I want to kill my computer...

In fact, killing my computer would be too kind. I want it to suffer the way it makes ME SUFFER!!!

I built (first mistake) my own DAW using the following components:
ASUS P5Q Motherboard (incudes SoundMax Audio integrated Digital soundcard)
8 Megs of RAM
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
ATI Radeon HD 3600 Video Card

C Drive: 150 GB Fast Drive (10,000 RPM) WDC WD1500 ADFD-00NLR5

D Drive: 1TB For Programs & Files WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1
Sonar 8.5, etc

E Drive: 1TB VST's ST31000340AS [EWSO Platinum, Play, Silk, Goliath, Fab Four, Choirs, Gypsy, etc)
Plus (4) external hard drives!!!
Windows XP 64bit

Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 I/O (This also constantly drops out or disappears and forces me to use the Soundmax)

It crashes constantly, reboots, Hard drives disappear and I cant even get a simple piano track (using Play, Goliath) without constant audio pops and dropouts.

Mixdowns on Sonar 8.5 are constant causes for entire system shutdown and reboot.

Can I get some help, ideas, an amen or a witness? Or what works best...Sledgehammer or Caliber 50 Machine gun?

Thanks to all

Thank you pair of Chris's!!!! I will follow your advice and will get back to you. I gotta do some studying & research to learn how to partition the drives and set up a RAID array??

Also, BACKUP is key in both of your statements. Makes perfect sense, should have followed that advice.

Guys, seriously, thanks again. You may or may not know how immensely frustrating it is to have an idea & not be able to implement because of faulty equipment (and most of my stuff is sonar & vst's)

Chris Alpiar said:

I use Seagate Barracudas currently. On my mac I have:
Macintosh HD: 250G barracuda 7200
Projects (where I record audio to and where all my DP and cubase projects go): 500G barracuda 7200
Then I have my samples spread out over 10 partitions of 250G each on 2 barracuda drives, 1st one is 1 terabyte, 2nd is 1.5 terabyte

My PCs are similar setup tho no projects disc since the PCs are all slaves

If I had the extra dough I would definitely go with Chris Merritt's setup, the raid array with 10k drives is great! I personally stay away from WD because I have had several of them go south on me over the years, unrecoverable. If you have money to spend and want to really do it right, I would consider checking out an all GLYPH drive system. But 10k rpm and built out in a nice array, and BACKUPS

Since I rarely am changing my sample/VI slaves, I have 2 1Terabyte external e-SATA/USB2 drives that I have all my samples backed up on and then I have a 3rd one that I use for Time Machine on the MAC which I run once a week or so. (do not let time machine or whatever prog you choose to do your backups with run in the background, it will chew the processors up, but make sure you take time to do it manually, at least once a week when you go to bed)

Replies

Albert De La Vega September 10, 2010 at 12:24am

Thank you pair of Chris's!!!! I will follow your advice and will get back to you. I gotta do some studying & research to learn how to partition the drives and set up a RAID array??

Also, BACKUP is key in both of your statements. Makes perfect sense, should have followed that advice.

Guys, seriously, thanks again. You may or may not know how immensely frustrating it is to have an idea & not be able to implement because of faulty equipment (and most of my stuff is sonar & vst's)

Chris Alpiar said:
I use Seagate Barracudas currently. On my mac I have:
Macintosh HD: 250G barracuda 7200
Projects (where I record audio to and where all my DP and cubase projects go): 500G barracuda 7200
Then I have my samples spread out over 10 partitions of 250G each on 2 barracuda drives, 1st one is 1 terabyte, 2nd is 1.5 terabyte

My PCs are similar setup tho no projects disc since the PCs are all slaves

If I had the extra dough I would definitely go with Chris Merritt's setup, the raid array with 10k drives is great! I personally stay away from WD because I have had several of them go south on me over the years, unrecoverable. If you have money to spend and want to really do it right, I would consider checking out an all GLYPH drive system. But 10k rpm and built out in a nice array, and BACKUPS

Since I rarely am changing my sample/VI slaves, I have 2 1Terabyte external e-SATA/USB2 drives that I have all my samples backed up on and then I have a 3rd one that I use for Time Machine on the MAC which I run once a week or so. (do not let time machine or whatever prog you choose to do your backups with run in the background, it will chew the processors up, but make sure you take time to do it manually, at least once a week when you go to bed)
Chris Merritt September 10, 2010 at 5:47pm

Before you worry about a RAID array, just consider a couple of very fast drives with a backup. Maybe Raptors or SSD's with a 1TB drive backing them up.

of 3

This reply was deleted.