cut out the rest of the junk and get
optimal setup.
http://www.quarkav.com/DAW-NLE/index.php

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

http://www.musicxp.net/installing_tips.htm

http://www.nemesysmusic.com/support/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf


cheers

geoff

"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message

Laurence Payne wrote:
.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

With A: first you'll continually be inadvertently trying to boot from
floppies which you've left in. If you are formatting NTFS, there is
NO POINT in the system ever trying to boot from floppy, 'cos there is
no such thing as an XP boot floppy, and with a FAT floppy you can't
see the NTFS volume anyway. (there actually are utilities to access
an NTFS volumes from DOS/Win16, but these are for when you are in
deep deep poo).

Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

"If you have a Windows XP Recovery CD-ROM, then you may not have the option
to select "Recovery Console".
For such cases, Microsoft have made the Windows XP setup process (to get to
the Recovery Console) available as
a download via Q310994 in different languages (note: there are different
downloads for the Home and Professional Edition).
You have to execute the download file, which will create 6 boot floppies.
You then can boot from the first floppy :
You will get first the message : "Setup is inspecting your computer's
hardware configuration..."


These XP boot XP floppies can be used to do all sorts of bizarre things,
including building an XP system with FDISK and FORMAT. But, lets not go
there...

"Ally" wrote in message


Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

It can work, but it can be less than bullet-proof. It will cost you more
than a GB of disk space in most cases.

I'm also probably going to need to run some non-recording-related
programs on the PC (MS Office, etc). Where should I install them?

The C drive.

Not on the same drive as the sequencer programs, I suspect...

Please distinguish between where you install a program, and where its
working files are stored. Loading a program and its components is generally
the smaller part of the I/O load associated with the use of the program, for
audio-related programs.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 21:47:00 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Despite a previous discussion regarding c: drive access during an
application's session or not, I would be inclined to have my audio data
drive the same as the OS/pagefile drive. There is just no reason TO have
the active audio data on C:, if you have 2 drives. If you want backups,
put them on the C: drive.

Oh yeah, and partitioning - scandisk doesn't take hat long on a 80G
drive.... I'd say not worth the complication.

Geoff, Thanks for expanding. I'm still not 1000% clear... assuming I
drop the idea of partitions, which of the following would be best:

Primary HD: OS, Audio programs, and backup of Audio recordings
Secondary HD: audio recording files (first instance of them, which the
audi programs save to by default).
CD slaved to Primary HD

~~OR:~~

Primary HD: OS and audio files (first instance of them, which the audi
programs save to by default).
Secondary HD: Audio programs and backup of audio recording files,
copied occasionally from the primary HD
CD-RW slaved to Secondary HD

My Abit NF7 mobo manual tells me to slave the CD-RW to the secondary
drive (or, at least, that's what the illustration shows).

Finally, which HD would serve best as the Primary:
The 120Gb SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A, 8mb cache
Or the 80Gb Maxtor 6Y080P0 Plus 9 ATA 133 ?

I guess one of these drives will be faster than the other (I don't
know which) and one will be noisier (again, I don't know which). And
one is needless-to-say bigger.

Thanks (anyone)...

Ally
PS: Thanks for the URL's on XP optimisation. Two of them seem to be
dead links, BTW.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:37:35 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote in message


Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

It can work, but it can be less than bullet-proof. It will cost you more
than a GB of disk space in most cases.

Less than 1% of my 120gb drive... sounds worth it...

I'm also probably going to need to run some non-recording-related
programs on the PC (MS Office, etc). Where should I install them?

The C drive.

Thanks...

Not on the same drive as the sequencer programs, I suspect...

Please distinguish between where you install a program, and where its
working files are stored. Loading a program and its components is generally
the smaller part of the I/O load associated with the use of the program, for
audio-related programs.

When you say "working files", are you referring to the actual audio
recordings - or something else?

Thanks for the help, again...
Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:34:54 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message

Laurence Payne wrote:
.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have to
change it.

With A: first you'll continually be inadvertently trying to boot from
floppies which you've left in. If you are formatting NTFS, there is
NO POINT in the system ever trying to boot from floppy, 'cos there is
no such thing as an XP boot floppy, and with a FAT floppy you can't
see the NTFS volume anyway. (there actually are utilities to access
an NTFS volumes from DOS/Win16, but these are for when you are in
deep deep poo).

Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

But why would anyone want to boot from floppies?

Ally

"Ally" wrote in message

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:34:54 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message

Laurence Payne wrote:
.

Set your boot sequence as A:, CD, C:. Then you'll never have
to change it.

With A: first you'll continually be inadvertently trying to boot
from floppies which you've left in. If you are formatting NTFS,
there is NO POINT in the system ever trying to boot from floppy,
'cos there is no such thing as an XP boot floppy, and with a FAT
floppy you can't see the NTFS volume anyway. (there actually are
utilities to access an NTFS volumes from DOS/Win16, but these are
for when you are in deep deep poo).

Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

But why would anyone want to boot from floppies?

Bail yourself out, when you are in deep yogurt.

"Ally" wrote in message


On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:37:35 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:


Please distinguish between where you install a program, and where
its working files are stored. Loading a program and its components
is generally the smaller part of the I/O load associated with the
use of the program, for audio-related programs.

When you say "working files", are you referring to the actual audio
recordings - or something else?

Both the actual recordings and any working files that are used to produce
them.

"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:37:35 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote in message


Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

It can work, but it can be less than bullet-proof. It will cost you more
than a GB of disk space in most cases.

Less than 1% of my 120gb drive... sounds worth it...

If something happens that you can't boot from C:, your
chances of booting from an alternative hard drive seeem
1% IME. Not worth it.

If you are really worried about disaster recovery (as we
all should be), make sure you have your data files backed
up. Why bother with operating system and program files
which can be easily reloaded?

Please distinguish between where you install a program,
and where its working files are stored. Loading a program
and its components is generally the smaller part of the I/O
load associated with the use of the program, for audio-
related programs.

When you say "working files", are you referring to the actual
audio recordings - or something else?

In most cases, the program files themselves (exe, dll, etc.) can
be installed in the default (C:/Program Files/...) location.
I like keeping separate drives (physical, NOT "logical") for
DATA files (wav, avi, etc.) Operating system/program files/
swap file on one spindle, and data files (particularly MEDIA
data files) on separate spindle(s).

"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:34:54 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

But why would anyone want to boot from floppies?

It will be crystal clear when you get there.

"Ally" wrote ...
Geoff, Thanks for expanding. I'm still not 1000% clear...
assuming I drop the idea of partitions, which of the following
would be best:

IMHO, partitions are overrated and of questionable benefit.
They are something like trying to guess ahead of time how
many minutes of cell-phone time you will need years into
the future.

Primary HD: OS, Audio programs, and backup of Audio
recordings Secondary HD: audio recording files (first
instance of them, which the audi programs save to by default).

That is my prefered configuraiton.

CD slaved to Primary HD

A somewhat independent decision. Much more hardware
dependent. Perhaps not as critical for audio apps as for video.

~~OR:~~
Primary HD: OS and audio files (first instance of them,
which the audi programs save to by default).

If I had two drives, I would put the media files on a different
spindle from the c:/boot/operating system/program/swap drive.

Secondary HD: Audio programs and backup of audio recording
files, copied occasionally from the primary HD

No practical reason to separate program files from operating
system that I am aware of. Much better to use separate drive
for primary data file storage.

CD-RW slaved to Secondary HD

Again, a hardware issue, not a software one. Easy to
experiment to see which configuration is most efficient
with your particular combination of hardware.

My Abit NF7 mobo manual tells me to slave the CD-RW
to the secondary drive (or, at least, that's what the
illustration shows).

Sounds like reasonable advice to me.

Finally, which HD would serve best as the Primary:
The 120Gb SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A, 8mb cache
Or the 80Gb Maxtor 6Y080P0 Plus 9 ATA 133 ?

I'd use the smaller drive for c: (boot/os/programs/swap)
as it is plenty big enough unless you have tons of programs
to load.

I guess one of these drives will be faster than the other
(I don't know which)

Not clear why this is important for audio use (unless you
are doing 24 tracks or something). Even for video this is
becoming virtually a secondary issue.

and one will be noisier (again, I don't know which).

Not clear why this is important either as they will both be
running all the time anyway.

"Ally" wrote ...
Hi Richard. Thanks for your input. Yes, I do intend to backup
religiously, .....onto my other hard drive.

Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Hard drives are remarkably cheap and getting even cheaper
(per GB) every week. You would be replacing your failed
primary/secondary drive, no?

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:02:30 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:


"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:37:35 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote in message


Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

It can work, but it can be less than bullet-proof. It will cost you more
than a GB of disk space in most cases.

Less than 1% of my 120gb drive... sounds worth it...

If something happens that you can't boot from C:, your
chances of booting from an alternative hard drive seeem
1% IME. Not worth it.

If you are really worried about disaster recovery (as we
all should be), make sure you have your data files backed
up. Why bother with operating system and program files
which can be easily reloaded?

Hi Richard. Thanks for your input. Yes, I do intend to backup
religiously, .....onto my other hard drive.

Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

In most cases, the program files themselves (exe, dll, etc.) can
be installed in the default (C:/Program Files/...) location.
I like keeping separate drives (physical, NOT "logical") for
DATA files (wav, avi, etc.) Operating system/program files/
swap file on one spindle, and data files (particularly MEDIA
data files) on separate spindle(s).

Yes, this I am learning - thanks...

Ally

Geoff Wood wrote:
application's session or not, I would be inclined to have my audio
data drive the same as the OS/pagefile drive.


Ooops " WOULD NOT" !!!

geoff

Ally wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 21:47:00 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Despite a previous discussion regarding c: drive access during an
application's session or not, I would be inclined to have my audio
data drive the same as the OS/pagefile drive. There is just no
reason TO have the active audio data on C:, if you have 2 drives.
If you want backups, put them on the C: drive.

Oh yeah, and partitioning - scandisk doesn't take hat long on a 80G
drive.... I'd say not worth the complication.

Geoff, Thanks for expanding. I'm still not 1000% clear... assuming I
drop the idea of partitions, which of the following would be best:

Primary HD: OS, Audio programs, and backup of Audio recordings
Secondary HD: audio recording files (first instance of them, which the
audi programs save to by default).
CD slaved to Primary HD

Yes, this option - I missed a "NOT" earlier wrt audio files and apps on
: - sorry for confusion.


My Abit NF7 mobo manual tells me to slave the CD-RW to the secondary
drive (or, at least, that's what the illustration shows).

SHould be equally fine on primary. The channel the CD-RW on will be limited
in it's UMDA-speed to that of the slower drive (the CD-RW) so you don't want
it sharing with your audio data drive.

Finally, which HD would serve best as the Primary:
The 120Gb SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A, 8mb cache
Or the 80Gb Maxtor 6Y080P0 Plus 9 ATA 133 ?

Presumably theSeagate it ATA133 as well. Do you want your backups drive or
data ddrive to be bigger - up to you. One may be faster than the other, in
which case prefer it for data.

geoff

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:39:12 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Geoff Wood wrote:
application's session or not, I would be inclined to have my audio
data drive the same as the OS/pagefile drive.


Ooops " WOULD NOT" !!!

I was 90% sure that was what you meant... :-)

Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:29:36 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Hi Richard. Thanks for your input. Yes, I do intend to backup
religiously, .....onto my other hard drive.

Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Hard drives are remarkably cheap and getting even cheaper
(per GB) every week. You would be replacing your failed
primary/secondary drive, no?

Good point. ..but it usually takes a day or two to obtain a new drive
by mail order. A day or two of down-time could be a disaster..

Ally

"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:29:36 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Hi Richard. Thanks for your input. Yes, I do intend to backup
religiously, .....onto my other hard drive.

Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Hard drives are remarkably cheap and getting even cheaper
(per GB) every week. You would be replacing your failed
primary/secondary drive, no?

Good point. ..but it usually takes a day or two to obtain a new drive
by mail order. A day or two of down-time could be a disaster..

Ally

If a day or two of down-time is disaster, you should just have a secondary
drive already that's ready to go in on a moments notice. Get everything you
need on your primary drive and then ghost the image of that drive onto a
backup drive. If the primary drive fails, you can just open up the case,
and switch the power and ribbon cables and you're back up and running. I'd
suggest RAID but it seems as if you're trying to run a skeleton system.
Heck, you could get a small drive that would only hold your OS and programs
until a replacement is available, it doesn't have to be a 200GB drive.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:47:21 GMT, "Bruce Chang"
wrote:

Heck, you could get a small drive that would only hold your OS and programs
until a replacement is available, it doesn't have to be a 200GB drive.

Bruce,
This sounds like a great idea. Thank you for that!

Ally

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:55:18 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

You should change that one right away, because it promotes booting floppies,
which is a common means for virus infection.

I've never installed XP Home. But if it's the same as XP Pro, just
put the CD in and let it do the job on a raw disk.

Maybe. The only time I put a floppy in is because I want to boot
from it. If your usage differs, indeed, recognize the danger.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:58:07 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:


With A: first you'll continually be inadvertently trying to boot from
floppies which you've left in. If you are formnatting NTFS, there is NO
POINT in the system ever trying to boot from floppy, 'cos there is no such
thing as an XP boot floppy

Oh yes there is! Except there are 6 of them :-)

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:21:33 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


Hello, L. THanks for the help.. Can you clarify why I'd want to
specify the A drive as the first boot drive? Would I ever want to boot
from the A drive?

As a rule, only for rescue operations, or maybe to update firmware on
a drive, graphics card or BIOS. These operations are often run from
DOS utilities. (Before anyone says "But you can't run DOS on a
NTFS/Windows XP system", yes, of course you can. You can boot from a
DOS floppy and do some system operations despite the disk drives being
invisible).

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:18:44 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

Unless you want to maintain a dual-boot system, I see no point. The
stand-by Windows won't have your programs, your setup. You might as
well do a fresh install. Just keep Windows and program files on one
partition, separate from data, so this procedure is convenient.

"Laurence Payne" wrote in
message
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:21:33 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


Hello, L. THanks for the help.. Can you clarify why I'd want to
specify the A drive as the first boot drive? Would I ever want to
boot from the A drive?

As a rule, only for rescue operations, or maybe to update firmware on
a drive, graphics card or BIOS. These operations are often run from
DOS utilities. (Before anyone says "But you can't run DOS on a
NTFS/Windows XP system", yes, of course you can. You can boot from a
DOS floppy and do some system operations despite the disk drives being
invisible).

Shhh - there are DOS and *nix utlities for inspecting NTFS drives.

"Laurence Payne" wrote in
message
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:18:44 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

Unless you want to maintain a dual-boot system, I see no point. The
stand-by Windows won't have your programs, your setup. You might as
well do a fresh install. Just keep Windows and program files on one
partition, separate from data, so this procedure is convenient.

The spare XP system can be used to migrate the data off the non-booting hard
drive. For example, it can have CD or DVD burning software on it.

XP can fail to boot because of unrepaired logical errors with the NTFS file
system. It can then refuse to boot to a desktop to run CHKDSK.

One approach is the recovery console, six disks or 1 CD and an unfamiliar
procedure and environment.

Or, you can boot the spare system, run CHKDSK on what is now the non-boot
drive, and then reboot the once-failing drive.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:19:46 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Geoff, Thanks for expanding. I'm still not 1000% clear...
assuming I drop the idea of partitions, which of the following
would be best:

IMHO, partitions are overrated and of questionable benefit.
They are something like trying to guess ahead of time how
many minutes of cell-phone time you will need years into
the future.

Primary HD: OS, Audio programs, and backup of Audio
recordings Secondary HD: audio recording files (first
instance of them, which the audi programs save to by default).

That is my prefered configuraiton.

CD slaved to Primary HD

A somewhat independent decision. Much more hardware
dependent. Perhaps not as critical for audio apps as for video.

~~OR:~~
Primary HD: OS and audio files (first instance of them,
which the audi programs save to by default).

If I had two drives, I would put the media files on a different
spindle from the c:/boot/operating system/program/swap drive.

Secondary HD: Audio programs and backup of audio recording
files, copied occasionally from the primary HD

No practical reason to separate program files from operating
system that I am aware of. Much better to use separate drive
for primary data file storage.

CD-RW slaved to Secondary HD

Again, a hardware issue, not a software one. Easy to
experiment to see which configuration is most efficient
with your particular combination of hardware.

My Abit NF7 mobo manual tells me to slave the CD-RW
to the secondary drive (or, at least, that's what the
illustration shows).

Sounds like reasonable advice to me.

Finally, which HD would serve best as the Primary:
The 120Gb SeagateBarracuda ST3120026A, 8mb cache
Or the 80Gb Maxtor 6Y080P0 Plus 9 ATA 133 ?

I'd use the smaller drive for c: (boot/os/programs/swap)
as it is plenty big enough unless you have tons of programs
to load.

I guess one of these drives will be faster than the other
(I don't know which)

Not clear why this is important for audio use (unless you
are doing 24 tracks or something). Even for video this is
becoming virtually a secondary issue.

and one will be noisier (again, I don't know which).

Not clear why this is important either as they will both be
running all the time anyway.


Richard,
Thanks for clarifying some of those points. If you have the
inclination, please comment on my reply to you other response where I
explain my perceived logic for having the biggest drive as the
primary.

Anyone suggest an easy way to assess which of two drives is fastest?
(Of course, experience would tell, but so far All I have on each drive
is a copy of XP)

Thanks,

Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:34:54 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

"If you have a Windows XP Recovery CD-ROM, then you may not have the option
to select "Recovery Console".
For such cases, Microsoft have made the Windows XP setup process (to get to
the Recovery Console) available as
a download via Q310994 in different languages (note: there are different
downloads for the Home and Professional Edition).
You have to execute the download file, which will create 6 boot floppies.
You then can boot from the first floppy :
You will get first the message : "Setup is inspecting your computer's
hardware configuration..."


These XP boot XP floppies can be used to do all sorts of bizarre things,
including building an XP system with FDISK and FORMAT. But, lets not go
there...

Sometimes you have to :-)

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:51:06 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Primary HD: OS, Audio programs, and backup of Audio recordings
Secondary HD: audio recording files (first instance of them, which the
audi programs save to by default).
CD slaved to Primary HD

~~OR:~~

Primary HD: OS and audio files (first instance of them, which the audi
programs save to by default).
Secondary HD: Audio programs and backup of audio recording files,
copied occasionally from the primary HD
CD-RW slaved to Secondary HD


There is no possible reason to have program files on a different
drive/partition to the os. Windows, the Registry and program files
are intimately entwined. Keep them together.

Backup data can go anywhere there's space for them. They're just
sitting there.

There's a small argument for having a CD-RW drive on a different IDE
bus to the disk containing data to be written. But only a small one.
In practice, which IDE cable reaches to the CD drive is often the
overriding consideration :-)

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:58:07 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

But why would anyone want to boot from floppies?

When things go wrong.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:01:40 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

When you say "working files", are you referring to the actual audio
recordings - or something else?

Both the actual recordings and any working files that are used to produce
them.

Meaning just what? I know of no audio recorder/sequencer that
doesn't load the control file into memory and keep it there. Do you?