Files under iCloud a bad idea?

[rcook349]

Hi,

While I believe it is still best practice to track to an external drive, I'm still small-time and just dipping my toe in the water of Pro Tools and all things recording (it is though, right?).

So when tracking to my MacBook Pro's hard drive, is it bad if the folder is under iCloud? Or, should I move the folder outside of iCloud to track to and then back in so iCloud will back it up?

I.e. will iCloud attempting to continually back up my files as I'm editing them have an adverse affect on performance?

Thanks.

[Darryl Ramm]

Very bad idea. Drag and drop session folders or audio files into iCloud folders as backup after you finish working in Pro Tools.

Some folks need to fully disable all networking to get maximum stability.

[rcook349]

Ok thanks. And external drive in all situations or only really needed when tracking or mixing lots of tracks? I.e. for me just tracking one or two at a time (or mixing just a few), no big deal to just use laptop drive?

Thanks again.

[Darryl Ramm]

Use what exact make/model drive? Connected to what/how? With what specs? Just talking about a "drive" with no details is a total waste of time.

Current and recent Macs have a 4 x PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD internal drive. Put sessions (even large sessions) on that internal boot drive if you have that. That internal drive will be much faster than most external drives you could find. Need an external drive and have a USB 3.0/3.1 port look at Samsung T5 SSD. Spinning HDD are slow technology from last century and best for backup/archive. And turn on disk caching in Pro Tools (set it to a size, not "normal").

[Dan IceWood]

Originally Posted by rcook349

Ok thanks. And external drive in all situations or only really needed when tracking or mixing lots of tracks? I.e. for me just tracking one or two at a time (or mixing just a few), no big deal to just use laptop drive?

Thanks again.

Using an external drive in all circumstances is best practise with PT.

[Darryl Ramm]

I would absolutely not say that... especially when it’s already clear the OP is talking about a MacBook Pro. And it is important to use the right spec external drive if you use one. On modern Macintosh or other systems using fast PCIe/NVMe boot drives you are usually better off just running everything off the single drive boot drive.... the single internal PCIe/NVMe drive offers vastly better performance than typical external drives... especially on anything with slow old Thunderbolt 2, like Mac Pro trashcans.


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[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Dan IceWood

Using an external drive in all circumstances is best practise with PT.

At least it has been so.

But if you have a heavy session and the internal SSD you have has 10x the throughput compared to your external, which one would you choose?