New iMac

[StoneHedge]

I just got a new iMac (i7 4.0ghz 32gig memory and 1TB Flash drive Retina Display)
My question is.....since I have a 1TB Flash drive, do I still need an external drive for audio? I also have BFD3 and EastWest Gold Orchestra and Stylus RMX. I'm using ProTools 11. Will be using about 24 tracks audio, maybe a few virtual instruments.

I have read that the flash drive makes and external drive unnecessary. I"m thinking of getting an external Thunderbolt drive for backups and I would probably put the audio on it since I had it, but I thought I read somewhere on here that an internal Flash drive is fine.

Can someone help me out?

[VRW]

Originally Posted by StoneHedge

I just got a new iMac (i7 4.0ghz 32gig memory and 1TB Flash drive Retina Display)
My question is.....since I have a 1TB Flash drive, do I still need an external drive for audio? I also have BFD3 and EastWest Gold Orchestra and Stylus RMX. I'm using ProTools 11. Will be using about 24 tracks audio, maybe a few virtual instruments.

I have read that the flash drive makes and external drive unnecessary. I"m thinking of getting an external Thunderbolt drive for backups and I would probably put the audio on it since I had it, but I thought I read somewhere on here that an internal Flash drive is fine.

Can someone help me out?

You got a very cool powerful machine and in combination with your 1TB Flash drive you definitely should be able
to run your sessions incl. audio files all from your OS drive. Those Flash drives are super fast and for the 1st time
in Pro Tools history it is able to skip the previously required 2nd separate audio drive.

Particularly as you were saying not to use more than 20-30 tracks this should be no problem. I would just go and try it.
As you intend to get a fast backup drive anyway you will be on the safe side if anything should not work out with only the
OS drive.
However I would recommend to rather put all the samples for your VIs on this backup drive in case.
Just leave your sessions+audio on the Flash drive (although it had been the other way round in former days I know).

Again, I´m pretty sure you will be able to do all stuff from the internal drive.

Have lots of fun,


all the best, VRW




Mac Mini i7Quad, 16GB Ram, MBP Mid 2012 2,5GHz i5, 16GB Ram, Mac OSX 10.10.3 Yosemite, Apogee Quartet+Duet 2
Genelec Active, Yamaha NS10, Pro Tools 11.3.1, Logic 10.1.1, Waves, MCDSP, Duende Native, HOFA, IK Multimedia, NI etc.

[StoneHedge]

Thanks VRW.....

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by StoneHedge

I just got a new iMac (i7 4.0ghz 32gig memory and 1TB Flash drive Retina Display)
My question is.....since I have a 1TB Flash drive, do I still need an external drive for audio? I also have BFD3 and EastWest Gold Orchestra and Stylus RMX. I'm using ProTools 11. Will be using about 24 tracks audio, maybe a few virtual instruments.

I have read that the flash drive makes and external drive unnecessary. I"m thinking of getting an external Thunderbolt drive for backups and I would probably put the audio on it since I had it, but I thought I read somewhere on here that an internal Flash drive is fine.

Can someone help me out?

Exact machine I have, you'll love it! I may be a bit old school but I still prefer to have my audio on a separate Thunderbolt attached drive, have a dual TB enclosure with an AngelBird SSD for audio and Samsung for Samples. Also put a USB3 enclosure on with another Samsung SSD for audio backup. In addition to those I have 4 spinning drives on the other TB port with separate OS X installs for Q&A, software testing and system backup (that's overkill, but I had the drives left from the iMac I replaced so put them to use)

All that aside I have mucked about recording to the system drive and did not run into any issues.

When you are looking for external SSD drives, research TRIM on OS X. There's a number of threads on this forum by Darryl Ramm explaining the process in detail.