ATA100 necessary for Program HD?

[gabriels]

Does Gigastudio run entirely from RAM once it\'s loaded? If so, is there any reason other than loading time, to use an ATA100 hard drive for Gigastudio.exe.? Samples would be on a fast drive.
Gabriel

[JonFairhurst]

Having Giga and the OS on a slower drive is no problem - if you have enough RAM. The slower drive will slow boot and startup times, but should operate just fine.

[Bill]

But no, Gigastudio doesn\'t run entirely from RAM once it\'s loaded. Only the beggining of each sample.

[csduke]

Originally posted by gabriels:
Does Gigastudio run entirely from RAM once it\'s loaded? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">As far as I can tell, the GigaStudio application, when launched, resides entirely in RAM. It is only the samples streaming into RAM that causes disk accesses. So you are correct.

From everything I have seen though (test data), HDs do not use the full bandwidth of ATA 100 or even ATA 66 let alone the new serial ATA. Strange but true.

[JonFairhurst]

\"From everything I have seen though (test data), HDs do not use the full bandwidth of ATA 100 or even ATA 66 let alone the new serial ATA. Strange but true.\"

Confirmed. However, different connections have different processor overhead and such that do affect throughput, at least somewhat. For instance, I read one test that showed a Firewire drive to have superior performance compared to a similar ATA100 drive, due to lower CPU usage. Also, the WD 10,000 rpm Raptor may start to push the Serial ATA-150 spec a bit. Great performance. Loud drive.

[composer22]

I\'d like to understand whether we are talking read or write speeds. I believe the faster transfer rates may be needed in a multiwrite situation, such as an seq/audio app, rather than a R/O streaming situation such as Giga.

if this is the case, then Giga could probably get by with only 1 drive?

[Bill]

With “get by” being the operative words ...

[JonFairhurst]

The problem with a single drive isn\'t the Giga program, it\'s the OS. Windows can access the system drive at the most inopportune moments. You will also want the second drive if you are doing Capture to Wave.