Old system with just 2 Drives: Am I making best use of these limited resources?

[BothHands]

I built a good Windows 7 system back in 2012 for PreSonus Studio One Pro, but have hardly ever used it. Tempus fugit. Now it's a "time capsule" but still runs Studio One Pro 4. I hope to use this PC for Studio One 6 Pro—nothing too rigorous—and for some basic video editing.

It has a 500GB SATA SSD System drive, and the original 1TB HDD Data drive will soon to be replaced by a 1TB SATA SSD. I know it would be better to have more and/or larger drives (a whole new system, really) but there's no budget for it.

I'm uninstalling everything but the OS, and starting over. The configuration below is what I think makes sense based on what I read online. Maybe, or maybe not...and I have no idea where to locate a SCRATCH DISK (if I even need one). I would really appreciate your advice before I rebuild this whole system. Can I do better than what's outlined below?

500GB SYSTEM DRIVE
Partition C: Windows10, software apps, VST plugins
Partition E: general User data

1TB DATA DRIVE
Partition F: sample libraries, virtual instruments
Partition G: Studio One song folders
Partition H: video production folders

Click to read more...

 

[José Herring]

What are the specs of your machine?

These days with SATA drives and NVME I don't even bother with partitions for storage. In the old days I had a partitions for different OS on my HD so I could dual boot but then after 10 years of never booting into the old OS I just gave up the idea all together. I'm not sure partitions will do any better than just having a separate folder for each and the subfolders as needed.

Unless you just want to partition for organization sake (which is a valid use of partitions) I don't think you'll see any real performance or optimization benefits.

What you may run into which is what I ran into is that some of the music programs run AVX. I'd probably still be using my old machine in some capacity but around 2021 or so I had to build two new machines because some of the music programs I was running like Massive X needed AVX support.

 

[MartinH.]

I built a good Windows 7 system back in 2012 for PreSonus Studio One Pro, but have hardly ever used it. Tempus fugit. Now it's a "time capsule" but still runs Studio One Pro 4. I hope to use this PC for Studio One 6 Pro—nothing to rigorous—and for some basic video editing.

It has a 500GB SATA SSD System drive, and the original 1TB HDD Data drive will soon to be replaced by a 1TB SATA SSD. I know it would be better to have more and/or larger drives (a whole new system, really) but there's no budget for it.

I'm uninstalling everything but the OS and starting over. The configuration below is what I think makes sense based on what I read online. Maybe, or maybe not...and I have no idea where to locate a SCRATCH DISK (if I even need one). I would really appreciate your advice before I rebuild this whole system. Can I do better than what's outlined below?

500GB SYSTEM DRIVE
Partition C: Windows10, software apps, VST plugins
Partition E: general User data

1TB DATA DRIVE
Partition F: sample libraries, virtual instruments
Partition G: Studio One song folders
Partition H: video production folders

I advise against creating partitions because you'll have a harder time getting along with your very limited disk space when you partition it up like this. This is total overkill imho. I wouldn't be surprised if it also interferes with SSD wear leveling. Just make a C drive for the 500gb SSD and a D drive for the 1000GB one, use folders for organization. No reason to make a separate partition for a scratch disk either as far as I know. Just assign the drive that still can take more beating in terms of write cycles.

 

[BothHands]

What are the specs of your machine?

These days with SATA drives and NVME I don't even bother with partitions for storage. In the old days I had a partitions for different OS on my HD so I could dual boot but then after 10 years of never booting into the old OS I just gave up the idea all together. I'm not sure partitions will do any better than just having a separate folder for each and the subfolders as needed.

Unless you just want to partition for organization sake (which is a valid use of partitions) I don't think you'll see any real performance or optimization benefits.

What you may run into which is what I ran into is that some of the music programs run AVX. I'd probably still be using my old machine in some capacity but around 2021 or so I had to build two new machines because some of the music programs I was running like Massive X needed AVX support.

Thanks for your detailed reply, José.

This PC involves an AMD Phenom X6 1090T BE (6-core CPU) on a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UDA motherboard. 16GB of whatever the popular RAM choice was back then, and the two drives as mentioned. It's water cooled via an Antec Kuhler H20 620. A formidable system at that time, and still runs silent 12 years later.

I understand completely about developing "all kinds of amazing features and capabilities," only to never use them. Like you, more than once I've "abandoned my darlings" after years of denial, distraction or whatever personal failing causes me to be so wasteful. This entire PC is an example of that, but budget constraints force me to "re-imagine" (ha!) this system now, rather than replace it. I'll seek workarounds for shortcomings, and would feel extremely guilty if I didn't...considering the $ I spent on this system.

Forgot to mention:
I want the partitions to make BACKING UP easier and more logical.

 

[José Herring]

Thanks for your detailed reply, José.

This PC involves an AMD Phenom X6 1090T BE (6-core CPU) on a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UDA motherboard. 16GB of whatever the popular RAM choice was back then, and the two drives as mentioned. It's water cooled via an Antec Kuhler H20 620. A formidable system at that time, and still runs silent 12 years later.

I understand completely about developing "all kinds of amazing features and capabilities," only to never use them. Like you, more than once I've "abandoned my darlings" after years of denial, distraction or whatever personal failing causes me to be so wasteful. This entire PC is an example of that, but budget constraints force me to "re-imagine" (ha!) this system now, rather than replace it. I'll seek workarounds for shortcomings, and would feel extremely guilty if I didn't...considering the $ I spent on this system.

Forgot to mention:
I want the partitions to make BACKING UP easier and more logical.

Makes sense. Just curious though how partitions would help with backing up. Perhaps not having to back up a huge drive all at once?

I am all for keeping your old machine going. You won’t have many problems. I was able to keep my old machine going for years beyond its time by just keeping it simple.

Funny when I finally broke it down and built new machines there were some components that were so dated that I couldn’t even remember what they were called even though I originally built the machine myself. Drives with old connectors I couldn’t even remember.

 

[BothHands]

I advise against creating partitions because you'll have a harder time getting along with your very limited disk space when you partition it up like this. This is total overkill imho. I wouldn't be surprised if it also interferes with SSD wear leveling. Just make a C drive for the 500gb SSD and a D drive for the 1000GB one, use folders for organization. No reason to make a separate partition for a scratch disk either as far as I know. Just assign the drive that still can take more beating in terms of write cycles.

Thank you, Martin, for your helpful reply. I LOVE IT when somebody explains to me why I don't have to do some of the nonsense I think up. =D I've been scraping together my own 'sketchy understanding' of SSDs, so I have a vague idea of what SSD wear leveling is.

I Googled "does partitioning an SSD affect wear leveling" and turned up a link to SuperUser.com that states, "Wear leveling works at the SSD firmware's level; it doesn't care what the file system or partitioning is. Nov 24, 2022" I also found several links saying partitioning does no harm to an SSD. Assuming that's accurate, I say we chalk it up to, "I learn something new every day." =]

My interest in partitioning is based on a recent gut instinct telling me to get serious about backing up. I don't know why that is, but I trust my instincts. I want to CLONE my System partition (or entire System drive) at least once a month. It would be great to have two identical System drives; one as the primary and another as the backup/secondary, to which I could clone the primary. In that case, when the primary system drive crashes, I just swap in the backup/secondary System drive. Five minutes and I'm back in business.

I'll do that eventually, but for now I hope I can clone the System partition to a larger leftover mechanical HDD, and when the primary crashes, clone that System partition back to the repaired-or-replaced primary System drive. In that scenario, I hope it's possible to boot from a USB Win10 PE boot drive, and complete the reverse-cloning process.

On the second drive, the 1TB Data drive, I think you're right and I appreciate the insight. There's no system on that drive, so I don't need to clone/migrate anything from it. I could just have four directories as you suggest: 1) Instruments, 2) Samples, 3) Studio One Songs, 4) Vegas Pro Videos. I could simply COPY each of those folders/directories to a backup drive.

 

[BothHands]

Makes sense. Just curious though how partitions would help with backing up. Perhaps not having to back up a huge drive all at once?

I am all for keeping your old machine going. You won’t have many problems. I was able to keep my old machine going for years beyond its time by just keeping it simple.

Funny when I finally broke it down and built new machines there were some components that were so dated that I couldn’t even remember what they were called even though I originally built the machine myself. Drives with old connectors I couldn’t even remember.

I want to keep the Operating System on a relatively small partition because wrecking-ball Windows Updates and a variety of other factors can take a system down without warning. I want to back the System partition up separately-and-often. If it's small enough, I might be able to keep two or three cloned backups in reserve on a mechanical HDD (one clone operation every couple of weeks).

See MartinH's advice for not partitioning the second Data SSD (1TB). I think that's a great idea.

I appreciate the encouragement for keeping my old system running. And yes, K.I.S.S. is a real advantage.

I absolutely hear you in regard to sifting through these Ultra-tech Components of Yesteryear. =D I too am hard pressed to identify some of what I recently unearthed. Case in point: I was hoping to use the hard drive from a former laptop as a small backup drive, but it wouldn't fit in my USB 3.0 SATA Drive enclosure. It was part of a $2,300 laptop, so it was expensive, but it turns out it's actually IDE (pre-SATA) and holds a whopping 40GB!!!

If I recall, I think I had the option to pay hundreds more for the top-of-the-line version that came with a 60GB, or perhaps 80GB HDD.

Man, tempus sure do fugit!