Wow, finally I have been able to upgrade from my old beloved P4 3.4 with 3 gigs of RAM to an i7 3770S with 16 gigs. My question is this: I am going to install Windows 7 as an operating system and would like to understand the current philosophy concerning splitting up my music production onto an SSD with Windows 7 on the 7200 rpm hard drive. Is this the way to go or am I doing it backwards or completely wrong and should be having everything on the same drive? Please let me know the error of my ways or the perfection of my first guess. Thanks a ton.

 

I got myself a new music PC a few months ago - almost same confuguration as yours!

I run my C-drive with a SSD harddisk and the rest of my harddiscs are plain SATA-drives (for projects, samples etc.), and.....

it works like a charm! *yes*

So I can only recommend your idears for your new music-maschine

Hope this was what you asked for - good luck!

 

Install windows 7 on your SSD then everything else on the HDD

Install 64Bit version to benefit the 16Gb Ram. 32Bit will only use just over 3Gb of Ram

I'm jealous

PS If it was mine and being a brand new puter, I would seriously consider dual booting with OSX Mountain Lion

 

I never thought to dual boot with OSX Mountain Lion. Why would you do that?

 

The answer to your question is obvious! Logic pro X and final cut pro X are ahead...

 

Well, I would rather dual boot it with Linux AV. There, I said it. But I am me and he is he.

He's not a "Mac head" as far as I get it, SirSillySausage, and not addicted to LogicX, FinalCut .

However, I do have Linux, but I don't dual boot, rather run it as a virtual OS inside VirtualBox [free] just for Internet, for safety reasons. ;) I also have virtual XP in VirtualBox so I can install suspicious programs in it. I can whole heartedly recommend you to install VirtualBox and at least Windows XP in it for browsing and testing installations of plugins. You will feel relieved when you have an OS you can fuck up and return to a working copy every time so easily. Just make a "snapshot" of the OS and you can always go back to this clean snapshot of the OS. The only bad is that you have to install the OS within the VirtualBox. You can install Win 7 if you want, but it's so much bigger, that's why I use XP which is only a few hundred MBs. Actually I use the same one on my main computer, since I don't use huge libraries of samples and mostly just mix and master tracks.

SSD is used for the OS and Temp files, yes. Hard disk is used for recording and holding big sample banks that you probably use since you go the x64 route.

Cheers!

 

If you play back a project with included audio files and also some virtual instruments using samples, there are at least 4 things going on at the same time, which need to access your hard drive:

- the OS itself
- the DAW
- the audio files being played back
- the playback of the samples of your virtual instruments

So for best possible performance, you need 3 hard drives.
One for the OS and the DAW (Programs), one for the audio files you record, and one for the samples of your VST instruments.

This way, the strain which only one hard drive has to bear when you play back such a project, is divided to three drives, so none of them has to work on their limit.

I have it like this in my DAW-PC:

- an SSD for the OS and all programs
That means very fast booting and also very quick program starts. My DAW starts up in around 5 sec
Also, it affects all the plug-ins you use in the DAW, because they also use the SSD. So every plug-in opens up very quickly, almost instantly. That's very cool to work like that.

- a standard 7.200 rpm for the recorded audio files
even a bit slower HDD should be enough for this, as long as you don't play back 200 audio tracks at once... lol

- a huge, very fast 7.200 rpm drive for my sample libraries
This gives me pretty quick loading times, but still a good value for money ratio.
For best performance, you can use SSDs for your sample libraries, but that will cost you a lot, if you have a lot of samples, obviously.

 

Certain software only available with PC and some only with OSX

I use Virtualbox to run OSX, WinXP, Win8 and Linux on my Win7 machine. And also boot Linux with a USB Drive. Dual booting the operating system means you will have all your computer hardware available to you since the virtual machines have to share with your main operating system.

 

I will pass this on to my computer guru who will be holding my hand as I go forward on this exciting odyssey. Thanks for checking in. It sounds like a great plan.

 

Another cool idea that I would never have thought of, three drives. Please check this for me as I want to get it correct. 1) The SSD for the operating system and my DAW. Would I also install my instruments and effects on the SSD? 2) One for my samples and 3) one for samples of my vsts like my Kontakt instruments. Is this what you meant? Thanks for taking time to deal with me.

 

I've been running my "new" HP Probook 6560 notebook which I got refurbished with 8 gb ram, i7, Windows 7 64 bit. My upgrades included a Startech Firewire card and a 250gb Crucial M500 SSD for my OS and any sample libraries I need to work in real time. I generally record/store projects on the original 500 gb 7200 HDD which I installed in the "upgrade by" by using a Optical Drive HDD Tray.

I have found that recording my current project to the SSD and then transferring it to the HDD later for editing when buffer sizes don't matter to be the best approach. (I had a 2.5 hour 16 channel multitrack session crap out on me when I recorded to my HDD this past August, so I've switched to recording to the SSD). Don't buy into the hype about SSD's wearing out like they used to, all in all you should be backing up your projects either way and should more than likely upgrade your whole system within 5 years.

Overall I would say my goal is to keep the LIVE, TRACKING resources on the SSD and the EDITING, CREATIVE resources on the HDD. Ideally it would be great to have multiple SSD's for their speed, but the price point is still a bit much when compared to all the cheap HDD's that work just fine in most situations.

 

1.) Yes, as you said. Of the VST instruments, you install the plug-in itself on the SSD, but the included library on another HDD (if there is a library, that is).
So for example: If you have Omnisphere or Trilian, you install the software part itself and all the DLLs to the SSD, but the STEAM folder, which includes the samples, onto another HD.
2.) Yeah, samples meaning audio that you record (= real instruments, vocals).
But also if you make bounces of VSTis, the resulting audio files will land on this HDD.
3.) Exactly.