"Could not make space for allocation"

[Darkk927]

Hey again, i was trying to record drums on my laptop, and when i hit the global record button and pushed play, a popup message came up saying

"Could not make space for allocation".

And it doesnt record. can someone help me please?

I use a fw 410 fyi

[spkguitar]

How much free space is on your disk?

Do you have "Open Ended Recording Allocation" set to "Use all space"? Or are you limiting it? (It is recommended to limit it if you can).

Are you recording to the system drive?

[Darkk927]

I have about 200 mb of space on the laptop i tried to use. I only use the laptop to record drums, then cut the files to my real computer.

I am not sure if i have set it to use all space. can you please tell me hwo to do that?

And yes, im recording to the system drive. i have read that this is not recommended, but can you please tell me why? and also, what other drive would i use? Lastly, ive been recording to the system drive for about a month now, but this is the first time anything has ever happened.

thanks

[spkguitar]

First, 200MB of space is not enough space. Pro Tools allocates the space that it needs on the hard drive before recording, if you have your "Open Ended Record Allocation" set to "Use All Available Space" it is going to try to allocate it's maximum file size; 2048MB (that's 2GB). You don't have nearly enough space available for that.

If you are using the laptop to record drums, then I assume that you are using multiple audio tracks? (kick, snare, hats, toms, OH?) In a typical scenario, you would be using about 8 tracks (sometimes less, sometimes more) to record drums? A 24 bit, 44.1kHz file is going to consume 7.5MB per minute, per track. Assuming your song is approximately 4 minutes in length, that is 7.5 x 4 x 8 = 240MB necessary, so even if you were limiting your open ended record allocation to the song length of 4 minutes, you still wouldn't have enough space. (Of course, your details may vary...)

Next, setting the open ended record allocation is done from Setup->Preferences->Operation Tab and then in the middle on the right hand side of that dialog window. If you aren't going to be recording long hours worth, it is recommended to set this to a constrained value, such as 10 minutes.

There are a few reasons why it is not recommended to record to the system drive:

1. The operating system uses the system drive (hence the title "system drive") to perform other tasks and can interfere with the proper flow of the audio data from the drive
2. most laptop system drives are too slow (4200rpm or 5400rpm) to stream audio from properly
3. many system drives (especially laptop drives) are too small and can fill up too quickly and cause errors (as you have found)
4. ...and I"m sure a few other reasons...

It is recommended with laptops (and desktops, if you really want to) that you use an external firewire drive with the Oxford 911 bridge chipset for recording audio.

Most of this info is covered in the Getting Started Guide that came with the software, and on the Compatibility web page that is referenced in that Guide.

[Darkk927]

Sweet thanks a lot. i didnt know about the open ended recording. thanks for the info. I will try to find a solution based on it.

Thanks again,
Darkk