- May 31, 2016
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Hi
I use my PC for audio production. I'm running Windows 10 on an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD (250GB). My audio application (Ableton Live) and most of my other programs are loaded onto this. My files, including audio files, are on a separate drive - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB (64MB cache). I'm having a hard time working because of audio drop outs. The PC is a couple of years old and this seems to be a problem that's developed over the last 6 months.
If I pull up Windows Task Manager and take a look while the PC is choking on audio, I'll typically see something like this for the Seagate drive: avg response time around 1-2ms, active time around 97% and read speed bouncing around between 5-10 MB/s. So the drive is working hard but delivering very little.
I'm not running into one of those issues where the drive is often working like crazy on trivial tasks in general. This is very specific to times when the drive is asked to deliver lots of audio files. When things are running smoothly, the read speed of the drive never routinely needs to exceed about 20 MB/s in order to keep up.
I'm happy to replace the drive if it's going bad (that seems the be the default answer on most sites) but I'm really interested to know if I'm just asking too much of the drive, whether other hardware issues might be causing it to malfunction (and would therefore likely do the same to a replacement drive), and if what I'm seeing is really that unusual.
This drive isn't heavily fragmented (2% according to Windows) or full (1.12TB used, 1.60TB free). I also have the option of just pre-loading all the audio files into RAM (I'm running 32GB) but most people, including the audio software guys, recommend against this as it can lead to out of memory errors.
I'm happy to provide addition info it it'll be useful.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Dave
I use my PC for audio production. I'm running Windows 10 on an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD (250GB). My audio application (Ableton Live) and most of my other programs are loaded onto this. My files, including audio files, are on a separate drive - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB (64MB cache). I'm having a hard time working because of audio drop outs. The PC is a couple of years old and this seems to be a problem that's developed over the last 6 months.
If I pull up Windows Task Manager and take a look while the PC is choking on audio, I'll typically see something like this for the Seagate drive: avg response time around 1-2ms, active time around 97% and read speed bouncing around between 5-10 MB/s. So the drive is working hard but delivering very little.
I'm not running into one of those issues where the drive is often working like crazy on trivial tasks in general. This is very specific to times when the drive is asked to deliver lots of audio files. When things are running smoothly, the read speed of the drive never routinely needs to exceed about 20 MB/s in order to keep up.
I'm happy to replace the drive if it's going bad (that seems the be the default answer on most sites) but I'm really interested to know if I'm just asking too much of the drive, whether other hardware issues might be causing it to malfunction (and would therefore likely do the same to a replacement drive), and if what I'm seeing is really that unusual.
This drive isn't heavily fragmented (2% according to Windows) or full (1.12TB used, 1.60TB free). I also have the option of just pre-loading all the audio files into RAM (I'm running 32GB) but most people, including the audio software guys, recommend against this as it can lead to out of memory errors.
I'm happy to provide addition info it it'll be useful.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Dave
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