laptop duel HD and partitions

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat May 01, 2004 1:21 am

please, any info would help. i just got a toshiba sat. p25 / 507 P4. the internal drive is 60 GB 4800 rpm. i was thinking of getting a 7200 rpm external drive and configering the both as follows:

internal drive: inner 1/2 of drive stripped down XP [for use w/ audio only]
outer 1/2 of drive full XP for web and non-audio software

external drive: Live 3.01/ FL / etc. and audio files

any advice on config. and info on the process would help.
thanx.....cheers!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat May 01, 2004 4:42 pm

sounds good i think,but on how to do that i cannot help u...

i will keep an eye on this thread
coz i am buyingt a lappie as well and that config looks good

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon May 03, 2004 3:26 am

Anonymous wrote:please, any info would help. i just got a toshiba sat. p25 / 507 P4. the internal drive is 60 GB 4800 rpm. i was thinking of getting a 7200 rpm external drive and configering the both as follows:

internal drive: inner 1/2 of drive stripped down XP [for use w/ audio only]
outer 1/2 of drive full XP for web and non-audio software

external drive: Live 3.01/ FL / etc. and audio files

any advice on config. and info on the process would help.
thanx.....cheers!

The inner sectors of the HD for your "music" OS is a good one, as they read faster... However, what's the advantage of having Live and the audio data on the same drive?

I would have thought that you would want as little on the audio and data drive as possible - that is no applications. Once your OS is booted and running, unless you have a small RAM and need a swap file, it seems that the OS won't access the HD often at all if it's "stripped down". No routine virus checks, no updates or scheduled tasks, etc.

So, you'll have an internal drive just sitting there, while the external drive, VERY busy with audio data, also has to deal with your audio apps.

Just my two cents, but I would think that having Live, FL and your apps on the inner sectors of the internal HD (with the "music" OS) would be superior in performance.

Of course, this all conjecture. I don't know for certain.

L8er
Montrealbreaks

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon May 03, 2004 9:08 pm

thanx montreal
that does seem logical. you think i should just use an external for audio files?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon May 03, 2004 9:39 pm

montreal is right--get a fast firewire drive for all of you audio files--7,200 RPM, 8 MB cache, under 9ms seek time. Have all of you audio files and record folders there, have your apps on your internal hard drive. If you get the 7,200 internal all the better. Having your audio apps and audio file on seperate drives is a huge performance boost.. Even if your internal drive is 4,800 (that all I have), it is still better to use two drives

Ryan

TAP1 · Post by **TAP1** » Tue May 04, 2004 10:52 pm

sorry i didnt log in b4.
that sounds really good. I dont have F wire would usb 2 work as good?
p.s. iI'll post how my set up is workin in case anyone here is hookin up a lap.
thanx

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:10 am

TAP1 wrote:sorry i didnt log in b4.
that sounds really good. I dont have F wire would usb 2 work as good?
p.s. iI'll post how my set up is workin in case anyone here is hookin up a lap.
thanx

USB 2.0 should be fine - I don't use it myself, but I hear it's comparably fast as firewire.

To elaborate on what I said before (for readers who may not know - I only found out myself a few months ago), the inner sectors of the HD always read faster than the outer ones - The HD has to spin faster just to get the same relative data transfer on the outside apparently. Simple geometry I suppose. Wow, throughout all of high school, I never suspected Euclid would ever be useful for anything!

Anyways, ya, I think that a particularly nice, clean and bare bones OS won't be using the HD that often, and it would be a good idea to put your apps in the same place to take advantage of the relative inactivity.

Plus, imagine a situation with Live streaming 8 or more seperate audio files and recording two more ones; that's quite a burden on the external HD already without having to worry about loading effects or whatnot.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 05, 2004 1:19 pm

montreal--do you remember where you heard that about the inner sectors of the HD? I was under the opposite impression--because the drive spins at a fixed rate, the outer rings of the harddrive allow more to be read per spin, as their diameter is larger. I was told this by someone, so it could be total bs, but it makes intuitive sense to me.

gaspode · Post by **gaspode** » Wed May 05, 2004 1:53 pm

Personally... I would keep all of your OS/Audio apps on your notebook drive. I have done this myself, because then if I want to work on a project and I don't have a power outlet, I can still work on my notebook.

With your config you *must* be hooked up to power. At that point, why get a laptop? You'd be better suited getting a mini pc and an lcd display and setting up a raid drive.

Just something to think about.

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Wed May 05, 2004 1:56 pm

Anonymous wrote:montreal--do you remember where you heard that about the inner sectors of the HD? I was under the opposite impression--because the drive spins at a fixed rate, the outer rings of the harddrive allow more to be read per spin, as their diameter is larger. I was told this by someone, so it could be total bs, but it makes intuitive sense to me.

I was told that the data is arranged radially, not linearly. Guess we have a real hum dinger of a question here.

My understanding was that a HD had it's data more spaced out at the outside... That is to say, there's X numbers of bytes per rotation, not X numbers of bytes per centimeter of curved track. So, like a dartboard, everything got more spaced the farther from the centre.

BUT, this is what I was told - we're entering the realm of speculation now. I honestly don't have time to research this, but if anybody can come up with a concrete answer, I (and others) would appreiate it.

L8er
Montrealbreaks

gaspode · Post by **gaspode** » Wed May 05, 2004 2:08 pm

Montreal...

Most modern hard drivers are much more advanced and confusing than what you explained hehe... I had started to write up an example of how a drive works, but it didn't really make sense to me.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard-disk.htm

This seems to be a bit more informative, and cohesive than what I was coming up with.

Something to keep in mind though, is that most modern hard drives don't even report valid geometry to your computer (ie, how many platters/heads/sectors) that it has. The do all kinds of funky translations to obtain maximum performance in your system.

Anywho... check it out... if I think about it I'll dig up my old computer science books tonight and see if I can find a better example

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Wed May 05, 2004 2:58 pm

gaspode wrote:Montreal...

Most modern hard drivers are much more advanced and confusing than what you explained hehe... I had started to write up an example of how a drive works, but it didn't really make sense to me.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard-disk.htm

This seems to be a bit more informative, and cohesive than what I was coming up with.

Something to keep in mind though, is that most modern hard drives don't even report valid geometry to your computer (ie, how many platters/heads/sectors) that it has. The do all kinds of funky translations to obtain maximum performance in your system.

Anywho... check it out... if I think about it I'll dig up my old computer science books tonight and see if I can find a better example

Thanks for the info!

I have never had a minute's worth of training on computer hardware - it's all self taught, and like most self taught subjects, there's a point where you can have just enough information to be dangerous!

Anyways, page seven on your link seems to support my theory that sectors get longer as you go to the outside of the disk... However exactly what effect this has is the subject of the debate...

L8er
Montrealbreaks

gaspode · Post by **gaspode** » Wed May 05, 2004 5:23 pm

This is where it comes down to data density...

Page 7 shows the sectors are all in length based on the distance from the center of the disk.

I *believe* thinking back that modern drives do not do this. To increase data density (and readability/writability) the drive actually spins slower on the outside of the disk so that it can actually write the data in the same amount of space as the inner track...

IE if you think about the inner track as spinning the fastest and it can read/write reliably in that amount of time over that distance...

then on the outer tracks you can either a)keep the same speed, but the further you are from the center of the disk the less power is focused on any particular section of disk (I hope this makes sense)... think of it this way... if you have six equally spaced dots on a wheel near the center and six equally spaced dots further away on a wheel and spin it very rapidly what you will see is nearer the center the color will look stronger, while on the edges it will become faint... think of it sort of like that, the further you get from the center (maintaining the same rotational speed) the fainter it is and harder for the drive to read.

So this explains why the drive slows down the further it gets from the center. It also means that if the drive slows down, and it reads/writes at the same rate, that the further it gets from the center the more 'dots' it can place on the drive.

Hence, in modern drives... the center spins the fastest, but has the lowest data density. The further you get from the center of the disk, the more data you can store, but you are effectively spinning the disk slower.

This in itself doesn't make the outer track slower, because it is still effectively reading and writing at the same speed as it was at the center. The issue becomes, that since there is now more data on that track, it takes longer for it to spin the disk around to read the data if it misses it.

Now that I have written my mini thesis on hard drives... I only wish I could get a grade on it... hehe.

I hope this helps explain the issue for anyone who actually cares... hehe.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 05, 2004 5:34 pm

gaspode wrote: I hope this helps explain the issue for anyone who actually cares... hehe.

...I care

TAP1 · Post by **TAP1** » Wed May 05, 2004 10:13 pm

WOW!
so in philly public school venacular...should i put OS & audio apps on the inside or outside and which is the first partition (where it writes first)
thanx alot 4 the info

laptop duel HD and partitions

laptop duel HD and partitions

Re: laptop duel HD and partitions

A thought

Heheh...

Re: Heheh...

Well...

Re: Well...