Pro tools 2018 ultimate and separate record drive

[ericsvizeny]

I know in the past it was necessary to have a secondary hard drive for audio recording and playback. Now I have an iMac pro with super fast ssd, is it still standard practice to use an external audio drive? Also, if so does anyone recommend any good thunderbolt 3 external drives for this purpose? Thanks!

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by ericsvizeny

I know in the past it was necessary to have a secondary hard drive for audio recording and playback. Now I have an iMac pro with super fast ssd, is it still standard practice to use an external audio drive? Also, if so does anyone recommend any good thunderbolt 3 external drives for this purpose? Thanks!

Nope. Use the internal SSD. Been discussed on DUC for a long time, you can likely search and see how many folks are doing it. You have a high-end 4 x PCIe 3/NVMe drive, that you Apple gouged you on for price, you might as well
get the most out of it. That, especially coupled with disk cache make all old arguments invalid... as long as you have space. And if you need space for samples it may make more sense to put them on an external (possibly slower drive).

If for any reason you need a similarly fast external drive, the Samsung X5 or Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 are two options. They are also 4 x PCIe 3/NVMe drives but connect via Thunderbolt 3.

Some HDD based Thunderbolt 3 drives or Thunderbolt 3 drives with a SATA SSD are a joke, just marketing wank. If you want a cheap but fast/reliable external SSD say for session transfers the Samsung T5 (USB 3.1 Gen 2) is great. If you have lots of backup/archive needs then performance is less of a factor and HDD become more attractive, especially for archival storage. Then USB or Ethernet/NAS may all make more sense than Thunderbolt 3.

(and this question has nothing to do with Ultimate, it's the same for all Pro Tools...).

[ericsvizeny]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Nope. Use the internal SSD. Been discussed on DUC for a long time, you can likely search and see how many folks are doing it. You have a high-end 4 x PCIe 3/NVMe drive, that you Apple gouged you on for price, you might as well
get the most out of it. That, especially coupled with disk cache make all old arguments invalid... as long as you have space. And if you need space for samples it may make more sense to put them on an external (possibly slower drive).

If for any reason you need a similarly fast external drive, the Samsung X5 or Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 are two options. They are also 4 x PCIe 3/NVMe drives but connect via Thunderbolt 3.

Some HDD based Thunderbolt 3 drives or Thunderbolt 3 drives with a SATA SSD are a joke, just marketing wank. If you want a cheap but fast/reliable external SSD say for session transfers the Samsung T5 (USB 3.1 Gen 2) is great. If you have lots of backup/archive needs then performance is less of a factor and HDD become more attractive, especially for archival storage. Then USB or Ethernet/NAS may all make more sense than Thunderbolt 3.

(and this question has nothing to do with Ultimate, it's the same for all Pro Tools...).

Thank you for the detailed response! It is very much appreciated!