Where Should I Store My Sample Libraries?

[robmanning]

Hello,

I am about to buy several bits of kit (EWQL Symphonic Choir, EWQLSO Gold XP Pro, Kontakt 2 Bundle, Synthogy Ivory) which will between them require roughly 120 GB of storage space.  I have roughly 70 GB available on my hard drive and the same again on my audio drive.  

Does it matter splitting up the samples so that some live in the audio drive, and some live in the hard drive, or should I just buy an external hard drive using Firewire 800 and put them all there?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Many thanks,

 

[marvinq]

well, as a general rule, avoid storing your sample libraries on the drive (not partition) where your operating system resides. Have a dedicated hard drive for your sample libraries, and if possible, have another drive just for ivory.

try to get the biggest drive you can afford. if you need to store 120gb of data, then it should definitely be way bigger than 120gb. drives with those capacities aren't so hard to find anymore nowadays.

[Sound Weavers]

hi Rob,

store your sample library to an external hard disk - firewire800 w/ 8MB cache . Glyph and Rocstor.

hope this helps.

Gerry

[robmanning]

Hello again,

Thanks for your help Marvin and Gerry,

Marvin, when you said that I should put Ivory on a seperate hard drive, did you mean away from all the other libraries that I am about to buy, or do you just mean put all libraries on an external hard drive?

The other thing I thought I could do is to buy another internal drive for my G5.  Would you still say that external drives are better?

Thanks guys,
 

[skunkyfunk]

Rob, you can store your sample libraries in my hard drive if it is ok with you.

[KitC]

Would you still say that external drives are better?

IMO, it's better to have samples on an internal drive than external because of the higher ATA bus speed as compared to the firewire bus. Might be important if you do a LOT of DFD streaming. I guess this is where the Raptors are king, eh Gerry?  

[robmanning]

Hello KitC,

thanks for your advice,

I agree, it seems to make sense to go for the fastest data rate doesn't it? surely it's best to make it as easy as possible for your computer to stream audio, therefore go internal?

Thanks,

[marvinq]

hi rob.

ideally, your sample drive should be separate from your system drive and your audio drive. if i had a choice, i'd separate ivory as well, coz ivory itself is already taxing on your hard drive, assuming you're sequencing music that is piano-heavy.

well, either that or increase the buffers on ivory to relieve your hard drive a bit. but then you'll want to upgrade your memory if you decide to go this route.

kitc is right (he always is... haha). you should put your samples in an internal drive, but separate it from the system drive. i have samples on my system drive, but they're the ones that i use least often, and those that load to memory (as opposed to streaming directly from the drive), like atmosphere libraries, trilogy, stylus, sampletank libraries, etc.

i'd use an external drive for audio, coz it's easy enough to change hard drives when i run out of space for other projects. that way your sample drive is left alone.

[GerardSalonga]

Hi Rob,

Here's what I did with my G5.  It only has one extra bay for a hard disk other than the one your system is on.  Since no samples may reside in that system disk, that leaves you with only one internal drive for your samples.  Even if you got a monster 700GB hard disk, eventually you'll run out of throughput using only one i/o.  Here's what I did, and it works wonderfully:

Check out http://www.wiebetech.com.  They make a thing called the G5 Jam.  It's a bracket that you install in your G5 that allows you to install two more SATA drives to it.  There's a model that allows even more.  I installed the 2-drive version, installed the included SATA card, and now I'm in Raid-0 500GB hog heaven (two 250Gig drives).  Ivory is on another 160 GB disk, and I have a Glyph 160 GB GT050 for more samples, and a Glyph 60 GB for the video files when scoring.  Lots of capacity is good, but also know that you must spread things around as evenly as you can to avoid logjams in the disk i/o.

Marvin's right....Ivory can be a hard drive resource hog, it's like when Kontakt 1's DFD was still new and really bad.  

Kit....Raptors are the best thing ever.  Noisy and hot but boy they perform.  I miss my old 9GB Ultra Wide SCSI drive, that was attached to my BEIGE G3....with Studio Vision Pro....my Akai samplers...Jaz Drive....oh the memories.  Man that thing was great.  Have you seen the new see through Raptor?  Ganda!!!!

Gerard

[KitC]

Had a tough time looking for it but... here's your Raptor, Gerry!

[Sound Weavers]

Boss KIT, why for me?  

[KitC]

Uy, Gerry! I was refering to Gerard S. Sorry for the faff... my bad.  

[Sound Weavers]

cool!

whew!