Partitioning and File System considerations

  • contractcooker
Posted: Fri, 05/01/2009 - 00:00
Hello all, I was wondering what the best way to partition is for an audio/video workstation. Are there any accepted standard partitioning practices? So far I've been making a small swap partition and a / partition but that's it. Is there any performance or stability benefit from further partitioning? Also, what file system is the best for audio/video work. I was reading somewhere that Jack runs better on ext2 and that journaled file systems should be avoided for audio work. Any thoughts on this? What file system is everyone using? tb
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DAW optimization

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Fri, 05/01/2009 - 17:16
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Hi, I'm not sure about your ext2 query but no you don't really want to use fat32. Fragmentation is an issue. You don't have it with ext3. There are other similar issues between a win32 & GNU\Linux Daw optimizations. Editing the registry in win32 I'd set NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate which stopped every file from being dated and stamped (who needs all this background activity when recording a piece). GNU\Linux has similar background activity but some are needed if you say run jobs with cron etc., Take a look at tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback below. Google: tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback Cheers! Dave.

Great Stuff

  • contractcooker
  • 02/23/09
  • Fri, 05/01/2009 - 14:41
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Hey Dave, Thanks for the great comments. I see you used fat32 for your audio workspace. Would this be equivalent to using ext2 with 64studio. Can I actually use fat32 (would I want to?) tb

swappiness

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Fri, 05/01/2009 - 04:47
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I always reduced the pagefile on my win32 DAW. On GNU\Linux we are talking about swappiness, and most distros default vm.swappiness=60 If you have plenty of ram you can improve performance by setting the swappiness. First check your free memory: $ free -m Check your default swappiness setting with: $ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness sudo or as root $ sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf add this line to the end of the file. reducing the size by 50% vm.swappiness=30 Reboot: check it out. then try vm.swappiness=15 Reboot: If you have 1 gig or more of ram. try: vm.swappiness=10 ReBoot: Cheers! Dave.

Partition Research

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Fri, 05/01/2009 - 04:10
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Here is something to research. I've given the example from my old studio workings so we'll have to study how it relates to the GNU\Linux file systems. win32 Daw: Hard Drive Partitioning: e.g. 100GB disk. p1 35GB: Audio (fat32) (C:) Workspace. Outer edge of disk "Fastest". p2 15GB: System (NTFS). (D:) Local Disk p3 50GB: Data (fat32) (E:) Data, Projects audio, samples, loops, studio data, zip-tar, backups. The Audio partition (p1) outer part of hard disk "Fastest part of disk" The Data. partition (p3) inner part of hard disk "Slowest part of disk". p1 Audio was kept empty, you would format this partition before creating your project or copy a project from the p3 Data for editing. Once you had finished recording/editing you would back up the project to cd/dvd then move the project back to p3 Data. Re Format p1 Audio ready for your next session. Fat was used for the Audio partition. It was seen as bad practice to keep large e.g. wav files on the p2 System partition. The blue screen of death always lurked, and large wav files on your system reduced performance. Installing your win-sys on (D: local disk) also improved security. I still do create my Data\BackUp\Storage partition on the inner part of hard disk "Slowest part of disk". 64 studio always gets installed near the Outer edge of disk "Fastest". Also I like to keep my operating system clear of large files if I can. Don't hold me to any of this, it's just some principles I used to work with. Just something to think about. We will have to look a lot more into the GNU\Linux version. Cheers! Dave.