Cubase 6.5 (64bit) - Disk Cache Overload

[Steve1977]

Hi,

I'm a newcomer to these forums, but I've been using Cubase for quite a while. I recently upgraded to the full retail Cubase 6.5.

I've got a fairly decent PC ...

Intel i7 920 Processor
Foxconn Flaming Blade Motherboard
8GB RAM DDR3
1 TB 7200 HD (split into partitions)
GTX 295
WINDOWS 7 64 bit

My Audio interface is a Firewire Focusrite Saffire 14 (with latest drivers installed).

Cubase runs perfectly fine, no crashes etc. My CPU meter can handle loads of plug ins, tracks. My only problem is that when I have a project with about 25- 30 tracks of audio the Disk Cache Overload meter starts spiking on playback.
Usually it'll play it fine for about a minute then it'll slowly start to creep up until I get stuttering and dropouts.
I've experimented and if I reduce the tracks to say 20, it'll play fine. 25 and above seems to be it's limit.
Btw these tracks have no plug ins inserted, just plain audio going to a seperate group track.

I've increased the disc preload to 6 seconds and it's still happening. I also increased the buffer on the interface from it's standard 512 to 1024 and although the cashe overload improved a bit, it also made latency unbareable for recording.

So I'm wondering what the solution would be? I've looked at de-fragging the HD, but windows says its 0% fragged.

Would you guys recommend buying an external hard drive? Right now I have one internal HD which is split into two partitions. C:/ houses my programs, windows 7/Cubase etc and D:/ is where I save my cubase sessions and other documents. Could this be causing a problem?

Any advice would be REALLY appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[Split]

Put in another, preferably, Internal drive. Plenty of advice out there on good ones. And then get another external one for backup

[Steve1977]

Put in another, preferably, Internal drive. Plenty of advice out there on good ones. And then get another external one for backup

Thanks for the quick reply Split!

Ok, that sound like a plan. I'll give it a go!

[Steve1977]

I've just ordered a 2 TB internal Hard drive. I'll use this solely for Cubase. Hopefully this will work!

[Grim]

You internal drive should still be able to run 30 tracks of audio...even if it is also the o/s drive.

I would be very wary of an approaching drive failure....back up anything you an't afford to lose.

[Steve1977]

You internal drive should still be able to run 30 tracks of audio...even if it is also the o/s drive.

I would be very wary of an approaching drive failure....back up anything you an't afford to lose.

Thanks for the heads up. I suspected that I 'should' be able to manage 30 tracks of simultanious audio in Cubase using the original HD, but I'll load up the new HD and back up my data and I'll report to see if there's an improvement.

Cheers

Steve

[Conman]

You might have to run defrag on the D Drive after each day of project saves, might help.
If you are using VSTis with large libraries any slowdown due to defrag will affect the streaming from disk and you get the overload.
You could try expanding your disk caches. I'll have to check how that's done because I've forgotten but I also feel that it may have negligible benefits. I'll also have to check whether it's worth doing or even possible on W7. I feel it'd be worth a couple of minutes reasearch on it though.

I'd say get more ram but it looks enough. It might be an idea using the W7 Task Manager to check your drive usage to see if there are any unusual spikes. If you leave the task manager open it will show up at the W7 taskbar bottom right where you can access it while using Cubase.

[Steve1977]

You might have to run defrag on the D Drive after each day of project saves, might help.
If you are using VSTis with large libraries any slowdown due to defrag will affect the streaming from disk and you get the overload.
You could try expanding your disk caches. I'll have to check how that's done because I've forgotten but I also feel that it may have negligible benefits. I'll also have to check whether it's worth doing or even possible on W7. I feel it'd be worth a couple of minutes reasearch on it though.

Thanks Conman. I've been defragging pretty regularly and after the latest cubase disc overload Win7 stated my D:/ drive was 0% fragmented. These latest overloads have been with only 2 plugins in the whole project (2 seperate instances of Cubases Guitar Amp Rack VST).

I've today ordered a new internal hard drive which I'm planning on using as a dedicated Cubase drive. In fact, I've ordered two today, the first was a mistake (it was 2TB, but only 5400 rpm and having read these forums it seems that might be a bad idea), but I've now ordered a new 1TB 7200 rpm HD and I'll sell the 5400 one.

[Conman]

You might have to run defrag on the D Drive after each day of project saves, might help.
If you are using VSTis with large libraries any slowdown due to defrag will affect the streaming from disk and you get the overload.
You could try expanding your disk caches. I'll have to check how that's done because I've forgotten but I also feel that it may have negligible benefits. I'll also have to check whether it's worth doing or even possible on W7. I feel it'd be worth a couple of minutes reasearch on it though.

Thanks Conman. I've been defragging pretty regularly and after the latest cubase disc overload Win7 stated my D:/ drive was 0% fragmented. These latest overloads have been with only 2 plugins in the whole project (2 seperate instances of Cubases Guitar Amp Rack VST).

I've today ordered a new internal hard drive which I'm planning on using as a dedicated Cubase drive. In fact, I've ordered two today, the first was a mistake (it was 2TB, but only 5400 rpm and having read these forums it seems that might be a bad idea), but I've now ordered a new 1TB 7200 rpm HD and I'll sell the 5400 one.

If in the uk under "Distance selling" rules you can return anything within 7 days. You might lose the postage and the refund could take a while.

[Split]

If in the uk under "Distance selling" rules you can return anything within 7 days. You might lose the postage and the refund could take a while.

Buy a hard drive, return a monitor

[Strophoid]

Lol, I thought the same

[Conman]

If in the uk under "Distance selling" rules you can return anything within 7 days. You might lose the postage and the refund could take a while.

Buy a hard drive, return a monitor

Bloody lawyers! Gotta get the wording exactly right!!! Return anything JUST BOUGHT within 7 days.
My guitarist friend loves this, he tries out all the gizmos on the market and all he pays is the postage fees instead of hiring the stuff out for £xxx per day. Drums it's a bit of a heavier deal. I mean, you gotta be real, it does defeat itself if you over use it.

[Split]

Still bad wording

But we get your drift

[Steve1977]

Just an update...

I installed a second internal 1TB hard drive and moved all of my cubase projects to the new drive.
Loaded up the project that had the 30 tracks on that was giving me problems last time and ...no more problems!

So, thanks guys for your advice.