ProTools with OSX-- Are we going backwards??

[slangification]

Read This

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag-2.php

And on the Apple site..

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...s/idefrag.html

As far as we know, iDefrag is the first defragmentation tool for the Mac that fully supports the Hot Zone, guaranteeing that this is not a problem.

iDefrag. Interesting. Have you tried it?

I found this page with users talking about it:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/...g_reports.html

Here is what Apple says:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

"If you think you might need to defragment

Try restarting first. It might help, and it's easy to do.

If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files (such as editing video, but see the Tip below if you use iMovie and Mac OS X 10.3), there's a chance the disks could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities.

Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files."

[rockridge]

Mac OS X systems use hundreds of thousands of small files, many of which are rarely accessed. Optimizing them can be a major effort for very little practical gain. There is also a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would decrease performance.

That last sentence about certain files residing in "hot band" sounds like you could be living dangerously if you use a third party defrag utility on the system drive.

A defraging utility dealing with thousands of small files might turn out to be an all night affair.
It would be nice if the system could be safely streamlined... oh, i forgot; we're taking about OSX.

[fifty8th1]

MT

You wrote this the other day :

" And partitions wont affect the bloated OS (which Im glad to say IS on a small system drive partition already), which is where my problem is anyway. "

That's kind of interesting.

You know ... we don't have a partition on our main drive. We emptied the disk and installed Mac OS on any empty drive. Making sure the OSX coud go exactly where it wanted to install. Then installed Protools ...and then everything else we had. Its an 80 gig internal ATA.

If you look back at the beginning of your post I was trying to get you to look again at installing OSX ..That is where I felt your problems were coming from. I couldn't get you move on that ... so I moved on to hard disk settup ..to try and get some issues worked out from another angle. It is obvious that I am not able to get you to work on that either ... so................

Back when OSX first came out there were issues that required OSX on partitions .. but that has all been worked out.
Maybe its worth a try to set your main drive the way we do . No need to reply to this post ... if you do try it and its works let me know .. otherwise .. good luck..

Jon
58Th....

[Donny]

Is there anything in the Answerbase about disk partitioning? I don't think you need to do it anymore and if it doesn't say so in the Answerbase, you probably don't need to do it. My experience has always been that they put all of their config recommendations in the Answerbase.

Dang, Stadium! 35 takes of the whole band playing one song???

-Donny

[fifty8th1]

Donny..

I checked with Digi 2 weeks ago on the phone to see what the lastest was on that. They said even though they
normally state 4 gig partition for an optimum performance. the guy I talked to figured you could go as high as 30 gig before starting to lose significant performance.

One of the things that are nice about them is they are small enough that you can copy the partition to a DVD when done ..something that is very fast and cheap these days ...and highly recommended when your taking money from a customer.
When that is done. ..you erase them. Its much more professioinal to record next time to a clean drive than one with someones files on them.

We have a quarter terabyte drive on the system. When we are done we drag the recording to the large drive for storage. That way we have a copy on the system when we need it ... and a DVD backup.
and then erase the files on the partition. Without any question your recordings will go much better.

If a song does get as big as your partition .. just drag it to a bigger one and keep going.

Its just more than great recording on Mac. So many ways of making things easy ..

If you were recording a song as big as Stadium ... drag it to a 60 gig partition. As long as you start with a clean partition and don't erase. That way the head isn't jumping back to fill an empty spot and then jumping ahead to find the next place.

You can always erase when its time for the mix. Just have a DVD backup .. then erase for the mix.

If your on a big drive and and don't feel its dragging on you .. .. go for it. But you might accumulate a lot of files that don't need to be there. If a directory did crash .. ouch. We have several drives with lots of stuff on them .. that are available when we need them.
We just don't keep them right on the area that we are recording on.

Digi still only supports 32 tracks to a disk ATA. Firewire is even less at 24 tracks. That should be enough to show you what Digi thinks todays hard disks can handle ....

We have always tried to just follow Digi's recommendation .. that way when something goes haywire .. there is a lot less to troubleshoot.

Gotta get back to work Donny ... thanks for asking.

Jon
58Th Street Studio