Additional Hard Drives for Gig files

[Louis]

I currently have two hard drives on my dedicated PC for Giga Studio 160......main system C: drive for Windows 98SE and Giga Studio Software, and D: drive for giga audio files. I am more familiar with Macintosh computers for audio applications and hardware setups. I realize that on a PC you are limited to four IDE devices. Considering I have two hard drives and a CD reader and a CD writer, I have no more room for IDE devices. I was talking with a PC technician the other day, and he told me you can upgrade a PC with an IDE expansion PCI card which will give you more expansion capabilities for more IDE devices. Is this a practical solution in order to add more IDE hard drives in order to have more disk space to store and run gig audio files on a PC running Giga Studio? Also, would a better solution be to ad a SCSI PCI card and go with SCSI hard drives? If so, what SCSI PCI cards are recommended for a PC running Giga Studio? Also, what SCSI hard drives are recommended?

Thanks

[lamoore]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Louis:
I was talking with a PC technician the other day, and he told me you can upgrade a PC with an IDE expansion PCI card which will give you more expansion capabilities for more IDE devices. Is this a practical solution in order to add more IDE hard drives in order to have more disk space to store and run gig audio files on a PC running Giga Studio?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This should work if you have the extra IRQ for this card and only wish to add a few more drives.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Louis continues:
Also, would a better solution be to add a SCSI PCI card and go with SCSI hard drives? If so, what SCSI PCI cards are recommended for a PC running Giga Studio? Also, what SCSI hard drives are recommended?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Adaptec SCSI cards are excellent. If you go Ultra-160 SCSI you\'ll find you can have upwards of 32 hard drives all on one IRQ, better access times (usually under 4 or 5ms), faster rotational speeds up to 15000 rpm, and expensive hard drives <:]

IBM SCSI drives are the most stable. I hear Quantum Atlas drives are excellent. Seagate Baracudas and Cheetahs are pretty good, too.

I have an older Adaptec 2940 SCSI card on my Gigastudio computer which works great along with a 75Gig 10000 rpm Seagate Cheetah data drive.

Good luck with your upgrade.


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Lennie Moore
http://members.loop.com/~lamoore

[cc]

Caveat Emptor: On certain systems, plug-in IDE or SCSI cards may add a lot of drive access latency (around 15-20ms) which just destroys Giga performance from gigs stored on drives connected to those cards.

Suggestion: before you buy, test the card in your computer and measure access times and random read rates with a utility like Sisoft Sandra (download for free). It should be < 9ms or so, otherwise you are in for trouble.

[Doc]

If you are upgrading to a AMD processor motherboard you should check out the new ABIT KT7A-Raid motherboard. It can run 8 IDE devices off the motherboard with no add on card controller.