Hard drive for Pro Tools (does size matter?)

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

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.

 

 

I've got three slots out of four slots filled on my internal drive caddy on my PC, and no heat related issues from them whatsoever. If heat is an issue, or noise, there are products that can help with those issues. My PC's drive caddy has rubberized shock mounts for all the individual drives, which helps to decouple them from the rest of the case, and really cuts down on the noise from them.

 

To recap...

 

If you're running Pro Tools, on a Mac or a PC, you can't use RAID. Pro Tools can send some audio to one drive, and play back audio from a different drive, which is useful if you have a really large session that exceeds the track count capabilities of a single drive, but it won't mirror and send / record clones of the same audio to two drives simultaneously.

 

Digidesign recommends you use a second HDD for recording / playing audio; something other than the system ("C") drive. In my experience, you CAN record directly to the system drive, and for laptop users, this is a viable option - especially if your simultaneous track counts (in / out - recording and playback) are not excessive. I've had 32 track sessions on my C drive record and play just fine... but since your system drive is also being utilized by and accessed by your computer's operating system, it's generally better to use a separate drive for recording / playing back your audio files.

 

An external firewire drive is usually going to give you better performance than your internal drive on a laptop. However, as I said previously, you MUST make sure that external drive uses a Oxford 911 or Oxford 912 chipset. Anything else is questionable on whether or not it will work or not.

 

USB 2.0 external drives are fine for backups (and if you value your data, you should DEFINITELY do regular backups), but won't work reliably for recording or playing back audio directly.

 

eSATA drives work fine for directly recording onto, so if your system supports them, you can certainly use an external SATA drive... but not all laptops have eSATA ports. Internal SATA drives are usually faster than standard P-ATA / IDE drives, and they work great in desktop / tower systems as your dedicated audio drives.

 

Drive speed makes a difference in terms of maximum number of audio tracks it will support at once. It's not just about the physical size (in GB or TB) of the drive - that just tells you how much TOTAL data the drive will store - the speed of the drive in data throughput is the issue. While rotational speed is usually going to give you an indication about the drive's throughput - a 5,400 RPM laptop drive is usually not going to do as well in terms of data throughput as a 7,200 RPM drive, and a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM drive will normally be even faster, it's the amount of data that drive can transfer in a given period of time that matters most in terms of the maximum amount of audio tracks it can simultaneously record and play.

 

Solid state drives that use no moving parts will probably be "the future", and I suspect drives that use rotating platters will eventually go the way of the 3.5" floppy, but at this time, they're pretty cost inefficient in terms of cost per GB of storage, and most of them are pretty small in terms of storage space. SATA drives are, at the moment, the best option in terms of low cost, massive amount of storage space and fast throughput. Solid state drives can be made that are fast enough to support large sessions, but again, you're going to pay for it. If you're thinking about recording directly to a USB flash drive, you can pretty much forget about it unless you only need a few tracks.

 

My advice is to stick with what's cost efficient and is known to work - that means your internal drive on your laptop (with an external USB or Firewire drive for backups), or an Oxford chipset firewire drive for recording / playing back your audio.

 

For desktop systems, I recommend a separate internal drive (other than your system drive) for your Pro Tools session and audio files. P-ATA or SATA drives are both fine, but if your system supports them, go with SATA, since SATA is generally faster than the IDE.

[AwayEam]

If you're running Pro Tools, on a Mac or a PC, you can't use RAID. Pro Tools can send some audio to one drive, and play back audio from a different drive, which is useful if you have a really large session that exceeds the track count capabilities of a single drive, but it won't mirror and send / record clones of the same audio to two drives simultaneously.

 

HEY BRO

 

I don't think we disagree about anything except this.

 

Pro Tools doesn't have to mirror anything, that's the RAID controller's job. The array appears to the OS as a single, contiguous drive. It doesn't matter if it's mirrored, or striped, or whateva (note: using a mirror or stripe for real-time audio is a bad idea ).

 

I'm not a Pro Tools user, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have it's own filesystem drivers, which is the only way it could be totally incompatible with a RAID setup.

 

I definitely wouldn't recommend using one, but Pro Tools, like every other DAW, will work with a RAID drive.

[Phil O'Keefe]

DAE error -9060 - a general list of potential causes on Mac OS and Windows.

1. Pro Tools does NOT support RAID arrays. This error can occur if drives are connected to a RAID SCSI controller, or if drives have been striped or formatted with a RAID formatting utility such as "Soft Raid".

 

Source.

 

Disabling RAID (Bios):

RAID is a type of array configuration for your hard drives that can save files between discs or mirror the file to a backup. Unfortunately, this causes erratic and often catastrophic errors with Pro Tools. To disable this feature, find the RAID controller option - it's usually found under the 'Advanced' menu. Even if RAID is not being utilized, it's important to disable this option.

 

Source - Digidesign - Windows Guide - Windows XP Optimizations and Troubleshooting.

 

It really doesn't work - and while I know what a RAID array is, and how to set one up, neither I, nor anyone else I know of has ever managed to get it to work properly when running Pro Tools.

 

If you can get it to work, I'd love to hear how you're doing it - seriously.

[AwayEam]

DAE error -9060 - a general list of potential causes on Mac OS and Windows. 1. Pro Tools does NOT support RAID arrays. This error can occur if drives are connected to a RAID SCSI controller, or if drives have been striped or formatted with a RAID formatting utility such as "Soft Raid". Source. Disabling RAID (Bios): RAID is a type of array configuration for your hard drives that can save files between discs or mirror the file to a backup. Unfortunately, this causes erratic and often catastrophic errors with Pro Tools. To disable this feature, find the RAID controller option - it's usually found under the 'Advanced' menu. Even if RAID is not being utilized, it's important to disable this option. Source - Digidesign - Windows Guide - Windows XP Optimizations and Troubleshooting. It really doesn't work - and while I know what a RAID array is, and how to set one up, neither I, nor anyone else I know of has ever managed to get it to work properly when running Pro Tools. If you can get it to work, I'd love to hear how you're doing it - seriously.

 

HEY BRO

 

That really doesn't seem right to me. To be fair, I'm just going off my experience with RAID drives and a couple Gearslutz threads (where the slutz say they have PT working on a RAID array), rather than actual experience with Pro Tools.

 

Maybe Pro Tools doesn't like software RAID setups, but I can't imagine what sort of weird thing it would be doing that would make it incompatible with RAID itself. Are you sure we're not just talking about occasional audio dropouts from the increased write times in some RAID types?

 

EDIT: Out of curiosity, can Pro Tools record to a network drive?

[D Charles]

One thing not discussed in this thread but important is brand now days. I've always been a huge Seagate fan, but check the user reviews over at newegg; there have been tons of problems with Seagates over 500 gig. I just ordered a new drive for my external USB enclosure and went with Western Digital due to the solid user reviews.

[barny15]

I'll just add my two cents (although I'm not sure how pertinent it is) and say that I've had good luck recording 8 simultaneous tracks into Protools onto a MacBook running both the recording interface (Digi003) and an external Firewire drive into the same Firewire port on the Mac. It's not an ideal situation at all (I wish I had room for a second internal hard drive or another Firewire port on my MacBook), but I've never had a problem or a hiccup doing it this way. Most of my projects are in the 15-20 track range in 24 bits, and I've rarely run into issues where my rig couldn't handle things, even with multiple plugins on most of the tracks. Not ideal, but I've been lucky.

 

Carry on.

[CME]

Wow I didn't read this thread thoroughly but Digi recommends FW drives. FW400 will carry 48 plus tracks no problem at 44.1/48k 24-bit. Higher resolutions may need a second drive but I don't use any higher resolutions so I can't say for certain. They also don't recommend Raid under any circumstance. Not to say it won't work but if you are and it causes problems they'll say that's the problem. You might read this .Straight from the horses mouth as they say. The only thing that matters if you're using a FW drive and interface is to have the interface last. This is only so that if you shut off the interface the drive won't suddenly lose connection (and possibly corrupt it). I prefer internal drives but have been using an ext Fw400 with my Macbook Pro no problems.

[Nijyo]

HEY BRO That really doesn't seem right to me. To be fair, I'm just going off my experience with RAID drives and a couple Gearslutz threads (where the slutz say they have PT working on a RAID array), rather than actual experience with Pro Tools. Maybe Pro Tools doesn't like software RAID setups, but I can't imagine what sort of weird thing it would be doing that would make it incompatible with RAID itself. Are you sure we're not just talking about occasional audio dropouts from the increased write times in some RAID types? EDIT: Out of curiosity, can Pro Tools record to a network drive?

 

It's probably:

 

1) Digidesign covering their ass because people typically stripe drives without doing backups (i.e. RAID 0 instead of RAID 0+1), and so lose a drive in the array and then lose the whole array as the result (since RAID 0 doesn't even have parity to let you rebuild the array, like RAID 5)

 

and/or

 

2) Most desktop machines have really {censored}ty RAID implementations unless you use an add-in PCI/PCI-E card (the ones on the motherboards often are really just hardware "assisted" software RAID, so are really {censored}ty). This is what they mean by "soft" RAID.

 

So, basically, they're saying (like is the case with the majority of software + hardware disclaimers out there), "okay yeah it might work, but we don't support that configuration, so if it goes haywire you're on your own".

 

You're right though, real RAID makes it look like one drive to Pro Tools, so it wouldn't have a clue that behind the abstraction there are 1+x drives in some RAID configuration.

 

Interesting point, related to this conversation, MANY external HDDs that are 1TB or higher are actually 2x500GB drives in a single enclosure, and some firmware magic makes them look like 1 drive to the firewire/usb/esata controller. You can tell if you take a look at (like the LaCie ones) the external enclosure and see its unusually long (it's two 3.5" drives on end, side-by-side), or when you power up and put it up to your ear, you can hear the drives spin up in sequence.

 

However, unless you've got a bigass studio business and IT tech on staff, making real RAID work is just not worth it. Get a couple eSATA drives, set up a good backup system, and call it a day. (eSATA = sexy)