logic problems, disk too slow Options

[gemmar]

Hi,

have a problem concerning disk speed using logic audio 4.7 Platinum. With audio track number 10-15, depending on particular Track, my powerbook (titanium 400) comes up with disk too slow error. Can someone explain this to me, i thought, running 12 little audio tracks of 2 to 8 bars length shouldn't result in any problems (o.k., there are some compressors, reverbs and delays running in parallel, but this shouldn't matter to the harddrive, or what?), anyhow, why is such a small amount of data not kept in the RAM anyway? I just have 256 MB, would it help to put in more to improve the situation, or do i have to play around with some parameters inside Logic, which?

any help appreciated

gma

[Synthetic]

Your track count might not seem like much but... to just a OEM internal hard drive who is running the whole system as well as recording... it may be too much especially if you are in 24bit audio. Try setting your disk cache down 256k in the memory control panel and then check to see if Logic has any preference for hardware buffer which may need an increase in memory. If you do this... it may help you get more tracks running but again... you can't expect too much from a single internal 5400rpm drive. I suggest getting an external firewire drive with at least 7200rpm if you expect to do lots of multi-track recording and mixing with more than 10 tracks. Also... majority of music apps do not load all the audio into RAM because there simply is not enough RAM to do that and run the system and app even if you do have 256mb which is not really a whole lot these days.

The last note... you might also want to use Norton Disk Doctor on your drive then optimize the drive (defrag) which may help also. A heavily fragmented disk drive will cause you problems too.

[gemmar]

thanks synthetic,

today my new external harddrive arrived, it's a maxtor external storage (personal storage 30o0 DV, 60 Gb), it's 7200 rpm and after manufacturers recomendation it should be very fast (i'm always mixed up about the different ways to express speed of harddrives with all that different formats, so i'm not 100% sure). So should i go for putting all the audio data onto this? That 256 Mb is low , i am aware of, so i planned to put in maximum amount, which is 1 Gb, as far as i know (too much, is less enough?)

gma

[Synthetic]

You can never have too much RAM. 1gb might be more than you really need but it also might come in really handy if you like to run lots of apps at once. RAM is at the cheapest cost I have ever seen so if you can afford it... I suggest getting all you can. I am using 320mb on my G3 350mhz and rarely run out of memory and I do lots of graphic work too. I am considering adding another 256mb sometime though.

The maxtor drive may work well enough. Is that a firewire drive or USB? The only concern would be that a USB external drive might not have the transfer rate to keep up with lots of audio tracks. USB is ok for mice and printers but I would never buy a USB drive or CD-ROM etc. Not that they don't work but not fast enough for my taste. When looking at drives... it is confusing when determining the speed. I look for 3 things. 1) RPMs (10,000 best or A/V but 7200 will work well) 2) Tranfer rate (I think anything over 11mb/sec is good) 3) Seek time (less than 9 seconds I think is good). Bigger drives are nice but you must also consider how long the seek time is because some large drives have very long seek times which makes computer slow in finding data on drive. Transfer time is usually related to the connection such as SCSI, USB, Firewire etc. RPMs is how fast that little wheel spins holding all of your data.

You should be able to get more than 20 tracks running in Logic with no problem with an external drive. Hope it works well for you.

[geedoubleyou]

The audio software that I use (Cubase, DP3) recommends a disk cache( memory control panel) setting of 256k or 512K.

The idea being that by caching smaller chunks of data, data will always be available at the processor.

A large disk cache will cause cpu overloads, because the CPU will constanly send out fetch data commands, while waiting for the default OS9 cache of 8Gb to fill up.

Disk to slow errors can also result from a fragmented hard drive.

[Synthetic]

hmm... i think I have heard that advice before geedoub... let me think... oh yeah... it was in my first reply ;-)

[gemmar]

thanks again,

will do what i can afford, the maxtor is firewire, so i hope it will work (i'm going to test it tomorrow, if this really improves the situation, i will tell here).

Before i'm going to defrag my harddrive (norton says it's basically ok, but what means basically?), i have to backup my system first, cause i have concerns, it might not work afterwards. This i never did on a mac before (this is my first mac and i bought it just 3 months, so i'm not very familiar with the system).

gma

[Synthetic]

Well backing up data is always a good idea but I have never had problems with data after using Norton. Did you just run Disk Doctor or did you run Speed Disk (also in Norton) too? Speed Disk will tell you how fragmented your drive is and if it says 'moderate' or 'severe' then you run the optimizing option which will defrag the drive. PC machines also have to be defragged once in a while too if that is what you are used to. The biggest concern with using Norton is make sure it is the newest version that will work with your operating system. Norton 5 or 6 I think is newest and works well with OS9 but not sure if they work with OSX or not.

Your firewire Maxtor drive should work fine. Let us know how it dows. Good luck.

[gemmar]

Hi,

got rid of disk too slow using the maxtor for all audio tracks, the disk i/o value raises nearly to the top level without crashing, before little peaks were able to disrupt the data transfer. I want to run speeddisk (fragmentation is severe), but i do not have the cd from which i have to run it . Just trying to defrag the harddisk while running the normal system did not work properly, cause spedd disk says there is not enough free disk space available (which i think is a bit suspicious, cause i only use 7 of 10 Gb on this disk

[Synthetic]

If you have a burner.... try burning a CD with system software on it and Norton and make sure to make it bootable and then you can use it to boot from and run Norton SpeedDisk. Or if you have a zip... use Iomega sodtware to make a rescue disk with a slim down verision of your current OS on it and then put Norton on that and boot from it. That is how I do mine... from zip.