Looking to get the most out of your Pro Tools system? Do your sessions tend to slow down when you get a few tracks in there? Do you get error messages a lot? Here’s a simple tip for you that will help. Buy and use an external hard drive alongside your internal system drive. This can be either firewire or USB 2.0 (depending on what ports your computer has) and can come in any size of course.
How will an external drive help?
Here’s the idea: your main system drive is where your operating system, programs/applications, and plugins are installed. When you record in a Pro Tools session, you are saving the audio onto your hard drive. As you begin laying down more tracks, Pro Tools is trying to not only 
operate the software and plugins off of your system drive, but it’s trying to read from and write audio to the same drive. This tends to bog the drive down causing errors or slow system performance.
The solution is to use a separate hard drive designated as your Audio drive. You install Pro Tools and all your software on your main system drive like normal, but when you create a new session you save it to your external drive. Now when you record audio it will be writing to one drive while your system drive is free to run Pro Tools. It’s a beautiful thing.
Other perks
Not only will having an external drive help system performance, it helps your mobility. If you record on a friend’s system or in another studio you can bring your drive and record the session there while leaving your main computer at home. Then just bring the hard drive back home, hook it up, and Pro Tools will read the session perfectly.
Some Options
Here just a few options for good external drives to look into. At the end of the day all that matters is that it works with your computer and is quiet!
Western Digital 500GB – $89
Lacie 1TB (i.e. 1000GB) – $109
Super portable Western Digital 320GB – $89
Comments
Great article, but you left out one crucial part. Pro Tools functions best with external firewire harddrives. Pref. fw400. None of the hard drives you showed have firewire ports. Firewire is alot better for recording streaming audio since it does not use the system bus. The latter can not be said for usb2. So go Firewire. Digidesign even recommends a firewire over an internal pci drive.
Hi Fridrikur! Great point about Firewire drives. I have used many with great success in my Pro Tools rig. The only reason I didn’t recommend them is because for all intents and purposes USB 2.0 is becoming the future in computer audio for plug and play devices.
Most PCs don’t have firewire ports and just look at Apple’s latest line of Macbooks, dropping the firewire port. Plus you see so many new audio interfaces going the route of USB 2.0, including Digidesign’s newest interface, the Eleven Rack.
So yes, Firewire 400 is a fantastic option if you have it, but USB 2.0 will be just fine. Cheers!
That is simply not true. USB 2.0 is not good enough to handle a large amount of tracks. There will be slow implementation over to USB 3.0. For now Firewire is around, and will be used in the future. Just look at the in house hardware used by Digidesign, Digirack 002,003, Command Console…ALL Firewire.
Now, while there may be USB options, you are giving the actual opposite advice as given by AVID.
I am using a NEW macbook pro and I have a firewire port.
You are just wrong on so many levels…
Please professional or interested professionals who want to record music, do not listen to advice given above.
He only mentions USB drives, which are CLEARLY STated as inadequate for recording, as only a few drives are accepted…
Hi Nate,
First of all I dont only mention USB. If you read my post then you see I mention firewire and USB. Secondly, I have been a Pro Tools user for a decade now, and I try to follow the Digi/Avid guidelines for everything so I can get the best results. Whether it’s a computer or hard drive setup. Firewire has always been the recommended choice for Pro Tools, no denying it.
My point is that just because it’s not officially supported on the Avid site doesn’t mean it’s not a good option. You take a risk when you stray, to be sure, but that’s no reason to try something. I’m actually currently recording to (and have mixed from successfully) a USB 2.0 drive on Pro Tools 10. So yes, it works fine. Also I’m currently mixing on a Mac Mini Server with Lion Server (which isn’t officially supported either) and it works flawlessly.
hi, i’m going to buy a macbook pro, i have a question: i need one port for the external drive and another for my audio interface…. what should i do?? i have checked the adapters but they are all for 34mm express cards, and the sdxc slot is tne macbook pro 13.3″ is 32mm
thanks
I was thinking the same thing about Digidesign recommending the use of firewire and Not usb 2.0 because they say it isn’t compatible. Can anyone clear this up? I am getting error messages and my new computer does not have a firewire port.
When in doubt, try to use what Avid recommends. People however still run into issues with different drives and different ports. Try getting on the duc.avid.com support forum and see what people say.
If you’re on W7 and PT9, DO NOT use a firewire drive…it must be usb2.0
Firewire is still okay for mac…..400 or 800
I’m sorry but this is a joke…Firewire is the only recommended and optimal connection for Protools. Check all their in house hardware. None of it is usb2.0…plus USB 2.0 is much slower than Firewire and for track heavy songs, IT WILL NOT DO.
Do not use a firewire drive with W7 or PT9? Thats a joke, dude please stop giving professional advice when you clearly do not know what you are talking about. I don’t even read this website but to clear up bs that you posted Kevin.
Please do use a firewire drive for W7 and PT9.
A lot of the M-Audio line of interfaces, which are designed for use with Pro-Tools M-Powered, are USB2.0 and they work fine. I think it depends on whether you’re recording at 96kHz, or in HD at 192kHz, for which I think you’d definitely need Firewire.
Also, you are quite wrong about Avid only recommending Firewire drivers. For Pro Tools 9, they quite explicitly state that you should NOT use a Firewire drive with Windows 7, and that USB 2.0 is recommended. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself. http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibility/en380567
You should relax, I use USB and it works fine too, graham gives all kinds of options and people can decide for themselves.
Hey there,
I’ve been using an external hard drive for Pro Tools editing. However I’ve only just realized that when I process a sound in Audiosuite (I’m a sound fx editor so I use audiosuite rather than RTAS) the new sound gets copied onto the HD of my computer.
As you can imagine this gets messy as my main session is on my external and my rendered files are on my local HD
Does anyone know how to change the location settings for rendered Audiosuite sounds?
Thanks
You’ll want to tweak your Disk Allocation setting in the SETUP menu. Make sure it’s all set to the right hard drive.
This is a sort of related question about how when I am using a VST like Structure to, say, import a Sibelius score and use Structure’s orchestration samples. The more banks I use and the more complex the score, the more chance of having buffer overflow issues. Would it be preferable (or even possible) to have the samples Structure uses located on the external drive? Or does it just load the samples as soon as you create each patch, so it’s a non issue? Anyhow, I am experiencing the buffer overflow issue a lot in this type of instance. Maybe I just need to go higher than the 8 GB RAM I have running on my Windows 7 64-bit.
It definitely helps to keep samples on an external drive!
what is wrong with windows 7 and pt9 firewire?
I have pt9 and the mbox 3 pro (requires firewire)
I am investing in a computer to work it all, but I cant afford a mac, and everyone says not to mix W7, PT9 and firewire, but nobody says why.
What happens?
What is so wrong with the combination?
Dakota, I don’t use Windows so I couldn’t tell you. Head over to duc.avid.com for support. Those guys are great!
As you mentioned here most PC’s and Macs don’t have fire wire ports. Next step would be USB. Ive looked at Glyph Externals but they are very pricey. And Ive also heard that they’re made with Seagate drives. Now, that being said. I know RPM Speed has to be 7200. Im fairly new to the world of recording and everything Ive learned so far is from your site and youtube vids. (Thank you btw) So, when looking for External Hard drives for recording is Average Seek Time,Cache Size, and Transfer Rate important to look at?? If so, what is the best specifications to look for??
Thanks in advance. God Bless..
Angel – I try to see what drives Avid recommends for Pro Tools and take it from there. Have had great success with Lacie drives and OWC (www.macsales.com).
If you dont mind me asking, what external drives are you currently using??
I currently use w7 64-bit, PT9, and the profire 2626 which connects via firewire. I started with plenty issues but discovered workarounds that fixed the problems I’d encountered. These fixes included disabling a internal usb root hub that shared the same irq as my firewire audio device and using a standard VGA driver because the newest driver available for my Radeon x1600 will work fine with w7 but isn’t supported which equals less efficiency and compatibility and caused some performance hogging while tracking….but no more firewire issues. A Texas Instruments chipset is also the key. Luckily my motherboard (Intel975xbx2 w/Dual-core 3.2) includes this chipset. Updated hardware drivers are essential, except for the firewire which has to use legacy drivers to work best. If you don’t have on-board firewire then there are PCI firewire cards available with this chipset. I do notice issues with video at times when plug-in drawing is required. Clicking on the plugin again cures and so will a new video card, but I’m cool. Not a huge price to pay to use W7 64-bit and PT9. The only other upgrade I’ll do is bumping my memory from 4gbs to 8gbs. Since the original subject was harddrives, I use a sata 320gb 7200rpm drive for my system and a separate internal 320gb 7200rpm drive for audio. Hope some of this info helps.
Graham,
I’m currently using a MacBook Pro 15″ 2.66GHz INtel Core i7 with 4GB RAM and a LaCie Firewire 800 external harddrive with an Mbox 3 Pro running Pro Tools 9 on OS X 10.6.8
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of erros in Pro Tools regarding buffer size, and also am having some latency problems. I’ve optimized my computer for Pro Tools, adjusted the buffer size up and down, used delay compensation, made tracks and plugins inactive, the works.
I have a few large sample libraries, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra and Omnisphere that are also running off of the same external harddrive, and I’m thinking that may be the problem . Is it inefficient to use the same harddrive for samples that Pro Tools reads and writes audio to? If so, is the solution to get another hard drive, one for samples and one for audio, and daisy chain them? I would like to keep the massive sample libraries off of my internal drive. Thanks!
CP – It sounds like you’ve found your problem. It may just be too much running off the same hard drive. I don’t use huge samples like that so I can’t speak directly to your problem, but it’s worth asking around on the DUC forum at Avid.com
i’m going to buy a macbook pro, i have a question: i need one port for the external drive and another for my audio interface…. what should i do?? how do you connect the external drive and the audio interface?
You can daisy chain hard drives and interfaces over firewire. Done it for years. Or go with a firewire interface and a USB 2.0 hard drive.
My imac only has 1 firewire port which is connected to my M-BOX PRO, however my M-BOX PRO has 2 Firewire ports, can I connect an external drive to my M-BOX PRO and daisy chain them that way?
You sure can. Some interfaces handle daisy chaining like this better than others, but I used to do it with my Digi 002 forever. No issues.
Is USB 2.0 fast enough to handle like 8 channels of audio at the same time? sounds to me that it would be slow but I have never tried it.
USB 2.0 is technically “faster” than firewire 400. Just handles info a bit differently. It should do the trick.
No its not technically faster:
hat with a Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio drive connected to a MacBook Pro, copying a 1GB file took 23 percent less time over FireWire 400 than over USB 2.0, while duplicating that file using FireWire 400 on the WD drive took 10 percent less time than when run over USB 2.0, and that FireWire 800 proved 35-58 percent faster than USB 2.0 in various tests on the MacBook Pro with the My Book Studio. Similar comparative results were noted using a compact Verbatim portable drive with the MacBook Pro.
Nate
Unfortunately your obvious textbook antisocial personality is self-defeating. Graham offers a great amount of helpful insight. His technical “errors” can be quickly and easily corrected, unlike your flawed character. Just exactly what have you contributed to mankind recently?
Keep up the good work, Graham!
@Pro Tools Pro, Thank you for shutting that guy up. Geez! @Nate has a firewire cord up his butt or something.
@Graham is the man…Nuff said. Thank you for all your insight. It has helped me tremendously!
Wait. So if i have a laptop I could record to a usb if my internal harddrive is too slow to handle 8 channels of audio at the same time? If that’s true than I have opend alot of doors right now!
Simon – Most DAWs show better performance when you record to an external drive rather than the internal one.
can you use a western digital tb hdd thats usb3.0 on a g5 to run pro tools sessions on? or do you need firewire for that computer.
I can’t confirm, but I’m pretty sure the G5s don’t run USB 3.0. Firewire is a safe bet.
I know they don’t have 3.0 the hd runs 2.0 on 2.0 computers but has the 3.0 capability. Really what i wanna know is can i use the 2.0 usb on the g5 to run pro tools sessions from the drive. It has a rpm of 7500 I believe. So will it run as smoothly with that as it would with a firewire hd.
The read and write to the drive is what I’m question will the 2.0 write and read the same as the firewire 800 or 400?
Avid doesn’t usually “promote” USB hard drives, but I’m sure you can get better performance from a USB external than running it all on the internal drive. It’s worth hunting around the Avid support forum.
Hello there. How do I need to configure my system?
-imac 2.4 ghz
-PT 8
-I use Komplete sample library
-internal HD and 1tb OWC HD
Whats the best way I should coonfigure my system?
I need help please!
How about usb 3.0
Not sure since I haven’t tried it. I would check the avid forum to see if someone has!
I just bought a Mac Book Pro, PT 10 & an M-box. So, what kind of external hard drive should I get & how much space??? I’ve been reading through & ppl have mentioned USB/Firewire but I need a clear answer for my specific situation. I use Pro-tools to record audio & make instrumentals w/ my Akai MPK 49.
Avid recommends Firewire drives. I’ve used both firewire and USB 2.0 successfully.
Okay thanks, so how much space do you think I need??
Completely up to you and the size of your sessions. Get as much space as you can afford I say.
I am a complete Newbie to Pro Tools. I am using PT9 MP. You are talking about USB 2.0 and Fire wire. Fire wire is great but where does that leave the rest of us, people like me who don’t have over 3 grand to plunk down for a Mac Book Pro? For what I want to do I can go back to Sonar X1 Producer and get quality results and it won’t cost me the farm. I’m not going to be a professional musician, guitarist or any of those things. I play and sing at my church and for my own enjoyment at home.
Hi Daryl. I’m not sure what you are referring to. Right now you can get a brand new MacBook Pro (with Firewire) for $1199. There’s a refurbished one for only $929. I personally only buy refurbished macs all the time. Are you in need of a new computer? Is that why you bring it up?
Nate is right, FireWire is better hands down. USB/USB2.0 transfers data in spurts. FireWire has a constant flow of data transfer. This will cause everything to run a bit smoother. But I will say that I used a USB drive for many yets without a problem. It all depends on the size of your sessions. I notice up to about 30 tracks until I start seeing some lagging. But you also have to take your computer speed into account.
Before you buy an external drive just to make Pro Tools faster, check that it really is the bottleneck of the system – if the CPU load is 100% or you have no memory left and the computer starts using the swap space than it won’t help you at all.
Also, a mobile HDD is good for mobility, but any of these will be slower than an internal SATA drive. An external drive will be enough for streaming the recorded audio but if you actually have a separate physical drive (not a separate partition on the same disk), you can save the system disk bandwith using that as well.
It is also worth mentioning that if you use Kontakt, a big virtual piano or any virtual instrument that uses gigabytes of samles, it is nice to put them on a different physical drive inside the computer (external drives are not so good for this).
Also, would it be better if I installed a separate internal hard drive for recording my audio files on instead of the external?
Graham hopefully you can help me with this. I had previously installed pro tools LE 8 on my comptuer than upgraded to 8.0.5 and it was working beautifully. Recently I had to reinstall everything and now when I go to record more than 1 track at a time it freezes for a few minutes and then starts recording. All the plugins are the same everything. I followed the avid guide to optimize my machine to run pro tools better.
OFF TOPIC:
Graham, I am just passing by and wanted to say I think you are doing a great job. I came across the site actually doing research on some plug-ins for a particular issue on a live track. And as a NARAS member, I can say “Yes I disagree” on some things you endorse, but that is a matter of taste so-to-speak not the techinicals. Thank you for spreading the word. I think this website and similar welldone websites often do a better job than NARAS in helping future engineers.
ON TOPIC:
One may use USB2, USB3, FIREWIRE, SATA PORTS, and THUNDERBIRD with varing degrees of success. I have used all the ports to some degree or another. Currently on this PC Audio Post rig, I am using an SSD for the XP OS(running Tools) and with an HDD for files via a SATA 3.5″ carriage. Keeping in mind I build my own computers. The 3.5″ drive is the project reel. I have recently added a SSD/2.5″ HDD cariage I have not tried as of yet, but thats around the corner. The reason I bring this up is HDD are not the perfect media for working with and archiving audio files. HDD are mechanical and can breakdown. ALWAYS do regular maintenance checks on what ever drives you choose to use, the MTBF for a HDD is finite. Sometimes no matter what port you choose to use, USB or FIREWIRE, when a drive is done, its done. AS a result, the sonic presentation may or may not be as good as it can be, or the drive just starts to fail causing a host of issues.
Lastly, using MACBOOKS and NOTEBOOKS are convient, but no sustitute for a WORKSTATION. I use both and there is no one way of doing anything in recording. Past audio gurus have shown this time after time. The variance in the computer industry makes that even more so. If one way is not working try another way, but keep in mind you need well maintained drives.
Good job Graham.
Thanks for the encouraging words. Glad to have you around!
Ok… at first I read this article and said “Graham drank the wrong koolaid”… I mean… my USB drive -=is=- a WD Scorp 250G 7200RMP Sata drive in a generic USB enclosure, but there’s no way the USB bus would be able to keep up with that kind of demand! At least that’s what I was thinking…
So… here I am on a 3 year old computer… using a Line6 Toneport for a soundcard (USB!) but what do I have to lose, I’ll try it… Um.. wow, it worked! Handles my Sonar X1 projects (I average 10-12 tracks of audio) just fine, and it’s going to save me TONS of effort in transferring between the studio (basement) computer and the mixing (upstairs so my family doesn’t think I abandoned them) computer.
Thanks for this great tip!
I don’t even drink KoolAid
Hi Graham, first off I want to say you are doing a great job with your website and the youtube videos you posted up. I’ve been watching them almost religiously and I could see I’ve improved on my recording skills. My question is about external hard drives and getting the right one that would work with my Pro Tools program. Right now I Pro Tools 8 LE, I know I’m a little behind with Pro Tools, haha, but I’ve looking at the Glyph GT-050Q Single Drive Tabletop Hard Drive and Glyph PortaGig 50 both of which are 500 GB. Would be safe to get an 1TB external hard drive to run with Pro Tools? My computer is a Mac OS X 10.6.8 with 1TB and I’ve had people tell me that running 1TB drives usually cause problems while running Pro Tools. What could you recommend?
Hi Anthony,
So glad you’ve enjoyed the site! I haven’t heard of issues with Pro Tools and 1TB drives, but you could always get a 500mb drive for your main audio drive, and then a second drive for backup now and then. I’ve had great success with drives from OWC (www.macsales.com) and Lacie
Graham,
I own a macbook pro 2.66 ghz, 8 gigs ram, 7200rpm,)…… I noticed on my newest protools session that i’m using as much as 45% on the disk ( IN THE USAGE WINDOW) I just purchased a glyph 1 tb external hard drive, I’m hoping
you can tell me how to optimize this setup with the external hard drive . I should mention i am not very experienced with computers, so if you could spell it out in laymens tems , i would be very grateful
,thank you very much
tom
HI Tom, make sure that you create your new Pro Tools sessions ON THE EXTERNAL DRIVE. That will determine where your audio gets saved. Crucial step.
thanx for your quick response,
so the existing session i am working on (which i mentioned in my previous post) can not be moved over to the external hard drive ….so that my internal hard drive is not working so hard ?
also I checked out some of your video’s ,great stuff !
all the best,
tom
You can “Save as” for the session and move it to the external drive. Yes.
actually it’s : “save as copy” i found out if you just use “Save as ” to the glyph, when I reopen the session i am missing files, also DAE error’s 9060, 9031 come up. doesn’t happen when I save copy, I thought this was worth mentioning ….?
Yep, that’s what I meant. Thanks!
YOUVE BEEN A GREAT HELP GRAHAM,WORKED PERFECT, THANK’S AGAIN………..TOM
You’re welcome!
Hey Graham,
Thanks for this aritcle. Makes a lot of sense. I just bought the WD 2tb Firewire 800 HDD and have a couple of doubts:
1) Should I partition the drive or just use it as is?
2) Since I don’t do a whole lot of audio work, would it be ok to partition and use the second partition for other data storage or a time machine backup?
And before I forget I really need to thank you man. I got started with sound engineering like 3 weeks ago and I’ve learnt most of what I know from your videos. I literally knew nothing about audio production/tracking/mixing/mastering a few weeks ago. Your tutorials are not only informative, but also engaging. They actually inspire me to learn.
In fact I tracked, mixed and kinda mastered my own track just a few days ago.
You can listen to it here http://agletdesignaudio.bandcamp.com/
Would love to get your feedback.
Seriously, thanks a lot!
I honestly have never partitioned a drive so I’m not the guy to ask. Lot’s of info on this over at the Pro Tools support forum (duc.avid.com).
Dude, your track sounds WAY better than my first ever recording. So glad my site has helped!
Thanks a lot man! Luckily my design studio doubles as a fairly decent sounding recording studio.
Graham,
I’ve been pulling my hair out with the whole firewire drive-with Macbookpro issue with protools (I’m using 9), and then I stumbled upon this thread! I’ve not been able to use fire wire drives with my 003 system (it constantly crashes) so I was recording to the system drive. I never thought a usb drive would be fast enough but I’ve been using one all day long now, running many tracks, samplers, etc and no problems. Thank you so much!
Glad it’s working!
I’m so delighted I dropped in to read this today! I’m
unsure if I disagree with any of it actually .
.. effectively said!
I’ll subscribe for your RSS feed and bookmark your site so I could return to read even more. Thank you so much!
First of all I would like to thank you for all of the recording lessons that you provide.
The problem: I connected two different external hard drives to my Mac OS X Ver 10.6.8 and when I pull up a session from pro tools it either gives me buffer size problem or my computer timmer keeps running and the computer locks up. The external hard drive that I AM TRYING TO USE IS A G/DRIVE. I connected by firewire and then USB. It happens no matter what i try to do. When I am playing back a session, I see the light on the hard drive flashing and the session sounds like it’s skipping and then a second later POOF… BUFFER PROBLEM.
When I disconnect it and use the file I saved on the computer hard drive, NO PROBLEMS. I hope I was specific enough. Thank you.
Oh yeah, I’m working in PT 10
Hi graham, i have a imac running OSX mbox pro and protools 8le. I’ve been using ex hard drive via usb as imac only has 1 firewire port, how can i use a firewire harddrive as well as mbox pro which also needs firewire connection . Can you get some kind of splitter box? Thanks for your help Rory
Hi Rory, if your firewire hard drive has two ports on the back (many do) then you can hook up your Mbox to the hard drive and the hard drive to your iMac. Did this for years with my old 002 rack.
Hi, Im thinking , of getting a new IMAC for recording and editing, I have not seen a option for a second drive, and also they do not come out with firewire ports. Ill have to get a thunderbolt to firewire adaptor,
Im hoping that it will not give me any problems connecting an M-audio projectmix I/O, I’m going to be recording 16 tracks simultaneous using ada8000 with projectmix I/O through ADAT.
Will the external hardrive for recording audio via USB run just as well as a second internal hard drive for audio.
External hard drives via USB work fine for audio drives.
I am currently running Pro Tools 10.03 with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and I’m wanting to record to a external usb 2.0 drive I bought. The drive is from a manufacturer called Seagate. However when I setup the drive for recording Pro Tools, Avid pops up a warning that says, “Eleven components in this drive corrupt Pro Tools files. Please remove the eleven components and then re-open Pro Tools.” Any thoughts?
Josh, I have never had that particular warning before but I have had problems with 3 different seagate drives. They seem to die very quickly. We have 6 or 7 at the studio and 3 of them haven’t lasted longer than 3 months. Our G-tech drives are more expensive but they last a long time and are not problematic.
Thanks for your advice Michele,
I had heard about similar issues with Seagate, however I came to realization that drives are drives and are eventually gonna give out. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try since Seagate has warranty and so I could send it back if it died in a month or two. After these I’ve been having though, I think it might be a good idea to get a more reliable audio friendly drive.
Thanks so much for your tip on G-tech drives. I’ll be sure to check them out.
Seagates warrenty is very limited and even though my drives died they would not replace them. I’ve learned that most of the time you get what you pay for and it’s better to get something good the first time. Saves a lot of headaches down the road.
Well thank you very much for your advice. I’ll be looking at G-tech and Glyph drives. You have been most thoughtful in your help. I really appreciate it.
I’m had a lot of luck checking into tower buss mastering. The Adaptec with two FW and three USB ports is still a fast ripper. Notebooks are easy to move but cannot compare to a tower’s performance. As long as an amp, speaker or computer is under 40# I’m O.K. moving them with my dollies and other stuff with wheels.
Anyway, external stuff (even FW) is slow. My Tower System Buss Master works well with the Adaptec Buss Master so throughput is pretty hot (as it should be during boot image disk cloning). We have to get the DAW surface (and/or) Digital Recording console into the computer so FW and/or USB cannot be avoided (for the moment).
I use three different drives, one for the system and app, one for the page file and one to send the work product to. Now If I were a real gearslut I’d add a fourth one with a Bus Mastering RAID card. No problem with WD drives but I’m using spinrite and testdisk along with the other usual suspects.
I believe in Fans (SMART will rat out the temp) and a 2:1 ratio of fans to drives is cool. A laptop/notepad without a cooling pad makes for some hellish heat that cuts CPU performance in half. You guys probably know all this.
I’m struggling to get second drives (for the page files) in the laptops
which should make for some modest performance (along with 2Gb of RAM upgrades).
I picked up a fancy Audio Card which should help the tower and the Laptop with a docking bay and two PCI slots. I’ll check into a new tower once the new FW, USB and PCIe are more common and cheaper with proven Buss Mastering
from the usual suspects (RAID Cards).
Just wanted to drop a note as to what I’ve been considering so that others might benefit as I’ve got a few questions myself that this forum could answer far better than I.
Best Regards
I just recently purchased a Glyph-2 TB 50 hard drive from B&H Photo and I’m trying to pair my Pro tools 7.4 running on a MacBook Pro OS X Version 10.8.2 and this is the message I get when I try and open a file;
“GLYPH-2 TB” cannot be designated as an Audio Record volume because it is not a valid audio volume.
When I go to the WORKSPACE section on Pro tools to change the Audio Volume it won’t allow me to change this portion; that’s when the message appears?
Can someone help me with this issue I’m not sure if its a setup issue or a Hard Drive issue?
Thanks for your help in advance!
Shon
This is a can of worms as there are so many variables.
Erase the drive and reformat (How this is to be done should be in PT docs somewhere).
May be the fault of the formatting mode chosen.
Is Your audio drive is set to “T” (transfer) or “P” (playback) instead of “R”(record).
Journaling can create issues.
Some suggest the (ugly) option of a PT re-install.
I run a macbook pro and use the usb 2.0 connections for my mbox mini, which i use for my pro tools 10. i have never had any connectivity issues. for me the usb 2.0 ports have worked flawlessly. i have never used the firewire port and have had no problems so i dont believe the argument that you HAVE to use firewire has any basis. just saying.
Its all about the clams.
Just got through testing an 8 channel multi-track with 4 clam shell CD players. I plan to work up 16 or 20 channel multi-tracks which would mean 8 or 10 clams respectively.
This is the cheapest fail safe method I could come up with which could very well be mentioned elsewhere.
I’m agnostic about computers and communication protocols but to test this stuff means putting it under a heavy load, hence the clams. Once I’ve got every input channel working its little heart out then its time for a little fun with effects. Usually it does not take long to break something but that tells me I’m (1)doing something incorrectly or (2) have finally exceeded the entire bandwidth of all integrated systems in the aggregate.
Strangely some of the posters here sound like me so the related info is
already here.
Excuse me. New at that port. What does look like? Firewire. Imma check google but just making sure. Gimme some link or photo. Thanks
Hello Graham, I just purchased an iMac which has a 800 Firewire Port, the Digi Design 003 which has a 400 Firewire Prot and Pro Tools 10. Which External Firewire Hard Drive do you recommend? Do I need to get one that has both 400 and 800 ports?
Thank you,
George
Either is fine. You can use a FW 400 to 800 cable to hook it all up if needed. No problem.
Oh cool!, Thanks for your time and help.
George
Hi Graham,
It’s good to see there’s still more and more people getting this information a few years on. You’ve helped many a budding soundie and have been a motivator to myself so I thank you for that.
I have used both Firewire and USB 2.0 external drives with success. Whatever works for you works I guess. I wouldn’t worry too much about what Avid supports guys. There’s way too many pieces of hardware for Avid to fully test out there which is why there are alot of options out there that aren’t “supported” but still work.
Mountain Lion although software, for example, worked without issue well before it was officially supported.
Keep up the good work mate, this months Duelling Mix is a fun one!
Sam from OZ.
Thanks Sam!
^^ Windows 7 – apologies, not Mountain Lion. There was a new update for that.
You know what I mean anyways!
can i use usb 3.0 external hard drive for my pro tools 10.
I’m using a USB 3.0 external with PT9 on a mac book pro retina no problems. Have even used the same external on a PC with USB 2.0 only and has worked flawlessly. My one is a 1TB WD my passport FYI.
I keep getting errors showing up on protools and it’s most likely because im recording onto my macs drive. okay say you have a motu with firewire hooked up to your computer already. where do you plug in this firewire external drive?
Plug into your computers USB port. Or if your MOTU has two FW ports then daisy chain the hard drive.
Hey Graham, love the site, been watching the youtube videos.
Probably a good idea to mention you need to be looking for a drive with at least a 7200 RPM spin rate, even for your internal drives when working with audio.
This is the single most important thing when deciding on your hard drive. Transfer speeds mean nothing if your write speed can’t keep up!
By the way, look for my EP in 6 months! You’ve inspired me.
Also, what band is that Christian Rock band with the female singer? I really like her voice.
Hi Mason,
If you’re referring to one of the songs in my first 5 Minutes video series on YouTube then her name is Annie Lawrence.
Thanks Graham! That was who I was referring to. She really does have a beautiful voice.
would it be better to get a thunderbolt enabled drive or a usb 3.0 since my new mac doesnt have firewire ports ?
Yep. This article is about 3+ years old. Most macs had firewire back then. Go USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt for sure.
I do not buy new computers (OMG !!!). If there exists (or if one could be cobbled together) a compatibility matrix it would be helpful to me. I’ve been burned badly by Avid because of older releases that never worked on platforms they claimed to support (7.4 to 8.4 on XP). I’m impressed with this thread as many appear to be pushing the envelope. So I’m asking, maybe even begging because I’ve got a Music Pastor that wants some tracks and uses pro-tools. I can give him Cubase, Cakewalk, Audacity, etc. but no pro-tool project files. SO I’M *** OFFICIALLY BEGGING ***. If there does not exist an ACCURATE compatibility matrix (as I suspect) then there is an indictment to be had against Avid that no Abbey Road studio rebuild can white wash.
Before all the Avid aficionados get their panties in a knot remember that Avid (reportedly) did not bother to use floating point arithmetic until 10. That basically says it all to any senior engineer with a multi- disciplinary background (hardware, software, solid state physics, etc).
I actually feel like I’m beating a dead horse and would love to be proved wrong.
You could export your session to OMF. Pro Tools should *Theoretically* be able to read the session data.
Alternatively, finalize each track and export each individual track as a WAV file. Then he can load up the WAV files in his preferred DAW.
Open Media Framework would seem to take care of 90% of this issue, THANKS.
W.R.T. to each track the WAV files imported onto the DAW might theoretically be thrown upon the mercy of the platform process and/or thread scheduling of the track tasks running in parallel in the application and the O/S.
Running the test on my machine would be good before sending it out. Having a matrix of PT, HW and SW configurations (and maybe Firm-Ware, bios, etc.) compatibility would still be nice.
Any benchmarking running an increasingly large number of tracks on any given DAW might bump up resource (main memory, page swapping, etc.) in a way that would be hard for me to predict.
I’d like to know about any platforms running RAID configurations. That
might allow an older system a longer life. I’m sorry, this could go on forever. Like which resource (Number of CPUs, Main Memory, Disk Array,
etc.) become a choke point for any given number of tracks.
Don’t mean to be whining, just gotta know in case I become the stuckee in such a scenario. Thanks again and God Bless (Amazing Grace).
Richard
Bouncing each track to a WAV (assuming proper signal flow), would give you your final processed sound per track. All he’d have to do is import the WAV audio. It would work from Any DAW to any DAW. WAV is a standard file type for just about every DAW.
As for RAID settings and what not, can’t help you, although for my quad-core processor with hyperthreading, I set number of cores to 7 (out of
at 95% load. You could do max cores at 85%, or if you’re running an optimized OS, you could get by with max cores at 95%. But unless you’re system is optimized (all unnecessary services turned off), you’ll need a little extra processing power for the OS itself.
so i think ive flooded my macBook with so many audio recorded tracks that now when i push the record button it says ‘no record volumes designate’ how do i make space??? can i delete alot of old tracks that i dont use anymore? PLEASE HELP.
I usually do not leave a comment, however after reading through a few of the comments
here Optimize Pro Tools: Use An External Hard Drive
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