M-Powered 7.1 + Delta 1010lt: optimizing performance?

[Berrado]

So, I just tried recording for the first time on our new 1010lt / MPowered system, and recording 8 simultaneous tracks proved to be a problem. We could always get one take, but as soon as we tried recording a second one (or hit "play" with the tracks rec enabled), the computer went on hold for several seconds, and then either gave me DAE Error -36 or told me the drive was to slow or fragmented to record, at which point I had to restart Pro Tools to get it to record again. Please note that this is a recently formatted, nearly empty hard disk (and it's not the system disk, it's a second internal 120 giga drive), and it's a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Our Mac is running 10.4.8, and it's a Power PC G4, dual processor, with about 800Mhz and about 800mb of RAM. I know it's not a lot, but the session was at 44.1k, 24 bits, and I've done far more intense things than eight simultaneous tracks of 44 / 24 on far lesser systems in old macs using old interfaces. I tried several settings of buffer size and CPU usage with little difference between them.

Anyone got any ideas about what I could do to optimize the system performance? I'm already starting to fear that my plug-in filled mixes will be a problem in this machine.

[M.Brane]

Did you already go through the system optimization tips in the general troubleshooting thread above?

If your audio drive is a slave to your system drive on the stock ATA bus you won't get much if any performance increase over recording onto the system drive since ATA is incapable of accessing two drives simultaniously on the same bus.

You don't need journaling on an audio drive, and turning it off may help.

More RAM wouldn't hurt either. Tiger takes 1GB just to run decent on it's own.