Advice please on RAM upgrade and additional hard drive

[ChamomileShark]

Hi, I fairly new to using PCs for music so I’d like some basic advice on my plans.

I have a HP pavilion PC running XP Home, 60 Gb, 512 RAM, 2.66GHz. The PC is both for home use, surfing etc and music (as a hobby). I’m running Cubase SX2 plus a bunch of VSTs including the CPU hungry Moog Modular V plus I have some samplers.

Ok, I’m thinking of getting another 512 RAM because sometimes when I’m getting some clicks with several instances of the Moog Modular (yes, I’ve fiddled with the buffer and I’m aware of freezing but that seems to take a bit longer than I would like when I’m in the flow). Opinions..worth getting another 512 RAM?

The second idea is to do with what I’ve read about having an “audio partition” (I assume this means both actual audio and the .cpr files created by Cubase). The problem as presented in magazines I’ve read is that everything slows on a C drive as stuff gets allocated to areas other than the middle of the disk..yes, I do defrag). Now I tried getting a partition on when I had an engineer in to install the system..he totally screwed the machine by changing the default boot up from the recovery drive that HP’s have (and he charged me..and left me to sort!) so I am nervous about trying that again. Plus, guess what, I’m already down to 30GB..and no doubt I will want more space for samples. I’ve noticed that some of my Cubase files are taking a long time to come up..particularly those with several instances of M-tron on them. I’ve had the machine for about a year and want to keep it for at least another 2 years. So it’s been suggested I get an additional hard drive, 120GB, inserted in the machine and put my music files (.cpr and mp3s tc) and the samples there. Will that get around the need for a partition..will it work ok? I’ll be getting a shop to do this.

Final question, and this is probably really stupid..I assume I take out the Cubase dongle..I guess after powering down (?). When do I put the dongle back, before powering up? Are they ok with this?

Sorry for the long post…I’ve spent hours and lots of money on software, I think a bit of time and money on the hardware is needed now!!

Hope someone can help.

[VitaminD]

the extra memory will NOT make your computer run faster.. or at least.. will not aleviate your click and pop issue with the Modular V.

What you need is a faster CPU to resolve this issue as it sounds to me that you are just taxing the processor and memory upgrades only do so much to help.


without being in front of your machine, I really cant tell you about the partitions or at least.. how to set them back to the way they were. However, I'd also check to make sure the hard drive is working at it's fastest speed possible..

Directions to do this are:

Click the Start button then go to Settings and Control Panel. Now we want to double click on System and select the Hardware tab (at the top of this page). Next, select Device Manager in the middle of this new screen and click the plus symbol beside IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and single-right-click on Primary IDE channel we should see a new box popup with Properties at the bottom - left click on that and now we need to go to the Advanced Settings tab at the top. now we are where we need to be! (whew what a ride)

just make sure where it has Device 0 and it's "Current Transfer Mode" it has something in that place such as "Ultra DMA Mode 5" (or mode 4)

if it doesnt, make sure that "DMA if available" is shown and just tell me what mode it has selected in the current transfer mode and we can go from there.

[ChamomileShark]

Hi,Vitamin, thanks for your reply, I've checked and it is Mode 5. I'm now wondering about the RAM, I was thinking of getting Atmosphere and they seem to recommend more RAM.

On the issue of the hard drive for just the cubase files and samples..what do you think? Do I have to do anything with the new drive to get it to work or just dump data files there?

[Lunch Money]

A second hard drive will speed up your system more than the extra RAM will.

If you have 2 IDE channels, you'll want both your hard drives on the same one, rather than sharing one out between the hard drive and your optical drive. If you have more than 2 channels, you'll want each hard drive to have its own.

I wouldn't recommend partitioning, at least not as a performance boost. There ARE some tangible benefits to be had if you follow a very specific partitioning scheme, but they're not all that wortwhile, and with the cost of hard drives (try to find an OEM source) such as they are, you'll be better off going that route.

Greg

[VitaminD]

Hi,Vitamin, thanks for your reply, I've checked and it is Mode 5. I'm now wondering about the RAM, I was thinking of getting Atmosphere and they seem to recommend more RAM.

On the issue of the hard drive for just the cubase files and samples..what do you think? Do I have to do anything with the new drive to get it to work or just dump data files there?

ahh then its going as fast as it will go.. mode 5 is like ata/100

for something like atmosphere (that uses samples), the extra memory might just help quite a bit..

but for something like a software synthesizer; the processor does most of the work in this case..

I have a single 160 GB seagate that I have partitioned into about 6 or 7 different sections.. one of these partitions (D:\) is where I have my music software and samples I have another (I believe it's R:\) that I have for recording and for temp space..

I dont think it does anything to help speed or really harm speed either.. but it a good system, I have found, for keeping things orderly and clean..

it also helps out a load when defragmenting the hard drive..

instead of defragging one 160 gig drive , I can do each one seperately when it needs it.. its really handy.

but back to your questions, the only thing you should need to do is hook the drive into the computer (IDE cable and the power connector) attach some screws to hold itin and then turn on the computer..

though I should point out that all of these drives have either a master or slave setting (on each of the 2 channels) and most hard drives out of the box are set to be the master.. which means ifyou are adding on to your computer, you already have a hard drive in the system as the master. so in short, you will probably have to set the drive to slave (there is a pin on the back of the drive itself - consult the hard drive manual but its REAL easy to set).

of course if you set it on the second channel and dont have anything hooked to it, you can just leave it as master..

or just set the drive to CS (Cable select) and let the computer figure it out..


hope it wasnt too confusing a ride..

[DevonB]

Yes, memory won't help those pops at all.

Cable Select - Only if you have a cable select cable in the first place. He mihgt have it, he might not. Also, setting the drive to cable select will make all your drives disappear if the other drive is left master, and you don't have the cable. This I have confirmed on my own. Just set it to slave and be done with it.

Devon

[ChamomileShark]

Hi, thanks for the replies, I'll print this off and ask the engineer to follow it through!