HDD compatibility

[Ninboy]

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive.

Pro Tools supports recording and playback to a secondary drive that meets the following requirements:

7200 rpm or faster
9ms seek time or faster

Firewire drives must have the Oxford 911 (FW400 port), Oxford 912 (FW400 & FW800 ports) or Oxford 924 (FW800 ports) Bridge chip. Other Oxford chipsets, while not fully tested, have not shown any issues and should generally work well with Pro Tools.

USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic. Avoid using USB drives, as they are known for causing a variety of errors.

I get this, but I have a macbook that doesn't have a firewire connection. How bad will protools run on my system with the normal internal drive?

This is my drive...

[srslab]

My first thought would be major slow as I had to upgrade mine to 7200 rpm for the system drive. I take it you are using the USB mbox?

[mindnoise]

Hi ninboy, welcome to the board!

a quality external USB HD ist still better than the internal HD.

there are actually some good USB chipsets out there, though I never went there.
And some PT users actually use USB HDs for recording.

Some external cases with a OXFORD 924 also feature USB2 ports.
If you still plan to use the internal HD make sure you NEVER fill it up to more that 50%.
the File System works best that way.

best

[barstool719]

if your macbook has a card slot, you can SIIG FW card.

[docbop]

That 5400RPM drive has to go you need a 7200RPM drive. That speeds up the OS, virtual memory, and all app's. Especially need the faster internal if you aren't going to use an external drive.

[Ninboy]

I'm just going to keep all my stuff on the external, and use the system hdd for what I'm working on.

I'll also set up my macs time machine, so If I do damage my internal I still have a year of warranty and I will get an upgrade than.

[Ninboy]

i haven't had a problem with pro tools so far.

[Obsidian Dragon]

I'm not trying to state the obvious but this is one of the major mis-steps from Apple to not include the Firewire port (and also have no way to add one on the short lived unibody MacBooks. If you look at the WWDC keynote, Apple clearly admits to this shortcoming and with the new 13" MacBook Pro have added a Firewire800 port specifically for people like us doing audio. There is unfortunately no good solution for Protools and the unibody MacBook that you have. At best you can upgrade the internal drive to 7200 or limp along with a USB drive. Both of these are known to have problems. If I were you, and Protools is an important of my needs, I would sell the MacBook and get a Macbook Pro. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you already knew that.

[Ninboy]

Yeah I know, I'm just going to deal with it for a while, I'm only a student and I'm not doing huge productions or anything like that, i will up grade later.

I did however get the USb to work, just partitioned the drive into Mac OS journal. And I can record and playback via the external hdd.

[Ninboy]

And I only have the mbox2 factory, with 48kHz sampling rate, so nothing serious.