Dedicating a new firewire drive to record, playback, and to backup files?

[nfm420]

I just purchased a WD external firewire hard drive in hopes to get rid of the error messages I was receiving when recording to my internal (Mac) hard drive. My external HD has 3 Terabytes of capacity. I know it's way more than I will ever need on a drive just dedicated for audio, but I wondered if I could also use this drive for backing up my protools sessions and files. When I installed the WD software for the new drive, it automatically synced with Apple's Time Machine and started backing up all of my files. If all those files are backed up on this new drive, will that slow down performance in Protools? Luckily I have several USB drives I can use for back up. I think I am now realizing I would have been better off with a cheaper, smaller capacity external HD. Any insight is much appreciated.

[JazzyJ]

Backing up should be done AFTER using Pro Tools ideally, not DURING usage. No problem to use the same drive, but the idea is to 'back up' - meaning a second copy. If you're using the same drive then if that drive goes down you'll lose the files....

Your External FW needs to be a 7,200rpm - If you have that then you'll be OK

[nfm420]

Backing up should be done AFTER using Pro Tools ideally, not DURING usage. No problem to use the same drive, but the idea is to 'back up' - meaning a second copy. If you're using the same drive then if that drive goes down you'll lose the files....

Your External FW needs to be a 7,200rpm - If you have that then you'll be OK

Thanks! Thankfully I have several USB external HD's so I can backup on them in addition to my new firewire drive. I am trying to find out if my drive is 7,200 rpm. It doesn't specify anyone I can find. It's a new Western Digital My Book studio. I will look into this more and make sure I have that. I did back up everything from my internal to this new external while protools was closed. When I opened a session from this new firewire drive, I still got the -6101 DAE error going on. I sure hope this drive is 7,200 rpm. Thanks for the help!
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[nfm420]

I found on Ebay that my drive is 7,200 rpm. But I also found that my drive uses the silly Green Power Technology and I read somewhere on here that it isn't compatible or doesn't work with protools. Could you tell me if I need to send this drive back, or if I am good to go? Thanks so much.