What are the benefits of...

Kokowam · December 04, 2010, 02:18:34 AM

... multiple hard drives ?_?

I want to record while I play games (Fraps), but it drops my FPS like crazy (from 60 to, like, 15). I heard getting a second harddrive would help solve this, y/n? Even if it doesn't (but also if it does), what are the benefits of multiple hard drives? Disadvantages?

Jonesy · December 04, 2010, 02:26:23 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Standard_levels

Good read. Dunno if it would increase your FPS when recording, but I wouldn't imagine so. Roph will probably be able to tell you.

Irock · December 04, 2010, 03:01:12 AM

Yes. When FRAPS records to my internal hard drive, my FPS can be pretty bad, but when it records to my external, it's good.

Irock · December 04, 2010, 03:07:51 AM

The benefits of a second hard drive would be more storage space, being able to back up important files in case one fails, and selecting a hard drive for FRAPS that isn't actively being used by the operating system and game you're playing.

Roph · December 04, 2010, 11:55:17 AM

Fraps files are HUGE, and if you fraps even a little, you'll be constantly saving / deleting huge files, which will fragment the shit out of your drive.

I only save fraps videos to my second hard drive for this reason.

Also your FPS will drop anyway, since capturing and lightly compressing every frame takes significant resources, especially at higher resolutions.

Kokowam · December 04, 2010, 06:59:40 PM

Oh crap that reminds me: I need to defragment my harddrive.

So, second hard drive for this purpose sounds good?

And does my computer have to have RAID? From what I can read, it seems like using RAID makes the harddrives interdependent which I'm not sure if that's exactly what I'm trying to do since I want to dedicate all the recording to one harddrive rather than make them work together. Does that even make sense ?_?

And does RAID require a reformat of my drives?

And yeah, I don't have any experience with multiple hard drives considering I just recently built my own computer so... yehh....

And yeah, higher resolutions. >_> At 1920x1200, FRAPS takes a lot. But even at the lower resolutions, too :\

Irock · December 04, 2010, 07:36:39 PM

You don't want to set up a RAID array for your purpose. Just buy a hard drive, set it up and set it to the recording location for fraps and you're good to go.

Moss. · December 08, 2010, 01:38:30 AM

When recording audio for a session, we never record to the C drive. Why? In short, because that's where the OS is. It's a resource thing.

So yeah, what Irock said.

That being said, you don't really need a second hard drive unless you're doing intensive stuff like recording raw audio and video, because those things take up a lot of space and resources.

Another example: our school has some gigantic VST sound libraries (if you don't know what those are, they're essentially soundfonts, just bigger, better, and ... BIGGER). These things can be over 100 Gigs total, 100 Gigs of samples of violins playing each individual 7 different ways. Anyway, we keep these either on a second hard drive, or an external hard drive. The reason is very similar to the situation above; loading and playing these sound libraries takes a lot of resources, and if you're loading them from the same place your OS and all your audio programs are, that means there's less "computing power" (so to speak) to devote to playing those gigantic samples. So in this case, using a second drive is highly recommended.

I'm not 100% sure, any maybe Roph knows exactly why, but I assume it's because the disc's laser is going back and forth reading information specific to the OS, the audio program, AND the samples. If it's on two separate discs, the workload is lessened, and information is read faster.

Kokowam · December 08, 2010, 03:11:19 AM

asdf now I wish I had the second hard drive before so all my games could be installed onto the non-C drive and put all my other programs on the regular C drive D8

Oh well~ Hopefully, I'll be getting a new hard drive early next year P:

Thanks for all the information/help! !_!

Kokowam · January 02, 2011, 12:57:16 AM

Bump: Would things still be good if I put all my games on the new harddrive while keeping Fraps on my old one? I feel like having a harddrive just for the games would make the performance for it better and not get affected by Alt-tabbing or whatnot? Just a question.

Kokowam · January 04, 2011, 02:21:34 AM

Buuuuuuuuuuuump ;-; Would you guys recommend having my games run from my new hard drive and use FRAPS on my old one or run games from the same hard drive the OS is on and FRAPS on the new one? I kind of want to know which the better choice would be so I know how big of a hard drive to get...

Roph · January 04, 2011, 04:45:42 AM

Mostly irrelevant nowadays. Any modern hard drive will give you over 100MB/s.

Kokowam · January 04, 2011, 05:16:49 AM

Alright, thanks, Rophhh

Kokowam · January 06, 2011, 10:19:02 PM

Okay, bump; I received the harddrive, but I didn't expect no cables to come with it. ._. And there are no more SATA cables that came with everything when I got my first computer parts. So, I'm looking around, and I was just wondering if this was a two-in-one kind of thing and would suit my purposes:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812226004

I'm thinking a "yes," but I want to know for sure before I order it.