If I was to replace my recording PC...

[Armistice]

I'm thinking that sometime after I finish the new album it'll be time to update the recording computer. My reasoning is that, whilst it's still functioning OK, it is 11 years old and still running Win 7. I have serious reservations about upgrading the OS on it because I just fear that I'll lose access to what is now an extensive archive of recorded material which I can still tinker with as a whole heap of stuff on it possibly won't work properly with Win 10 / 11.

And as I'm doing so much stuff in the box these days, various things I would like to do would require upgrading various software to versions which do not support Win 7. They might still work, they might not - but if it all doesn't work, then none of it works.

So the current machine is a HP Z220 SFF Workstation with Intel Xeon CPU E3-1245 @ 3.40 GHz with 16GB RAM.

It is used only for recording. It has a 1TB standard hard drive and 125 GB SSD. It doesn't have WiFi so I use a dongle. It is never connected to the net apart from upgrading software. What it does have is 10 USB ports, 4 on the front, 6 on the back. 7 of these are permanently in use. It has two graphics cards because that was the way it was done (apparently - although my guiding source, my cousin, might be wrong about that) at the time. It has a CD/DVD drive which gets used for burner CDs when finalising albums and because it's still a useful thing to have for other reasons from time to time.

Just so I can start having a look into it - what sort of specs / inclusions should I be looking from and from where? I am absolutely not going to build myself a PC. I want something off a shelf somewhere...

And I'm used to having all those USB inputs and the DVD drive as well, and working the way I work, but Is that even possible these days?

In terms of USBs, I have two back up drives permanently connected(1,2), a mouse/keyboard wireless dongle(3), wifi dongle(4), MIDI keyboard(5), interface(6), Kemper(7) and pretty much always a thumb drive(8) for transferring stuff around as the PC isn't networked to anything else, and I don't really want it networked to anything else. I do not want to be plugging and unplugging stuff from it at any time.

From what I'm seeing they don't exactly make them with lots of USB ports any more. This may mean I need to use a different back up system and obviously I'm fine with having onboard wifi - it just wasn't an option on the current machine.


Anyway - if anyone can tell me how I achieve this, if indeed, it's possible, that would be awesome.

[CrowsofFritz]

The three biggest things would be to have a good CPU, maybe 32+ GB of RAM, and having an SSD be your MAIN drive and the HDD be the backups.

Those are the things that will see speed increases. If you’re not doing any strong video work, the GPU on the CPU should be enough.

And honestly, 32 GB of RAM may already be overkill if it’s ddr5. The SSD is the most necessary for booting up and applications. And transferring between folders.

If you use a ton of virtual instruments, you may want the extra RAM.

[vomitHatSteve]

You can get a USB expansion device that splits one USB port into several.

I probably wouldn't run the Kemper or interface into that one, but it'd be good for mouse, keyboard, etc.

[Lt. Bob]

you can get USB hubs and powered ones should be able to handle anything as long as it's USB 3.0

And DVD drive/recorders are cheap.

[Armistice]

Thanks for your thoughts @CrowsofFritz, @Lt. Bob and @vomitHatSteve

I've done a bit more digging after coming up blank on the local HP site. I'm well aware of USB expansion hubs and stand alone CD/DVD drives but I was finding it frustrating that there weren't specific machines built for people who deal with creative pursuits - not at HP anyway. Which is interesting because my current computer was specifically built for non-standard tasks. The Xeon chip was developed for those purposes - servers, high performance desktops etc. And so to not find a replacement 10 or so years on is a little annoying, especially when overwhelmingly more people are now working with creative technologies, specifically video, but lots more audio as well. And putting together a machine with things hanging off it is something I'd go a long way to avoid.

So I went googling for what other people do and was reminded of Dell. I've never owned a Dell but they're all assembled from the same componentry I would imagine. Anyway, Dell still do towers with DVD drives and with lots of various USB outputs and with multiple display ports and SD readers AND, as I discovered, inbuilt RAID systems (if you option it).

Alas the configuration doesn't extend to storage / RAM combinations - so if you want a 1TB SSD then you have to have 32GB DDR5 RAM - which as Crows mentions, is probably overkill for audio. But if you only want 16GB of the same RAM then you end up with 500GB SSD, which isn't optimal. Also, when you're doing a 1 TB RAID 1 set up, that's an extra 1TB SSD required (assuming I only do one) and that isn't cheap. But it does solve the continual need to back up issue for me.

Here are the specs.... any further comments on any of this welcomed!

CPU: 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-13700 (30 MB cache, 16 cores, 24 threads, 2.10 GHz to 5.10 GHz Turbo, 65 W)
Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 6300 2GB GDDR6,Full Height,2xDP
Memory: 32 GB: 1 x 32 GB, DDR5
Storage: 1 TB, M.2 2230, PCIe NVMe, SSD, Class 35

Then for ins and outs there is the following descriptions of things on first the front and then the back panel:

1. Power Button - got it
2. Hard-disk drive activity light - got it
3. SD card reader (optional) - might as well for $33
4. Universal Audio Jack - you'd assume this to be stereo, Dell doesn't specify, but not really relevant anyway because #interface

So then the USB section. There's a picture of the front panel so easy to work these out...

5. USB 2.0 - 1
6. USB 2.0 - 2
7. USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 3 (standard USB-A socket)
8. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C - 4 (USB-C yech...)
9. Optical drive (optional) - DVD drive, required

Then we go to the back panel

10. Re-tasking line-out/line-in audio port - say what now?
11. Serial port (optional) - not required
12. 3x DisplayPort 1.4a (each up to 4096 x 2304@60Hz) - oooh, I could have three monitors and pretend to be a day trader!
13. Video port (optional) - not required, but assuming this is some form of additional output section for people who need older school ports like VGA etc.
• HDMI 2.1, up to 4096 x 2160 @60Hz
• DisplayPort 1.4a, up to 5120 x 3200 @60Hz
• VGA, up to 1920 x 1200 @60Hz
• USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt mode, up to 5120 x 3200 @60H

14. USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 5
15. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 6
16. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 7
17. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 8
18. USB 2.0 with Smart Power On - 9 (and I really don't know WTF that means. Also the picture of the back panel indicates there are two of them, not one)
19. RJ-45 Ethernet - got it
20. Four Expansion Card Slots - got it, not required
21. Power Cord Connector - got it
22. Power Supply Diagnostic Light - who knows but whatever
23. Release latch - to get into the box, I imagine
24. Padlock ring - presumably to keep people out of the box
25. Security-cable slot - got it


So pretty sure that would allow me to keep doing things the way I'm doing them with only minor workflow modifications. Its absolutely not a cheap machine but I'm sure there will be sales sometime and I'm not in a hurry, perhaps this becomes the next gen lower spec model, or something.

[rayc]

I just posted and lost it!
I upgraded from W7 to W10 recently on the comp I'm typing on. All went well - cost $120 at a comp store & they updated all drivers.
My current recording comp was based on a box and filled with stuff to my spec at a computer store in Thirroul. Seems they bought the box & motherboard from a major supplier and then added to it as per my directions. It cost about $1200 back about eight years ago.

Retasking is that little section with pink, green etc audio connectors.
USB smart power send power, more than the ordinary USB, to devices...lots of interfaces have dedicated USB power lines now.

I've had some good and then VERY bad experiences with Dell which is why I went to the local store for the build. Check reviews of late to see if they're back in the games.

[Lt. Bob]

Thanks for your thoughts @CrowsofFritz, @Lt. Bob and @vomitHatSteve

I've done a bit more digging after coming up blank on the local HP site. I'm well aware of USB expansion hubs and stand alone CD/DVD drives but I was finding it frustrating that there weren't specific machines built for people who deal with creative pursuits - not at HP anyway. Which is interesting because my current computer was specifically built for non-standard tasks. The Xeon chip was developed for those purposes - servers, high performance desktops etc. And so to not find a replacement 10 or so years on is a little annoying, especially when overwhelmingly more people are now working with creative technologies, specifically video, but lots more audio as well. And putting together a machine with things hanging off it is something I'd go a long way to avoid.

So I went googling for what other people do and was reminded of Dell. I've never owned a Dell but they're all assembled from the same componentry I would imagine. Anyway, Dell still do towers with DVD drives and with lots of various USB outputs and with multiple display ports and SD readers AND, as I discovered, inbuilt RAID systems (if you option it).

Alas the configuration doesn't extend to storage / RAM combinations - so if you want a 1TB SSD then you have to have 32GB DDR5 RAM - which as Crows mentions, is probably overkill for audio. But if you only want 16GB of the same RAM then you end up with 500GB SSD, which isn't optimal. Also, when you're doing a 1 TB RAID 1 set up, that's an extra 1TB SSD required (assuming I only do one) and that isn't cheap. But it does solve the continual need to back up issue for me.

Here are the specs.... any further comments on any of this welcomed!

CPU: 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-13700 (30 MB cache, 16 cores, 24 threads, 2.10 GHz to 5.10 GHz Turbo, 65 W)
Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 6300 2GB GDDR6,Full Height,2xDP
Memory: 32 GB: 1 x 32 GB, DDR5
Storage: 1 TB, M.2 2230, PCIe NVMe, SSD, Class 35

Then for ins and outs there is the following descriptions of things on first the front and then the back panel:

1. Power Button - got it
2. Hard-disk drive activity light - got it
3. SD card reader (optional) - might as well for $33
4. Universal Audio Jack - you'd assume this to be stereo, Dell doesn't specify, but not really relevant anyway because #interface

So then the USB section. There's a picture of the front panel so easy to work these out...

5. USB 2.0 - 1
6. USB 2.0 - 2
7. USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 3 (standard USB-A socket)
8. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C - 4 (USB-C yech...)
9. Optical drive (optional) - DVD drive, required

Then we go to the back panel

10. Re-tasking line-out/line-in audio port - say what now?
11. Serial port (optional) - not required
12. 3x DisplayPort 1.4a (each up to 4096 x 2304@60Hz) - oooh, I could have three monitors and pretend to be a day trader!
13. Video port (optional) - not required, but assuming this is some form of additional output section for people who need older school ports like VGA etc.
• HDMI 2.1, up to 4096 x 2160 @60Hz
• DisplayPort 1.4a, up to 5120 x 3200 @60Hz
• VGA, up to 1920 x 1200 @60Hz
• USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt mode, up to 5120 x 3200 @60H

14. USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 5
15. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 6
16. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 7
17. USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 8
18. USB 2.0 with Smart Power On - 9 (and I really don't know WTF that means. Also the picture of the back panel indicates there are two of them, not one)
19. RJ-45 Ethernet - got it
20. Four Expansion Card Slots - got it, not required
21. Power Cord Connector - got it
22. Power Supply Diagnostic Light - who knows but whatever
23. Release latch - to get into the box, I imagine
24. Padlock ring - presumably to keep people out of the box
25. Security-cable slot - got it


So pretty sure that would allow me to keep doing things the way I'm doing them with only minor workflow modifications. Its absolutely not a cheap machine but I'm sure there will be sales sometime and I'm not in a hurry, perhaps this becomes the next gen lower spec model, or something.

you need Tadpui to weigh in on this so @tadpui

[vomitHatSteve]

Oh! I don't know precisely where you fall on the topic, but HP is one of the companies that BDS calls for a boycott on.

So if you're looking to actively support Gazans, one way to do it is to buy any other brand and post publicly about why.

[Armistice]

I just posted and lost it!
I upgraded from W7 to W10 recently on the comp I'm typing on. All went well - cost $120 at a comp store & they updated all drivers.
My current recording comp was based on a box and filled with stuff to my spec at a computer store in Thirroul. Seems they bought the box & motherboard from a major supplier and then added to it as per my directions. It cost about $1200 back about eight years ago.

Retasking is that little section with pink, green etc audio connectors.
USB smart power send power, more than the ordinary USB, to devices...lots of interfaces have dedicated USB power lines now.

I've had some good and then VERY bad experiences with Dell which is why I went to the local store for the build. Check reviews of late to see if they're back in the games.

I guess a local "build it for me" thing could work too - just not entirely sure where I'd go around here. I got a massive discount on my original machine as my cousin was working for HP at the time - and they do regularly run discounts on some stuff, but probably not anything I'd be buying. Because the first machine has been so successful, I'm drawn to getting another, despite what BDS think of HP, but I just can't see that there is one. Of course, they have a crap sales interface - they needed me to work for them to fix it - so it could be there somewhere.

Honestly, companies who list their rarely purchased products by internal line brand names as the primary sorting mechanism! How the fuck would I know if I want an Envy or a Pavilion? Or something else... Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I'll have another look when I have more patience, this afternoon.

[Armistice]

I'll have another look when I have more patience, this afternoon.

Yeah, nah. Very much impossible to find anything that might be useful because of the site's configuration and the sudden (and retrograde) swing to "all in one" units.

They could not make it harder.

You look at one model and they list only the I/O that's on the front panel. They don't have a picture of the back, then when you go to More specifications you see a bit more detail, but then you have to go to a complete spec to find the actual full picture, which contradicts what is elsewhere on the page.

Unbelievable.

Dell is so much simpler, as a site.

[rayc]

This is the basic box I had mine built from
https://leader-online.com.au/product/vi ... 0-desktop/
I added SDD and other specifics I needed for audio recording
There's a store that does them in Gympie.
Supposedly Australian company
https://leader-online.com.au/

[Tadpui]

12th gen for Intel was a huge leap for them over their previous generations, where they incorporated (er, stole) the Apple silicon idea of having a mixture of "performance" cores and "efficiency" cores. I haven't paid close attention to the 13th gen press, but I do recall hearing that it was a pretty modest performance improvement over 12th gen. You might be able to save a few bucks by going 12th gen. I was seriously impressed by the 12th gen i7 in Bob's machine. It slightly outperformed my aging Ryzen 9 3900X in brute force benchmarks.

The last machine I built was Lt. Bob's, and that was right after DDR5 came along. It was very expensive compared to DDR4 and it didn't come with much of a performance boost at the time. I think it's had time to mature and prices have come down so I'd imagine DDR5 is the way to go at this point.

I wouldn't worry too much about external USB connectivity beyond the handful that you need for mouse, keyboard, interface. Powered USB hubs are pretty cheap and high enough bandwidth to plug a bunch of stuff into without worries about bottlenecking unless you're doing constant backups to multiple external drives. Anything that you can't find integrated nowadays, you can find a cheap and good quality USB version of it. Card readers, CD/DVD drives, WiFi adapters, you name it.

One piece of connectivity that I didn't see mentioned was spare M.2 slots on the motherboard. Instead of a handful of external drives (or in addition to them) you can stick a big ol' NVMe SSD in there for bulk storage. Prices on those things are terrific right now. I just installed a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro in my machine last week for $300. I think that's what I paid for my original 250GB SATA3 SSD 7 years ago.

One thing I'd watch with Dell, HP, and other system integrators is compatibility. They like to sneak in some proprietary stuff that can make upgrading/repairing a real hassle. Their cooling and power supplies tend to leave a lot to be desired and practically beg for upgrading.

Honestly it's almost difficult to piece together a bad PC at this point. Just about everything is awesome, it's hard to go wrong. Modern CPUs, RAM, SSDs, and USB connectivity is all so good and so stable, it's space-age stuff compared to what we were all using several years ago. It's a great time in history to find a PC that'll outlive us all

[rayc]

On the storage issue there's a limited life of memory "cycles" for SSDs. HDD are expected to outlive them even though it's moving parts versus non moving...

The man's a complete droob BUT he does get info across simply enough.

[Tadpui]

On the storage issue there's a limited life of memory "cycles" for SSDs. HDD are expected to outlive them even though it's moving parts versus non moving...

The man's a complete droob BUT he does get info across simply enough.

This isn't really a big concern, IMO. Yes they have a limited life cycle. But to really wear out an SSD in this fashion, you'd have to be writing and overwriting terabytes of data every day for them to fail in an amount of time that would be of concern to us mere mortals. I've got a Samsung QVO which I knew had a kind of crappy life expectancy when I bought it. I've got it backing up hourly with the expectation that eventually I'll kill that thing. Their EVO line is more robust (I've got 2 of those approaching 10 years old...one of which is my system drive right now), and their PRO line has a life cycle such that my couple of them will most likely outlive me. If you're running a data center or something, it's a real concern. But recording 10 or 20 or 100 audio tracks a couple of times per month isn't going to wear them out in any amount of time that would affect our lot.

I did kill one Samsung 960 PRO. But I'm sticking to the story that it was because I forgot to remove the protective sticker thing that covered the soft heat sink pad on the heat sink of my motherboard. I think that turned the heat sink into more of a heat retainer and sent that SSD to an early grave.

[Armistice]

12th gen for Intel was a huge leap for them over their previous generations, where they incorporated (er, stole) the Apple silicon idea of having a mixture of "performance" cores and "efficiency" cores. I haven't paid close attention to the 13th gen press, but I do recall hearing that it was a pretty modest performance improvement over 12th gen. You might be able to save a few bucks by going 12th gen. I was seriously impressed by the 12th gen i7 in Bob's machine. It slightly outperformed my aging Ryzen 9 3900X in brute force benchmarks.

The last machine I built was Lt. Bob's, and that was right after DDR5 came along. It was very expensive compared to DDR4 and it didn't come with much of a performance boost at the time. I think it's had time to mature and prices have come down so I'd imagine DDR5 is the way to go at this point.

I wouldn't worry too much about external USB connectivity beyond the handful that you need for mouse, keyboard, interface. Powered USB hubs are pretty cheap and high enough bandwidth to plug a bunch of stuff into without worries about bottlenecking unless you're doing constant backups to multiple external drives. Anything that you can't find integrated nowadays, you can find a cheap and good quality USB version of it. Card readers, CD/DVD drives, WiFi adapters, you name it.

One piece of connectivity that I didn't see mentioned was spare M.2 slots on the motherboard. Instead of a handful of external drives (or in addition to them) you can stick a big ol' NVMe SSD in there for bulk storage. Prices on those things are terrific right now. I just installed a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro in my machine last week for $300. I think that's what I paid for my original 250GB SATA3 SSD 7 years ago.

One thing I'd watch with Dell, HP, and other system integrators is compatibility. They like to sneak in some proprietary stuff that can make upgrading/repairing a real hassle. Their cooling and power supplies tend to leave a lot to be desired and practically beg for upgrading.

Honestly it's almost difficult to piece together a bad PC at this point. Just about everything is awesome, it's hard to go wrong. Modern CPUs, RAM, SSDs, and USB connectivity is all so good and so stable, it's space-age stuff compared to what we were all using several years ago. It's a great time in history to find a PC that'll outlive us all

Thanks Tad - all good to know. I figure things are overwhelmingly better these days than they were last time - I remember agonising at the time over specs for this now 4 year old laptop before realising it was in every way faster than my recording PC...

So I managed to do this in the configuration section for the particular machine:

Screenshot 2023-11-08 071744.png

So that they'll pre-install RAID 1 for you if you select a matched drive tells me there just has to be that slot on the motherboard. TBH, it was only yesterday I learnt that there was a next gen for SSDs and that they attached to the motherboard via a slot ...

That raises the obvious question - is it worth installing RAID 1 and additional SSD or should I just, as you say, install a big ol' second hard drive and do some partitioning on the main drive for OS vs samples & music software, and leave the audio recording data on the second drive?

The configurator allows for a third drive as well, so clearly you can do all sorts of stuff. I'm aware of RAID as a concept and understand for my purposes that RAID 1 is more useful than RAID 0 so I just have essentially an auto backup going - but then I get scared off by people saying "Yes, but it has to write everything twice and that slows things down" - which I get as well, but would it just really not matter with these new SSDs being as fast as they are?

It's easy enough to copy all the salient files from OS and software to an external drive and only update when you change something, and then just dump your work files onto a second, or indeed, the same external drive - which is sort of what I do now.

What would you do if you were building a new machine right now? I have got nowhere near filling up my 1TB spinny HDD on the existing machine over the course of 4 albums and various assorted projects, including some video, so I'm not sure I need mega storage anyway.

[Armistice]

This is the basic box I had mine built from
https://leader-online.com.au/product/vi ... 0-desktop/
I added SDD and other specifics I needed for audio recording
There's a store that does them in Gympie.
Supposedly Australian company
https://leader-online.com.au/

Thanks ray - I'll have a look into them. I found a company on the northside of Brisbane that appears to do bespoke PCs for all sorts of applications including audio / video and I sent them an email yesterday - it seemed to me these were PCs for video and they just chucked "audio" into the frame because they could, and I told them as much in the email. The lack of I/O information and ability to configure various things was a concern. They'll probably not get back to me as I probably came across as "cranky customer who doesn't understand modern tech" which may well be semi-accurate, but I said I was open to buying from them if they could just explain some stuff to me...

[Tadpui]

Thanks Tad - all good to know. I figure things are overwhelmingly better these days than they were last time - I remember agonising at the time over specs for this now 4 year old laptop before realising it was in every way faster than my recording PC...

So I managed to do this in the configuration section for the particular machine:

...

So that they'll pre-install RAID 1 for you if you select a matched drive tells me there just has to be that slot on the motherboard. TBH, it was only yesterday I learnt that there was a next gen for SSDs and that they attached to the motherboard via a slot ...

That raises the obvious question - is it worth installing RAID 1 and additional SSD or should I just, as you say, install a big ol' second hard drive and do some partitioning on the main drive for OS vs samples & music software, and leave the audio recording data on the second drive?

The configurator allows for a third drive as well, so clearly you can do all sorts of stuff. I'm aware of RAID as a concept and understand for my purposes that RAID 1 is more useful than RAID 0 so I just have essentially an auto backup going - but then I get scared off by people saying "Yes, but it has to write everything twice and that slows things down" - which I get as well, but would it just really not matter with these new SSDs being as fast as they are?

It's easy enough to copy all the salient files from OS and software to an external drive and only update when you change something, and then just dump your work files onto a second, or indeed, the same external drive - which is sort of what I do now.

What would you do if you were building a new machine right now? I have got nowhere near filling up my 1TB spinny HDD on the existing machine over the course of 4 albums and various assorted projects, including some video, so I'm not sure I need mega storage anyway.

Right, RAID 1 is the "mirroring" kind. So it's redundantly writing the same thing to both disks in the array. If one drive fails, you can still survive on the other one until you replace the bad one and rebuild the array. RAID 0 is the "striping" kind where it's writing across both drives as if they were a single drive. But if one drive dies, they're both useless until you reformat the surviving disk to work alone or rebuild a new (empty) array after replacing the dead disk.

RAID 0 is significantly faster than RAID 1 though. Just last week at work, I was testing out a new server and I couldn't figure out why it was taking literally twice as long to complete its work (3 hours instead of 90 minutes). Turns out it was configured as RAID 1 instead of 0. But that was in a scenario where the machine has to read, parse, translate, link, and write hundreds of millions of records to/from files. I don't think the difference would be so pronounced in scenarios that you or I would run into in our daily lives. Even running with one hand tied behind its back, figuratively speaking, an NVMe SSD running in RAID 1 would surpass any requirements for reading and writing many channels of high resolution audio.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with RAID at all in a personal machine. I did it once with 3 1TB spinners in RAID 0 just to see if I could. It worked, it was faster than any one of those drives on their own, and it satisfied a nerdy itch that I can now tell people about on the internet My advice would be to stick with normal disk configurations, just back up your important stuff periodically (and if you know of a good backup utility, let me know. I'm in the market...I'm fed up with the built-in Windows File History junk).

[Armistice]

Right, RAID 1 is the "mirroring" kind. So it's redundantly writing the same thing to both disks in the array. If one drive fails, you can still survive on the other one until you replace the bad one and rebuild the array. RAID 0 is the "striping" kind where it's writing across both drives as if they were a single drive. But if one drive dies, they're both useless until you reformat the surviving disk to work alone or rebuild a new (empty) array after replacing the dead disk.

RAID 0 is significantly faster than RAID 1 though. Just last week at work, I was testing out a new server and I couldn't figure out why it was taking literally twice as long to complete its work (3 hours instead of 90 minutes). Turns out it was configured as RAID 1 instead of 0. But that was in a scenario where the machine has to read, parse, translate, link, and write hundreds of millions of records to/from files. I don't think the difference would be so pronounced in scenarios that you or I would run into in our daily lives. Even running with one hand tied behind its back, figuratively speaking, an NVMe SSD running in RAID 1 would surpass any requirements for reading and writing many channels of high resolution audio.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with RAID at all in a personal machine. I did it once with 3 1TB spinners in RAID 0 just to see if I could. It worked, it was faster than any one of those drives on their own, and it satisfied a nerdy itch that I can now tell people about on the internet My advice would be to stick with normal disk configurations, just back up your important stuff periodically (and if you know of a good backup utility, let me know. I'm in the market...I'm fed up with the built-in Windows File History junk).

Yeah, reading further on the topic I was sort of reaching that conclusion myself. I think my inclination would be to get an additional identical SSD, leave the RAID alone, immediately partitiion the main drive, then put all software and samples on the second partition, then use the second drive for the recordings, then back the whole lot up to an external drive of some sort, sort of like I do now.

I can, apparently, put a third drive into the machine and use that for backing up - problem with that I think is that one of the data risks is theft, so having your backup IN the machine may not be so smart.

I was just playing around with the various configurations and you can essentially get 500GB SSD and i7 and 16 GB DDR5 OR 1 TB SSD and i7 and 32 GB DDR5 OR 1 TB SSD and i9 and 32 GB DDR5 - so you can add all the extra additional SSDs you want, but you can't add RAM. Now I've added RAM to a PC before - not hard, but then you have to deal with whether what they give you as stock is in two slots or one.

I hear you on the back up. I bought something for the current PC a decade ago because the Win version simply disappeared somehow and hasn't reappeared to this day - along with Media Player. So I was religiously using it but eventually it twigged that you needed the software installed on the new drive, assuming a crash, to recover everything and how would you do that anyway, especially if you'd forgotten what it was and where you got it. Then a bit later it became more an issue that if the current PC drive died, then there's no way I'd be tying to replace the drive with a similar one running Win 7 and it'd be time for an upgrade anyway. So these days I just manually copy every folder over that's in any way music related to a badkup external drive, so I could reinstate everything on a more modern machine if I needed to.

Anyway, I have a clearer picture in my head now and I wasn't doing this immediately, so perhaps there'll be another generation of stuff which will reduce the price further in future. And I did want to know what it was going to cost so I could set some pennies aside.

[Armistice]

The man's a complete droob BUT he does get info across simply enough.

Isn't he though? OMG, the haircut alone ....

Interesting info though and I'm about to watch his backup video as well.

[rayc]

Isn't he though? OMG, the haircut alone ....
Interesting info though and I'm about to watch his backup video as well.

VERY good info. The stuff about mini PCs is VERY interesting in terms of what they can actually do in such a small form factor.

I remember doing a back up using software I'd bought..it was quick & effective. I was impressed. The computer I'd been using subsequently died and I replaced it with a better one that came with the next gen of Windows. NATURALLY the software wouldn't restore the image to a different iteration of the O.S. NICE one software. That wasn't in the fine print...it was in the error messages and there was no way around it. Since then I keep three or four restore points as well as backing up each new project to two different external drives.
Palaver or what? The good word is that TAPE back up is the most stable and likely to outlive SSD, DVD & HDD.