[PlanetCCRMA] New dual-boot DAW, what configuration with SATA, IDE?

[Matthew Barber]

->My question is regarding partitioning/setup of the OS on the hard
drives
I have.  Originally I was thinking about using the SATA drive as my data
drive for both Windows and Linux (one big FAT32 partition?) so I could
record in Linux and then pull up my recordings in Windows, etc.  What
would the best setup be?  <-


I've found FAT32 to be rather clunky under linux (and for that matter,
under windows) - its biggest limitation is that you can't store anything
larger than 2GB, so if you're temporarily storing DVD images, or a long
6-channel 96kHz/24-bit soundfile, you might have trouble.  If you're
doing lots of disk streaming in realtime, you might not want to use
it...  ext3 works OK, or you could try xfs, jfs, reiser4, etc...
something that works well with large files.  You could then have a
smaller FAT32 partition as a transfer station between the two OS's's (of
course, you have to wait a little longer to copy files from one
partition to another).  If you're having trouble with putting both
windows and linux on one disk, then you might consider using the SATA as
the data drive for whichever OS you need to be the most robust in real
time (sounds like Windows, if it's gonna be used for live performance).
It might be worth it (if you have time) to experiment with different
filesystems under linux: format your sound partition in whichever
filesystem you want to try.  Dump a bunch of soundfiles into it, and
then see how many you can stream at once before you get dropouts.  I
think probably the physical specs of the drive will ultimately be more
important than the filesystem, but every bit of efficiency helps.

Matt