DAE Can't get audio from the drive(s) fast enough?

[daleh]

Lately I've been getting this error whenever I try to record in ProTools:

DAE can't get audio from the drive(s) fast enough. Your drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to the extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load. (-9073)

It randomly occurs and I can't do anything about it. Sometimes it will happen on the first track of a session, other times it only shows up after I have like 20 tracks, but once it happens in a session, that session is screwed and I can't record for more than 5 or 10 seconds without it popping up and shutting down recording.

I'm on a PowerBook G4 with a Digi002r and a LaCie external firewire hard drive. I've used this setup for years without this problem. I have 30+ gigs of free space on the LaCie, where the audio is.

PLEASE help as this is getting really frustrating!

[M.Brane]

What percentage is the free space on your audio drive? Anything less than 50% could be problematic. What about your system drive? Cleaned it up lately? How much RAM? Excessive swap file activity can really stress a drive.

Time to do some system/drive cleanup? Run Applejack, backup/initialize the LaCie etc.

Install/update any software or make any significant changes in the system lately?

[rattledaddy]

I can relate, same trouble exactly here. My config is as follows: Terra Digital (digi approved and fully tweaked) Pention M Laptop,2.0 GHz, XP Home PTLE 7.1 - 002R(I know this is the Mac forum but the issue seems to be the same). I am running 2 external FW drives, Seagates with the digi recommended Oxford 911 chipset. One dirve is for Audio, the other is for samples and BFD data. Each drive runs at 7200 rpm. The audio drive is in a NTFS format, the sample drive is FAT32. Both drives have at least 70% free space. My system drive (C:) has 55% free. The drives are connected via a 2 port COMPAQ firewire adapter card. The Didi is connected via the 4 pin FW port. I have had no problems in the past but recently I am getting the same DAE - Can't get audio fast enough error as you are. I have made no significant changes to the sys. I was thinking that it might be better to daisy chain the drives rather than use the card. Does this increas or decrease "firewire bandwidth"? I wouldn't think it would make a difference. All drives are well maintained and defraged. There are so many confounding variables I don't really know how to trouble shoot the issue. Thoughts???

[Shawn Simpson]

What is your DAE playback buffer set on?

[Kerry C]

I have encountered the same problem. I have been able to pinpoint it to the fact that PT is creating "bad files." My thinking on this is due to the fact that when I go to copy a session where this problem has occurred from one drive to another, it will not copy certain files, and they are the same files that PT locks up on and gives me the error when it should be reading them for playback. I have done all the trouble-shooting steps I could find and I'm not certain the problem has gone away. It's really scary to think that it could happen with paying clients in the studio. My hard drive is a brand new dedicated audio drive 250 gig WD SATA. I have run several Final Cut Pro sessions off it and have not had any problems, so I'm skeptical of it being the drive.
I have a fairly fresh install of everything, and everything is updated as far as I know.
Thanks for any help,
kc

[howie b]

Same problem here. Seems to happen mostly on longer tracks.

Have you tried running DiskWarrior and/or DiskOptimizer lately?

[daleh]

What percentage is the free space on your audio drive? Anything less than 50% could be problematic. What about your system drive? Cleaned it up lately? How much RAM? Excessive swap file activity can really stress a drive.

Time to do some system/drive cleanup? Run Applejack, backup/initialize the LaCie etc.

Install/update any software or make any significant changes in the system lately?

the audio drive has about 50% free space. System drive has about 10 gigs free out of 60. I have 512 megs of ram. What do you mean by cleaned it up lately?

This occurs EVERY TIME i try to make a new session now - within the first 30 seconds of the first track. It's not something that's happening only in big sessions. I can't record at all.

[rattledaddy]

In my case the error happens regardless of the DAE seting. Thanks.

[M.Brane]

System drive has about 10 gigs free out of 60. I have 512 megs of ram. What do you mean by cleaned it up lately?

10GB free on a 60GB drive is way too full. No wonder you have problems. Especially with 512MB RAM. I bet the swap file activity has trashed your system drive's directory. Better back that up while you still can, and either initialize/restore or use a good disk utility to rebuild the directory if it can. Adding another 512MB RAM would also help prevent this problem in the future, but won't help your current issue. The damage has already been done.

Clean up with a utility like Applejack that removes the cache/swap files, and validates preference files. This especially important if you shut your machine down on a daily basis. Machines that get shut down don't let the OS go through it's normal housecleaning proceedures. That's one reason why only my display sleeps. The drives spin 24/7 unless I'm out of town for more than a day.

This occurs EVERY TIME i try to make a new session now - within the first 30 seconds of the first track. It's not something that's happening only in big sessions. I can't record at all.

This looks like a classic file corruption issue to me. I'd stop using the system for work immediately, and backup all your important files until you can get it stable again.

[daleh]

What do you mean, the damage has already been done? You said to back up my important files and not use it until I can get it stable again, but I have no idea what steps I would take to do that - Is it just the AppleJack thing you're talking about? I rarely shut down my computer, so I hope it should be doing the housecleaning you mentioned.

Today I ran Diskwarrior on both the audio drive and the system drive, and I tried messing with the DAE buffer size in the ProTools settings, but it made absolutely no difference.