Hard Disk for studio audio recording PC?

[Threepwood]

My mate has setup a studio and he wants a new HD for his PC system.

He was asking me about using an external drive to record to, but my opinion is that something like this should be internal, my thinking that a SATA internal is going to be way better speed/reliability wise than external, especially if the external is USB, though I know the max speed of USB2 is more than SATA (am I right USB2=480mbps, SATA=300mbps?), he does have a firewire card though so maybe would that be better speed wise, an external f/w drive?

Take into account though that his studio sound card is f/w so we don't want anything taking up it's bandwidth that it needs, I don't know anything about f/w so I don't know if that is an issue or not?

He has done recordings on his current SATA hd which I think is prob. 8mb cache and SATA2 and that is working well AFAIK, I'm thinking he will get something like a 500gb SATA2 16mb cache if we go the internal route.

Thoughts?

 

[antowan]

Would not matter much imo. Don't think audio is that hard on disks in terms of speeds required even on multi track recordings. Just get him as much space as possible for a cheap as possible.

 

[The_Techie]

My mate has setup a studio and he wants a new HD for his PC system.

He was asking me about using an external drive to record to, but my opinion is that something like this should be internal, my thinking that a SATA internal is going to be way better speed/reliability wise than external, especially if the external is USB, though I know the max speed of USB2 is more than SATA (am I right USB2=480mbps, SATA=300mbps?), he does have a firewire card though so maybe would that be better speed wise, an external f/w drive?

Take into account though that his studio sound card is f/w so we don't want anything taking up it's bandwidth that it needs, I don't know anything about f/w so I don't know if that is an issue or not?

He has done recordings on his current SATA hd which I think is prob. 8mb cache and SATA2 and that is working well AFAIK, I'm thinking he will get something like a 500gb SATA2 16mb cache if we go the internal route.

Thoughts?

From what I've seen most hard drives don't even really saturate the USB bus' bandwidth. I agree with antowan, get as much space as you can afford.

 

[genetic]

From what I've seen most hard drives don't even really saturate the USB bus' bandwidth. I agree with antowan, get as much space as you can afford.

+1

RAW uncompressed audio has an average data rate of 1536kbps which is far lower than the USB2.0 bandwidth threshold.

 

[chickenbeef]

Sata has a bandwith of 3 giga bits per second while usb only has 480 mega bits a second. When i use my seagate 500gb internally with the sata interface i get an average sustained speed of 50 megabytes a second while when in an enclosure with usb 2 it only gets a max of 30 megabytes a second

 

[Arthur]

Get the biggest drive money can buy. Then double it, because you MUST make regular backups.

Basic backup rule: The chance of losing data is inversely proportional to the frequency and thoroughness of backups.

A far greater challenge is silencing the PC. This is a HUGE TOPIC, but I don't want to deflect your thread. Liquid cooling ... water-cooled PSU ... audio insulation & padding, ultra-quiet fans ... there's a ton of stuff...

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Big drives and lots of onboard ram. Also stream to a seperate drive than the one the OS lives on to prevent extreme disk IO.
Also you need to be aware that external cases can only house certain sized drives ! We got one at work that is rated for 500GB USB2.0 or SATA - you get an bracket for your PC that plugs into your onboard sata and then you plug your external device into the bracket.

 

[HavocXphere]

From what I've seen most hard drives don't even really saturate the USB bus' bandwidth.

I'd be careful with that.... In theory yes, but for some reason its not that way in practice. No idea why, but for some reason these kbps calculations just don't freakin work.

I had a buddy's external here that had both esata and usb 2. The esata link is noticeably faster. Not sure of the numbers...but it was a fairly hectic difference.

I'd stay away from USB for this. Also, some of the drives shut down after x minutes. Fairly annoying on my FreeAgent. It can be disabled though somehow....

I reckon your best bet is an internal sata or an esata drive (Almost no difference between the two...I think only the shielding is different).

 

[The_Techie]

I'd be careful with that.... In theory yes, but for some reason its not that way in practice. No idea why, but for some reason these kbps calculations just don't freakin work.

I had a buddy's external here that had both esata and usb 2. The esata link is noticeably faster. Not sure of the numbers...but it was a fairly hectic difference.

I'd stay away from USB for this. Also, some of the drives shut down after x minutes. Fairly annoying on my FreeAgent. It can be disabled though somehow....

I reckon your best bet is an internal sata or an esata drive (Almost no difference between the two...I think only the shielding is different).

Interesting, I'm able to get my drive to basically top out via USB. Didn't really notice a difference when using eSATA to be honest.

But I do agree with what you say, I have seen a few devices that connect via USB perform abysmally, but perform better via FireWire. Maybe resource allocation plays a role here...

 

[HavocXphere]

Interesting, I'm able to get my drive to basically top out via USB. Didn't really notice a difference when using eSATA to be honest.

I suspect it depends heavily on the mobo's usb implementation.

Also depends on the specific usb port you pick...best to look at the device manager to figure out which ones are sharing resources with other heavy hardware and which aren't.

 

[The_Techie]

Maybe resource allocation plays a role here...

I suspect it depends heavily on the mobo's usb implementation.

Also depends on the specific usb port you pick...best to look at the device manager to figure out which ones are sharing resources with other heavy hardware and which aren't.

My suspicions exactly

 

[HavocXphere]

My suspicions exactly

/facepalm

I guess I should pay better attention. soz

 

[Asha'man X]

USB has a theoretical high speed, but with protocol overheads it performs pretty poorly compared to Firewire 800 or eSATA. I've seen this myself many times. It's a pity, since eSATA is not well and properly implemented by mobo makers, or it could have made things easier for transferring large amounts of data.

When it comes to amateur studio recordings, the average hard drive is fine. Rather spend it on quality components and silence enhancing parts.

 

[Threepwood]

This is far from amateur, it's on a tight budget but my mate knows his stuff.

He did some kind of internship thing at a recording studio, and worked at SABC studios for quite a while. He's recorded Lucky Dube and Hugh Masikela.

It's a DIY sound-proofed room (layered, styrofoam and some kind of fluffy foam stuff, it works very well for what it is), the real stuff costs big money.

They've spent most of their budget just on a drum kit mic kit, condensor mic and the sound card, just using his existing PC. Doesn't sound like a lot but that all probably racked up ~20k excluding PC.

BTW we got him Seagate 32gb cache internal SATAII drive.

Anyone want to do some recording?