Best Way to Transfer PT Files Between HD

[justus1900]

I just bought a new 750GB/7200RPM/64MB Cache Hard Drive from Newegg. I need to know the best way to Transfer all of my Session Folder Files from my 250GB/7200RPM/8MB Cache Hard Drive with out losing any of the Audio Files or any of the other files in the Folder Transfer. I heard you can't just do a Copy/Paste from one Hard Drive To The Other Hard Drive. Any help would be appreciated, Thank you

[justus1900]

Hmm. Well I have done a Copy/Paste before and all of the Wav. Audio files didnt transfer? Also I have read other people say the same thing, I remember reading some place you need to Load the Session Folder and do a Copy File/Folder or something to make everything transfer to the new Hard Drive but IM not for sure so IM asking, Thank you

[Top Jimmy]

Doing a complete drive copy/paste should introduce no problems.

Where problems do arise is when you copy just a session folder that does not have all of the media files used in that session located within that folder. If you suffer from this problem, saving the sessions within Pro Tools using the "Save Session Copy" command will bring together all used media within the one session folder.

[Craig F]

after the copy:
open Pro Tools
set the old drive to Transfer in the Workspace
open each session on the new drive (make sure the new drive is set to Record in the Workspace)
if something is left on the old drive it will get moved to the new one

[justus1900]

I did a complete drive copy/paste and it introduce no problems at all. Seems all of the Session Folders and Files transfered with no problems.

[DigiTechSupt]

Just to be clear - a 'copy/paste' or 'drag and drop' from one drive to another is typically not recommended unless you know for sure that all the audio for your sessions are contained in the audio files folder AND you understand that you have to relink the media or set the previous drive to 'T' so that the media is not accessed on that drive when opening a session.

When you drag/drop or copy/paste the session file still has info in it indicating that the audio files for a session are on the original drive and it will access that drive unless you update the links to your media on the new drive or set the original drive to 'T' in the Workspace window so that Pro Tools will look to the new drive for the media.

A better option is to open each session and do a 'Save Copy In' and choose to copy all media - that way the session file is updated with the new location of your media and it gathers all media for the session in the new location, regardless of where it was located previously.

[aka21stCentury]

I would always choose save as: mac/pc compatibility and transfer the files from the opened and correct Pro Tools session as Tech Support suggested and others... making certain the fade folder is also duplicated.

Now what about NTSF 3g from a PC to Mac. Anyone care to comment? Can Pro Tools write on a Mac running Snow Leo to an NTSF external disk if fast (non-caching) option is used with NTSF 3g?

Also can a PC created session be played back on a Macintosh 10.5 or higher with NTSF 3g without glitching? Anyone know? 24/44.1k - 88.2k

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by aka21stCentury

I would always choose save as: mac/pc compatibility and transfer the files from the opened and correct Pro Tools session as Tech Support suggested and others... making certain the fade folder is also duplicated.

Now what about NTSF 3g from a PC to Mac. Anyone care to comment? Can Pro Tools write on a Mac running Snow Leo to an NTSF external disk if fast (non-caching) option is used with NTSF 3g?

Also can a PC created session be played back on a Macintosh 10.5 or higher with NTSF 3g without glitching? Anyone know? 24/44.1k - 88.2k

No

Yes.

A far better solution is to install HFS+ support on the PC and then format the external or transfer drive as HFS+. Theres also MAC-NTFS from Paragon Software. That will let you write to a NTFS volume from OSX.