Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro,rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production (
More info?)
In article <e6tac.2122$zh.430@fed1read07>, Smith <J_shmitz@yahoo.coom> wrote:
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>I have a 180GIG SATA drive as a main drive I will be using as a main drive
>for A/V editing.
>Based on some of the things I've read in this group, it's not recommended to
>partition because I will wear the drive down if I'm reading and writing with
>a partition between them.
There's a fallacy in there, or at least a misunderstanding about how the
drives work. A contiguous logical space on an ATA (or SCSI) disk drive
is not likely to be a contiguous physical space anyway.
But that's not the point. I doubt you're going to have an ATA disk
drive long enough to worry about the stepper motor wearing out.
I would advise a small system partition. 8GB I guess, is small for XP.
Next, another small partition with big cluster sizes. Big clusters
reduce number of writes for the same data. Another 8GB in precisely
the same number of clusters for a backup of this one.
Leave the rest of the space unallocated ;-)
Oops, you said A/V, not just audio. The same principles apply, but
obviously you need way more space. So make that 8 gigs for system,
64 GB for data, another 64 for a backup of that data (preferably on
another drive!)
I'd like to know where you got the understanding that the partition
table has any effect on wear and tear of the drive. That might be based
on some reasonable assumption, but it's not something to worry about.
I tend to think in terms of "local storage" and "archival storage".
For local storage, I really don't want to deal with a partition larger
than I can comfortably backup. Right now, that's 8GB. So the first
thing I do with a new disk is to partition it into 8GB chunks. Windows
goes on the first one. The rest are "extended" partitions, System
(NTFS), DataA(NTFS), DataB(NTFS), root(ext3), usr(ext3), var(ext3),
home(ext3)
(obviously I do a dual boot linux/windows setup).
Anyway, I leave the rest unallocated until I need it, which I never do,
thanks to the file server (RAID). I'd rather have a "small", *quiet*,
fast local disk.
However much RAM you have, quadruple it. On my Shuttle XPC (the machine
on my music rig), I can turn *off* the disk drive and the fan, and
record to RAM. (4GB). Yeah, that's risky in case of power failure, but
I like the quiet.
I don't know much about A/V editing, but I do know about disk drives.
I've worked in big datacenters and been responsible for acres of
machines with every kind of disk drive from MFM to fibre channel netapp
filers. It doesn't really make a difference how you use a disk drive,
what kind of data is on it, or how often it's accessed. Some of them
fail after a month in the rack, and some of them will work perfectly
5 years from now, and there's no correlation.
Keep your partitions small (== manageable). Use a nonmagnetic medium
(DVD+/-R?) for long term storage. Remember the maxim "the steady state
of disks is full", and don't try to fight it with bigger drives.
Some of the old school audio folks have commented about the loss of
discipline that came bundled with the unlimited number of tracks in a
DAW. Maybe keep that in mind?