recording to & running a session on a USB flash drive

[JasonGough]

i do wonder...

if i get a 32Gb USB flash drive and format that badboy to use the Mac OS X extended journaled file system, will it be fast enough to run a ProTools LE session with 20 something tracks?

my MacBook Pro's internal 5200rpm drive is not even fast enough to record 1 stereo track for more than about a minute, so i am carting around a 500Gb external drive to get the speed of the 7200rpm drive as required by 'tools.

If correctly formatted, will ProTools allow me to set a USB flash drive as a record volume? has anyone experiences of trying this or reading about this before?

thanks!

[The Dougfather]

Ouch, you can expect some harsh replies but the bottom line is no.

I understand where your coming with regard to the size of the externals.

I use an OWC on the go FW400 2.5" enclosure, it's great, fits in my bag, completely bus powered and you can buy a drive included or load it yourself. I'm using it with 30 tracks no probs chained to my 002R.

Cheers

[Gothboy]

I have a couple of these flash drives and they're great for backing up a session to take it somewhere with you....and they keep getting bigger and bigger but no....you can't record audio directly to it during a session. Firewire is always the better way.

[OddsAre]

i think the only thing worse than recording to your internal hard drive would be to record to a USB flash drive...

[sjs]

Originally Posted by OddsAre

i think the only thing worse than recording to your internal hard drive would be to record to a USB flash drive...

Well, just for the curious - at the moment I am using 2Gb NTFS formated USB Flash Drive (Maxell) in Vista, and it works just fine for 3-4 audio tracks. Or even more - I should make tests. It gives me about 3.5 Mb/s. Right now I am trying to use another USB thumb drive 4 Gb, formated with the same options, and PT7.4 says it is not valid Audio volume. But it says it is just fine for Video recording

[NHH]

Originally Posted by OddsAre

i think the only thing worse than recording to your internal hard drive would be to record to a USB flash drive...

I thought that a 2nd internal hard drive would always be quicker than an external drive?

(i.e. PT on 1 int. drive, audio on the 2nd)

?

[barstool719]

Originally Posted by NHH

I thought that a 2nd internal hard drive would always be quicker than an external drive?

(i.e. PT on 1 int. drive, audio on the 2nd)

?

mac laptops only have 1 internal.

[OddsAre]

yeah I wasn't eluding to using a second internal drive, which a laptop is incapable of, I was talking about your internal system drive. If you have a Mac Pro/Powermac and want to use additional internal drives, they work great. I have two loaded in my machine that I use every day.

As for SJS and his USB thumb drive, let me know when you get the kind of performance that I need, 48 tracks and a bunch of plugins. Why would you consider 3-4 tracks acceptable? You say it like you were impressed. I wish I had the time to play around like that...

[Jamtime]

Originally Posted by JasonGough

i do wonder...

if i get a 32Gb USB flash drive and format that badboy to use the Mac OS X extended journaled file system, will it be fast enough to run a ProTools LE session with 20 something tracks?

my MacBook Pro's internal 5200rpm drive is not even fast enough to record 1 stereo track for more than about a minute, so i am carting around a 500Gb external drive to get the speed of the 7200rpm drive as required by 'tools.


thanks!

Hi! I´m surprised! I just bought (last week) the little white Macbook 2.0 and as it always has (for me) recording to the system disc works excellent. 24 stereo tracks with 60% discload!

I applaud ideas like this, thinking of the USB flash drive. If I had one I would def test it!

I also wonder if it really can be better to run an external FW drive sharing the bandwith with, for example, my 002R. After all the USB2 is faster alone than the FW400. I have many times recorded into a USB 2.0. Works super.

Yeah, yeah.. I know what Digi says...

/Micke

[Numi]

Tried it with 8g stick(pretty fast one too)..got errors right of the bat. It would be totally sweet to be able to, for portable users on the run. I've had better luck using the internal 5400 stock drive that came with my macbook. There still has been talk of maybe using it as a loops or samples storage device(but might as well use your firewire drive imho).