Hard drive for Pro Tools (does size matter?)

[JoeLouis]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some internal (or external) hard drive for work with Pro Tools LE/MBox2 Pro running in a 2.3GHz Dual Mac G5

I'm thinking in a 1 TB or 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda (72k rpm), but I'm afraid that working in a big HD, with a lot of audio files inside, Pro Tools will turn slowly. Am I right? Or HD size doesn't matter.

I'll appreciate your advices. Thanks

[UstadKhanAli]

72k rpm.....wow, now THAT'S some serious speed!!!!!!!

 

I don't know the answer to your question, but I haven't had problems so far with large drives. Internal is likely to be faster.

[weeman]

72k ...u mean 7200rpm x i think raids about 15k but i could be wrong and i dont think protools supports raid. Erm unless ur planning on recording over 48khz i wouldnt consider another drive. Over 48khz i would consider looking into raid or fast sata drives.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Pro Tools doesn't support RAIDs.

 

My largest internal drive is a half TB SATA, and I've had zero problems with it. My next internal will likely be at least 1TB.

 

SATA drives beat IDE drives in terms of data transfer speeds and track counts... if your motherboard supports the use of SATA drives, I'd recommend going with that for your audio drive(s).

 

I use externals a lot, but mostly for backups. If you want to record directly to an external with Pro Tools, it's crucial that the drive you get is A) a firewire drive and B) utilizes an Oxford 911 or 912 chipset. Trying to use an external USB drive for recording / playback is going to be extremely frustrating for you... but they'll work fine for session backups.

[starsnuffer]

Another thing to look for if you're considering externals is the enclosure. Get one WITHOUT a fan. I hate fans. They're noisy. I don't like noise.

 

I purchased a new 1TB external from Fry's the other day. It has FW800, FW400, usb, and eSATA connectivity on it, which is great. It also has the Oxford 912 chipset. I can't recall the brand off the top of my head (the drive inside is a seagate). It was pretty cheap and it didn't have a fan. Works great so far at FW800 with my LE setup on my imac.

 

-W

[JoeLouis]

Thanks you all guys for your advices. I'll get an internal 1.5 TB Seagate.

Just one more question. Is SATA the same that Serial ATA? (just to be sure)

About the speed, when I wrote 72k rpm, I mean that: 72k rpm.............it's a joke (it was a mistake)

[UstadKhanAli]

Yes to your first question.

 

I was just ribbing you about the second thing.

[alcohol]

I'm not an expert on hard drives, but I think having a hard drive without a fan will lead to earlier hard drive failure. A DAW puts a lot a demand on a hard drive and it'll run really hot, it needs a fan.

 

I keep my computer and hard drives in a separate room so I don't hear the fans.

[AluminumNeck]

this is a bit confusing. The DAw shouldn't be supporting riad. Thats the JOB of the Operating system. The DAW uses the Os to run inside the machine. Riad should be totally transparent to Protools if the configuration of the riad is setup properly it should appear as one drive.

 

Unless you are running a sinlge drive with multiple paritions.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

 

just one more thing I see wrong with protools that keeps me away.

 

 

Pro Tools doesn't support RAIDs. My largest internal drive is a half TB SATA, and I've had zero problems with it. My next internal will likely be at least 1TB. SATA drives beat IDE drives in terms of data transfer speeds and track counts... if your motherboard supports the use of SATA drives, I'd recommend going with that for your audio drive(s). I use externals a lot, but mostly for backups. If you want to record directly to an external with Pro Tools, it's crucial that the drive you get is A) a firewire drive and B) utilizes an Oxford 911 or 912 chipset. Trying to use an external USB drive for recording / playback is going to be extremely frustrating for you... but they'll work fine for session backups.

 

[AwayEam]

Thanks you all guys for your advices. I'll get an internal 1.5 TB Seagate. Just one more question. Is SATA the same that Serial ATA? (just to be sure) About the speed, when I wrote 72k rpm, I mean that: 72k rpm.............it's a joke (it was a mistake)

 

HEY BRO

 

Yes, SATA is Serial ATA. Older drives that you hear called "IDE" are regular old ATA (sometimes called Parallel ATA).

 

If you can afford it, I'd recommend going with a 10K RPM Raptor internal as your system/recording drive. They're pretty small so you'll have to get a 1 or 1.5 TB drive for long-term storage, but the speed increases you get are substantial.

 

The 15K RPM drives are not "RAID drives", they are typically SATA drives designed for use in server RAID arrays. Older ones are SCSI.

 

There's no reason Pro Tools wouldn't work on a RAID array (even if it's not officially supported) as any good RAID hardware controller will present the array to the system as a standard NTFS (or whatever format) drive.

 

That doesn't mean it's a good idea to use a RAID array for audio, however. You can get vastly improved read times on one, but the write times generally suffer, so I wouldn't use one for recording.

[samtrips]

I'm pretty confused about the whole external hard drive problem.

 

I've heard people say that you should always record to an external drive when using Pro Tools. Fair enough.

 

I'm running a MacBook Pro, my interface is a Profire 2626, connected by firewire, and at the moment recording to my external Iomega 7200rpm hard drive, which connects via USB. Now I've only got one Firewire port (I think?) so with there being no other option I record to the USB hard drive.

 

Is there something badly wrong with this? I've been recording two practices a week, 8 mic ins at a time, since last August. Hardly had any problems, except when my mate turned the power to the hard disc off by accident the other day. It takes a while for the audio to appear after stopping recording (it shows greyed out and then loads in, not too slowly or anything though)

 

Should I be worried about my setup? Or am I OK because it's only 8 straightforward ins recording at a time? It's all sounded OK to me to be honest, can;t notice any audio glitches or anything, nowehere near as bad as I've seen on other people's systems.

[AwayEam]

 

I've heard people say that you should always record to an external drive when using Pro Tools. Fair enough.

 

 

HEY BRO

 

For real? Who told you that? It sounds like a pretty bad idea. It's likely fine for up to 8 tracks or so, but it's definitely not ideal. It would be especially bad if you have the recording interface and the hard drive on the same bus (USB or FireWire).

 

Are you sure they didn't tell you to record to a separate, internal drive? That's the best way to go. The idea is to avoid having OS swapping or I/O from other processes jam up the writing of the incoming audio streams to disk.

 

Or maybe they meant back up to an external drive? Also an excellent idea.

 

EDIT: I should add, since you have a laptop, another internal drive is probably out of the question. In this case, recording to your system drive is preferable to an external drive (especially USB, which is notoriously bad for sustained data streams)

[alcohol]

I've never had any problems recording and playing back from external hard drives with Pro Tools using firewire up to 64 tracks on two separate Firewire Drives, 48 on a single. Why would an internal drive be better? If my memory is correct Digidesign recommends that you record to a different hard drive than your system hard drive.

[AwayEam]

 

I've never had any problems recording and playing back from external hard drives with Pro Tools using firewire up to 64 tracks on two separate Firewire Drives, 48 on a single. Why would an internal drive be better? If my memory is correct Digidesign recommends that you record to a different hard drive than your system hard drive.

 

 

HEY BRO

 

Yes, as I said in my previous post recording to a different drive from your system drive is absolutely a good idea. Recording to an FireWire drive is not such a good idea.

 

SATA gives up to 375 MB/s, FireWire gives up to 10 MB/s in the best case. The SATA bus is dedicated solely to hard drives whereas the FireWire/USB buses can get jammed up with other peripherals. FireWire will also introduce a bit of extra latency.

 

As you've discovered, all of this may not be a big deal. The bandwidth of FireWire can be big enough, and buffers in the recording interface and system memory pick up a lot of the slack.

 

However, if some rogue process on your computer decides to start looking at your external drive while you're recording, you're in big trouble. Incidentally, this is why it's recommended that you don't use your system drive, but SATA will handle this type of thrashing much better than FireWire or USB.

 

Recording to your system drive and recording to a FireWire drive are both not ideal, but recording to the system drive is the lesser of two evils.

 

EDIT: Corrected SATA/FireWire transfer rates.

[samtrips]

 

If my memory is correct Digidesign recommends that you record to a different hard drive than your system hard drive.

 

 

Yeah, think that is what I had heard recently too. Seeing as I run Pro Tools off my system hard drive, I should avoid recording to there. As far as getting a second INTERNAL drive, I hadn't even realised this is possible to be honest. Although with a Mac laptop it is probably a bit more complicated, not always the most hardware-upgrade friendly platform. Mine is especially delicate as I have lost some screws for it.

 

OK now for a really stupid question. Actually make that several. Seeing as it seems USB hard drive recording is apparently too slow a transfer rate compared with firewire, I would be better getting my next external as a firewire one, right?

 

Is there any way of running my Profire interface through the hard drive (my current hard drive has firewire slots in it, so i'm assuming others will likewise?).

 

The other thing is, do Firewire 400 and 800 have different ports? As my laptop supposedly has two firewire ports, but it looks like they are two of the same symbol marked on two different sized slots - am I right in thinking one is 400 and one is 800? If so, I need to learn which is which. I am actually embarrassed about how little I seem to know about my own gear when it comes down to it! I get fair results from my recordings but my technical knowledge needs upgrading before my recordings can reach the next level I think!

[samtrips]

 

Recording to an FireWire drive is not such a good idea. SATA gives up to 3.0 GB/s, FireWire gives up to 400 MB/s in the best case. The SATA bus is dedicated solely to hard drives whereas the FireWire/USB buses can get jammed up with other peripherals. FireWire will also introduce a bit of extra latency. However, if some rogue process on your computer decides to start looking at your external drive while you're recording, you're in big trouble. Incidentally, this is why it's recommended that you don't use your system drive, but SATA will handle this type of thrashing much better than FireWire or USB.

 

 

Damn. There goes that idea:cry:

 

Am I right in thinking my three year old Macbook Pro isn't going to have a SATA port?

 

Well i have no chance of upgrading that really, money too tight, so I'll have to stick with what I got dangnammit. Now I know it's not a good idea, it's bound to stop working. I shoulda never found out and lived peacefully in my USB Soma world...

 

EDIT: hmm, OK, so checking the specs it seems I do indeed have two Firewire ports, 400 and 800, and it also says ATA Bus: Serial-ATA in the specs. however, it only lists

 

Input/Output

USB: 2/3 2.0

Firewire: 1

Firewire800: 1

Audio Out: stereo 24 bit mini, Optical S/PDIF

Audio In: stereo 24 bit mini, Optical S/PDIF

Speaker: stereo

Microphone: mono

 

So is that SATA bus then for my internal hard drive I already have?

 

So many questions. Thanks for listening!

[AwayEam]

 

Damn. There goes that idea:cry: Am I right in thinking my three year old Macbook Pro isn't going to have a SATA port? ... So is that SATA bus then for my internal hard drive I already have?

 

 

HEY BRO

 

You're probably correct on both counts. The external SATA port is called eSATA and looks kind of like a wider, L-shaped FireWire

 

Regarding your last post, I imagine that FireWire port is on an external hard drive. I'd avoid plugging your recording interface into that, as it's probably just a cheap underpowered hub. If you have no other choice, though, give it a shot. It may work just fine.

 

Keep in mind that I'm talking about ideals here. If your setup is working for you, it's groovy. You just have a higher potential for recording artifacts if your computer decides to misbehave. Hell, with a bit of luck you may never run into any trouble.

 

Same with alcohol. He seems to have a bit of a crazy setup, but apparently it's working fine for him.

 

My day job involves huge databases and lots of data transfer, so I tend to be a bit pickier about this sort of thing than may be called for in recording.

[samtrips]

HEY BRO You're probably correct on both counts. The external SATA port is called eSATA and looks kind of like a wider, L-shaped FireWire Regarding your last post, I imagine that FireWire port is on an external hard drive. I'd avoid plugging your recording interface into that, as it's probably just a cheap underpowered hub. If you have no other choice, though, give it a shot. It may work just fine. Keep in mind that I'm talking about ideals here. If your setup is working for you, it's groovy. You just have a higher potential for recording artifacts if your computer decides to misbehave. Hell, with a bit of luck you may never run into any trouble. Same with alcohol. He seems to have a bit of a crazy setup, but apparently it's working fine for him. My day job involves huge databases and lots of data transfer, so I tend to be a bit pickier about this sort of thing than may be called for in recording.

 

 

OK Cool, I'll stick with what I got...until something goes wrong and then run back here whimpering

 

Thanks very much for the info!

[AwayEam]

NO PROBLEM BRO

 

Best of luck!

[alcohol]

I'm wondering. I've got two internal hard drives in my Mac G5. They are installed right against each other. I've never used my extra internal hard drive as an audio drive because I was concerned about the heat buildup of the two drives next to each other. Is this not a concern?

[AwayEam]

 

I'm wondering. I've got two internal hard drives in my Mac G5. They are installed right against each other. I've never used my extra internal hard drive as an audio drive because I was concerned about the heat buildup of the two drives next to each other. Is this not a concern?

 

 

HEY BRO

 

It's probably not a big concern. If the second drive is already in there, it's already contributing to the case heat (it's still spinning when idle), so you'll only see a marginal increase in heat if you start using it a bit more.

 

My current machine has 4 internal hard drives all used fairly heavily without problems. You'll typically get worse heat problems from your video card and processor.

 

If you notice a heat problem, you can always use this mess. I've got one on my fastest drive. It's silent, cheap, and easy to install if you have a spare 5.25" slot.

[alcohol]

Thanks for the tip!

[tjones62]

away is completely right about multiple hard drives. heat becomes more an issue when you are running scsi drives at 15,000 rpms but that's server bull crap. the most important thing to keep cool in your system is obviously the processor and the power supply. if your PSU overheats your whole system is likely to fail when the voltage fluctuates up and down as the components in the PSU fail.

 

just wanted to throw this out there... intel now makes a solid state drive that is claimed to be the fastest drive on the planet. the cost is about 5 USD per gig. gatta love technology in its infancy stages...

[alcohol]

AwayEam, thanks for suggesting using my other internal hard drive. One of my Firewire Hard Drives started to go and I transferred my Pro Tools files to the internal drive and it's all working well and very stable.

 

tjones62

Just reading about the Intel solid state drive. After having one more hard drive start sputtering in performance, I'm thinking that using the solid state drive for the work and occasionally turning on a mechanical HD for storage is the way to go. The Intel solid state drive has an estimated 72 years of use before burn out besides better performance.

 

 

The X25-E Extreme's expected lifespan will, of course, depend on how many gigabytes of write-erase operations are thrown at it. Even with 100GB of write-erase per day, it'll take more than 72 years to burn through the drive. Couple that with the Extreme's two-million-hour Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) rating, and one can probably expect the drive to last.

 

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15931/1

[Zooey]

Flash memory has slower sustained write speeds than a 5400 laptop drive. It doesn't sound like a great choice for audio.