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[MusicEuphony]

Most things I have to say about this have been covered, but one thing you might think about when choosing between Windows XP and 2000 is that Microsoft has pretty much just dropped support for Windows 2000 while XP is still going.  Also, if you ever plan on going the Pro Tools route, it doesn't support win2k to my knowledge.

[Ronny]

Jay Ridgeway wrote on Thu, 07 July 2005 19:34

Go with a reputable DAW builder (search the forums for suggestions) unless you are interested in tinkering with the computer more than writing/recording music. If you are determined to build your own, start saving up... given the inevitable mistake or two, it will cost you more than you expect. Here are my general recommendations: 1) Your hard drives will fail, go with a raid 1 setup, spare drive and tape/dvd storage. Always be backing up! 2) Aim for quiet, not fast. If you prefer to mix in the computer, you can get a ua or tc cards for plugins. Quiet computers are usually quiet because they are operating at lower voltages and therefore require less air flow. The reduced heat will help all the components live longer and be more stable. The mobile Athalons are a good bet in this category. 3) Go with a firewire audio card. They tend to have fewer conflicts with mb bios/chipsets, are slightly more future proof than pci cards, can easily be made part of a mobile rig, are hot swappable and have a better spec than usb for managing bandwidth and "urgent" packets. 4) Your hard drives will fail; see # 1. There's another thread in this board about quiet PCs with some good data on cases, psu, drives and the like.  http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/mv/msg/5880/0/0/7 253/?SQ=ea253d25af91a12175fb541a32319677 Jay

Sounds like you've had a problem with hard drives. I have 30 hd's, in 3 DAW's and 5 HD-R's, the HD-R's have caddies so I can interchange the drives in those. Most are used for multi-track and 2 buss master audio archiving and don't stay permanently hooked up. I have over a terabyte of audio that dates back to tapes from the late 60's to the present, most of them are analog recordings that I transferred to hd's and when I got into mastering to DAT in the early 90's, I accumulated 200 DAT tapes that I transferred to the hd's last year. I have all of the audio doubled on mirror drives just for safety, but I've never had a hard drive fail. Not one that formatted and have been using. I had a brand new Western Digital WD800JB 80 gig that wouldn't format in FDMS3, it was manufactured in Malaysia, I sent it back, the replacement formatted fine and has been working flawlessly since. I have 8 WD800JB's and 2 WD1200JB 120 gig drives, some from Malaysia some from Thailand, they all work fine, just had a problem with that one. The rest of the drives have always worked fine. I've never had a drive in a PC go kaput. Maybe I'm lucky.

[Jay Ridgeway]

Ronny wrote on Fri, 08 July 2005 21:54

Sounds like you've had a problem with hard drives. I have 30 hd's, in 3 DAW's and 5 HD-R's, the HD-R's have caddies so I can interchange the drives in those. Most are used for multi-track and 2 buss master audio archiving and don't stay permanently hooked up. I have over a terabyte of audio that dates back to tapes from the late 60's to the present, most of them are analog recordings that I transferred to hd's and when I got into mastering to DAT in the early 90's, I accumulated 200 DAT tapes that I transferred to the hd's last year. I have all of the audio doubled on mirror drives just for safety, but I've never had a hard drive fail. Not one that formatted and have been using. I had a brand new Western Digital WD800JB 80 gig that wouldn't format in FDMS3, it was manufactured in Malaysia, I sent it back, the replacement formatted fine and has been working flawlessly since. I have 8 WD800JB's and 2 WD1200JB 120 gig drives, some from Malaysia some from Thailand, they all work fine, just had a problem with that one. The rest of the drives have always worked fine. I've never had a drive in a PC go kaput. Maybe I'm lucky.

You are lucky! I have a fail rate of 1 drive every 8-9 weeks across 500+ computers. This means there is roughly a 1% chance of drive failure. I guess thats not a lot... unless you consider the data critical.

Seriously, it sounds like you have a great setup. Mirrored drives are the way to go (if stored in seperate locations once archived; I'm also afraid of fire).

Jay

[Ronny]

I guess I am lucky than. I'm housed in a building that was built in 1943 and am a bit paranoid of fire, too. I rewired the studio with modern 12-2 Romex and beefed up the amperage on the breakers, but the rest of the building is on old circuits with old abestos coated wire that is over 60 years old. I also have a 3rd backup on a lot of my material on DAT's, annie tapes and cd-r's that are stored in a fire proof vault downtown. Can't be too safe.

[Eric Bridenbaker]

I've had a few drives go bye bye. Drives will eventually fail, as they have bearings and mechanical parts. This is a good reason to use optical media, like CD/DVD alongside hard drive archiving.

A year of heavy use, and its time to replace the drive, or at least move it to a less critical role. Back up everything regularly.

Cheers,
EB