topic Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems? in PCs & Accessories

Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

Raify — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:02:07 GMT

I'm rapidly filling up my music drive (a virtual partitioned drive) and was wondering what the best way of adding more space is.

How could I add another drive, whilst not losing my music? Can the music drive exist over 2 drives?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

kee-lo_ — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:03:44 GMT

Depends

1) Buy a new physical drive
2) Change the partition size with PartitionMagic (I don't recomend it)
3) Use another part of another partition.

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

DJRyu — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:43:32 GMT

yes the same mp3's can exist over different partitions.

Best thig to do is add new hard drive & do what Kee-Lo said

Choose wisly on ur HD size, make sure u choose right one as u dont want to fill it again soon,
250gig are cheap enuff now to think about having one, & if u do fill that, buy another 250gig

I have got 240gig over 5 partitions

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

Raify — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:59:12 GMT

Does that mean I can add another physical drive, and tell sonicstage to store the music there (from that point onwards)?

Will I not end up with music over 2 drives?

I tried transferring music from my old pc to my new vaio, and the stupid sonicstage software wouldn't allow it, so I don't think I can transfer my current music to a new physical drive.

thanks for the replies.

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

DJRyu — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:13:38 GMT

well i dont know about moving sonic stage saved music but im sure u will be able to change storage destination.

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

kee-lo_ — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:17:02 GMT

Use iTunes it's a lot simpler with MP3.

As Ryu said, get a big drive :smileygrin:

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

reaper — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:27:27 GMT

ryu the reason that you are proberly losing performance and needing to restore all the time has to be because of 5 partitions thats nuts mate it lowers performance intensly

thats why it is best to strip your drives (if you have two the same)
it improves on system performance coz there is only one partition

next time you restore your pc why dont you just have two partitions equal amount of mem on each

or just have one big partition as you seem to be restoring every two mounths or so you can do a test on all three and see which one makes your pc run better

regards ben

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

kee-lo_ — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:30:16 GMT

People like to organise their PCs
Keep music on one partition
Photos on another
Movie files on another.... etc

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

DJRyu — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:32:20 GMT

doh!

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

DJRyu — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:49:44 GMT

Noted M8, cheers:smileywink:

i would cause problems tho cos i could'nt sort them any better that they are now, i mean pal...... i got loadsa stuff,

Next Time i do a System Works Check ill tell u how many files i got over 240gig. ( Sure it was 75,000 on last time i looked )

Also having 240 gig availible all the time will strangle my PC anyway wont it?

Also i got a problem with Mp3's on my 200gig, i got thru my collection over time & gradualy i seem to be having corrupt mp3's

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

reaper — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:53:50 GMT

yeah i fully understand that peeps want everything in order and it is nice to have a partition for one entire media substance

but why not get one drive to have the media files ?????

haveing one whole drive for your system and progs
and one whole drive for your other files avi ect ect

i bet that would run better than one drive partitioned five times with every partition full as ryu described

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

reaper — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:59:23 GMT

having 240 gig all the time would strangle your pc ????????

how did you manage to work that one out having it empty would do nothing at all only when it is full is when it starts to strugle and when you have loads of progs loading up at the start or running in the back ground

by the way how much ram have you got ?????

pcs love ram and it isnt very expensive any more you should at least try and get it up to 1 gig if it isnt all ready

regards ben

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

DJRyu — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 18:46:58 GMT

no i never said it was full, i have got a fair wack of stuff but not going out just yet to buy a nuther 200gig!!!

but i hear ya mate if they all on one drive, just folder them up instead of having a partition!

oh, & ive got 1024 mb of Ram

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

vaiodon — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 00:57:09 GMT

I think it's, fundamentally, a good idea to separate your PC's programs , swap & temporary space from storage used for media files, especially, anything used for video/DVD.

I've spent a long time working on UNIX systems and the philosophy of separating programs/swap/temporary/application data is standard practice although drive capacities and virtualisation makes it difficult to hold to an ideal.

Performance is one issue: if you've got more than one physical disk drive available then stripe for performance.

If you're buying new to expand an existing system go for S-ATA drive(s) and a new S-ATA interface card (Adaptec do one for about £50 that'll support mirroring or striping). Mirroring (aka RAID-1) will ensure that you don't lose data in the event of a disk fail and provide a small improvement in read performance while striping (RAID-0) will improve performance but if a disk fails make sure you've got a backup.

It's possible in Windows 2000/XP to concatenate physical drives to create a spanned partition as a new volume or expand an existing partition.

It's not, necessarily, a good idea to allocate drives/partitions exclusively for music/video/photos - I'd recommend single drive allocation (D:, E:, whatever) with a well organised folder hierarchy.

Do realise that if you split a physical drive into more than one partition it isn't going to have any bearing on performance - there's still only one underlying spindle/platter set to read and write data from/to.

Fragmentation is going to become an issue on larger volumes with large audio, photo or video files so defrag regularly.

Re: Add new hard drive - Sonicstage problems?

kee-lo_ — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 13:54:49 GMT

Its very good practice to seperate stuff really. I think leaving it in one big partition is not the best thing to do.