[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

Although Avid has never confirmed it, but I am reasonably certain that they were doing "direct disk access", instead of accessing the drive through the operating system. This was common practice back when we were using older, slower drives, as it allowed for slightly better disk performance.

It appears this practice was discontinued with the advent of Pro Tools 9.

When using "direct disk access", an application essentialy takes full control of the disk drive. This would be why Pro Tools was not approved for use with RAID drives, as RAID uses a "proprietary" controller, and Pro Tools would not be able to directly control a disk.

If an application is using direct disk access and another application writes to the disk via: the operating system, it would be very easy for a disk to get "scrambled".

However, as it appears that Pro Tools is now accessing the disk via: the operating system, the "scrableling" possibility no longer exists.

Note: The following is based on my own knowledge of computers (I work in IT), combined with my less demanding sessions, and my ability to take a certain amount of risk. YMMV...proceed at your own risk!

I would not be afraid to use a fast SSD as both an OS and a recording drive. As has been noted, there is no mechanically moving "head" with an SSD, so it should be able to perform quite well.

Depending on the computer's power and the disk's performance, I would be willing to try using a modern spinning drive for both an OS and a recording drive. However, I would do quite a bit of testing before using this setup for mission-critical work.

The "wild card" in this thing is the new hybrid drives, such as Apple's "Fusion Drive". While I wouldn't have a problem using it as an OS drive, from what I have read about it I would be somewhat leery of using it as a recording drive until a lot more "field reports" come in.

Again, these are just my "somewhat educated" opinions...YMMV...try this at your own risk, and if you're working for money test the hell out of whatever options you decide to try...

Your correct about drive access. Some one from Digi posted about the fact they were using Direct Disk Access or something analogous to it several years ago. It may have been a proprietary algorithm. I have no idea if it was changed in PT9 or not.