New user here, well when Christmas Day comes! My question is what is the best way to set up Cubase Pro 11 Education on HDD. I have a 500gb SSD with Windows and Office On with about 350gb free. Do I need more space than that and if so what would you recommend and also if someone could talk me throught the best way to install it? Getting an additional HDD and wondered if you put the main program on the SSD and other bits on different drives, if that makes sense. Running Windows 10.
Thank you!
I think you’ll be fine to start out. The whole installation including all the content that’s included (if you download all of it) is maybe 30 gb.
Have you looked at the Cubase section in the Steinberg Download Assistant yet?
Hi, thanks for the quick reply.
No I haven’t installed anything yet as it’s a present. At the moment I may have Cubase Pro 11 Education or 10.5. Complicated but another member has helped me out tonight with that.
I have just been reading about activation as I don’t want to mess that up.
Do you have to use your education email to register? Just thinking about when no longer a student and I lose the edu email account.
Thank you!
We can talk about storage here, for the activation stuff continue talking about that in your other thread since @Dr.Strangelove is helping you .
Maybe have a look at this too so you can get familiar with the new forum: https://forums.steinberg.net/faq
Thanks Steve! In terms of a HDD what sort of size would you recommend for projects?
This depends somewhat on what type of projects you’ll be producing. If they’re mainly MIDI/virtual instrument ones you’ll need a lot less pace than if you’re recording lots of tracks of real audio (with perhaps many takes?).
I’m a hybrid user with drums, keys and strings usually from virtual instruments and vocals, guitars, bass, misc percussion as real audio. I have a 500Gb SSD for my “live” projects (ie: those I’m still working on…~20 usually) and various other drives for storing completed projects.
Don’t worry about it being an edu version. Just use your permanent email address. If you upgrade your 11 edu later to 11.5 or 12 it will be a full non edu version after that.
If it were me, I’d get a 1tb ssd drive, Considering the cost, I would not bother with a comparatively slower hdd.
It’s not easy to estimate how much space another person would need- it varies according to whether you’ll be using video which has large file sizes, how big your projects will be, how large your sound libraries will be, etc.
Hi, we will be using a combination of midi and live music and other software as well. Not really up to speed with additional software like Halion etc so there will be quite a lot of playing around with things. A 500gb SSD is what I have, albeit with Windows and Office on, and I read about users storing other parts on other HDD. I want to make sure I have enough space so that there are no reinstallation issues if that makes sense, and also future proof as much as possible.
Thank you for the help!
Hi Steve, apologies as I am a complete newbie, we will be producing and writing our own songs using both live and virtual instruments, plus I have some orchestral compositions. Let’s say I compose a song with a standard set up of drums, bass, electric and rhythm guitar, and keys, can you give me an approximate idea of the size of the file? I honestly have no idea about this.
Many thanks,
My songs with a similar instrumental line up average between 2-3Gb. These are 32bit floating point 48KHz recordings. Higher sample rates will require more space.
I agree with @steve that a 1TB SSD would be the way to go.
It’s not as important as it once was to have your recordings on a separate disk and you could just use the existing drive in your computer for a while but at some point you would run out of space.
Why not use what you have then add a new one when you need the extra space?
It’s simple to move projects about.
Truly the best way to go- avoid buying stuff you don’t need yet. Especially if you’re using VST instruments as opposed to actual audio, a project like @planarchist is talking about is audio files- the same instrumentation using VST instruments might only come to 50 mB. Maybe less.
Here’s a basic rule of thumb: One minute of 16 bit stereo audio at a sample rate of 44,100 samples per second uses 10 megabytes of disk space.
Great thank you very much!
Thank you again!
That is really helpful, thank you so much!
Good advice in here to start with what you have.
My simple approach, a probably common one, is:
If C: is an SSD or M.2-Sata (something quick) of appropriate size (500 GB or more), it shouldn’t be a problem to have samples & instrument content there (also depends on your VSTi, some have a huge library).
For projects, I’m using 7200 rpm HDDs, fast enough to run hundreds of audio tracks @ 44.1/24 bit (I hardly go above that). If SSDs were even cheaper, I’d replace the HDDs but it’s not necessary for working smooth.
My current configuration is…
The second M.2 is just luxury I bought when I saw, those things were cheap and my mobo offered another socket for it. Since I have it, there hasn’t been any sort of performance boost, it’s just nice to have.
The internal backup HDD is also just luxury. I enjoy the speed of copying files with all discs inside the computer vs. just backing up to external drives, which takes a while longer. But we’re not talking about hours here.
So, to have it all nicely organized, an SSD as system/samples plus a HDD for projects plus an external backup drive looks like a straightforward config.
Thanks, I have a 500gb HDD and have just downloaded Cubase 11 onto it. Also an external 1 TB drive for the sounds, at some point I will get another HDD for projects. I also use 7200 spin speed. Thanks again!