Good ol' Problems

[Combos01]

Alright so when I first got Pro Tools 8 LEwith the Mbox mini everything was working great. Then after about a month or so I started getting these 6086 errors "increase H/W Buffer Size". Well it was only every now and then at first but now it has gotten to the point where it just constantly says it and you can't do anything. Then other times it will work just a little bit, then start messing up again. I've read that it is disk too slow errors and what not but I wasn't 100% sure. I just wanted to ask b4 I went out and replaced my hard drives. I've done PC wizard and it says they are healthy. But they aren't really new, I believe I've had em for 2 years. Both drives are Western Digital. But they are compatible. It was just weird that it was working fine and now I can't even play pieces that I had finished before without getting those same errors somewhere in it. Any ideas?

[cwsand]

Look in the General Troubleshooting sticky and post a SANDRA report so we can see exactly what's in your system.

[dave911]

Have you defragmented the drives recently?

[TOM@METRO]

Before you defrag, be sure you have a complete backup.

[ram130]

Same here...but I defrag every week so I don't see what the hell is going with PRO TOOLS BUGGY CODE...jeezz other DAWs dont do this..

I'm now getting a combination of this error and the CPU overload one, which is weird since everything will play fine for 10min at 10% cpu and then BAM.

[TreeDaddy]

Originally Posted by Combos01

Alright so when I first got Pro Tools 8 LEwith the Mbox mini everything was working great. Then after about a month or so I started getting these 6086 errors "increase H/W Buffer Size". Well it was only every now and then at first but now it has gotten to the point where it just constantly says it and you can't do anything. Then other times it will work just a little bit, then start messing up again. I've read that it is disk too slow errors and what not but I wasn't 100% sure. I just wanted to ask b4 I went out and replaced my hard drives. I've done PC wizard and it says they are healthy. But they aren't really new, I believe I've had em for 2 years. Both drives are Western Digital. But they are compatible. It was just weird that it was working fine and now I can't even play pieces that I had finished before without getting those same errors somewhere in it. Any ideas?

I had the exact same problem Make sure your drives are 7200 rpm...because mine were older as well and 5400. This made all the difference and haven't seen that error again ONCE since then..
(knock on wood of course)

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by ram130

Same here...but I defrag every week so I don't see what the hell is going with PRO TOOLS BUGGY CODE...jeezz other DAWs dont do this..

I'm now getting a combination of this error and the CPU overload one, which is weird since everything will play fine for 10min at 10% cpu and then BAM.

Interesting....you de-frag every week, and I almost never defrag(actually I never defrag an audio drive). If I feel the drive needs a tuneup, I will install a fresh drive and move session folders onto it, check them for proper function, and then delete the files from the original drive/partition.

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Interesting....you de-frag every week, and I almost never defrag(actually I never defrag an audio drive). If I feel the drive needs a tuneup, I will install a fresh drive and move session folders onto it, check them for proper function, and then delete the files from the original drive/partition.

+1. Exactly. And the old audio drive becomes a new backup drive if it tests out. I have 5 months on my current working audio (WD Black) drive and no dfrag.

[ram130]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Interesting....you de-frag every week, and I almost never defrag(actually I never defrag an audio drive). If I feel the drive needs a tuneup, I will install a fresh drive and move session folders onto it, check them for proper function, and then delete the files from the original drive/partition.

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

+1. Exactly. And the old audio drive becomes a new backup drive if it tests out. I have 5 months on my current working audio (WD Black) drive and no dfrag.

Hmm really? I just defrag few hours ago.. ..I will try that then. I just do to ensure performance is kept.

[Combos01]

Ok so did defrag and things starting working really well again. So i thought that was the problem. Well I started a new project and everything was going smoothly, then as I continued to add more tracks, periodically that same error would come back "H/W Buffer Size". But I could still record or playback several times without it coming back. I still need more tracks but now I am up to 28 stereo tracks and it will no longer play the song at all. Every 1 to 5 seconds that error pops up. Now i know my hard drive speed is 7.200 rpm so its good. Could it be that my single core processor can't handle such a feat? Or is it my Ram, which is 2g but DDR 1033mhz or something. Im probably gonna need 35 to 40 tracks. Its also wierd that I can go back to older projects and they work. But the new one is the biggest and its done. Any ideas?