Quote:
How do you record 6 bands in an hour? There must be a break to press stop. I'd rent the Alesis HD24, or the new HDX24. Never use a laptop for recording live!!!!!! You are asking for trouble!
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I'm pretty sure he meant 1 hour, 18 tracks
FOR each band.
I recorded 18 tracks, live, on a 1gHz Powerbook about a year ago. I was worried as well, but things went fine. However, I didn't record for an hour straight because I was concerned about crashing just like you. What I did was create a session template and then some pre-named sessions from that template. About every 30 minutes I would open a new session. I had a hand signal I would give the band that they needed to pause a bit longer after a song so I could get the session up and all the tracks in record mode. I could do this very quickly so it wasn't a big deal.
However, I honestly think it was probably unnecessary. Things went smooth and I probably could have recorded sets from beginning to end.
The advice you've gotten here is actually quite good. Since the band doesn't need to monitor itself through Pro Tools (I'm assuming that's the case), you might as well go for the highest buffer setting, and setting the record limit to two hours is a good idea. Also, to build up your confidence in your rig, do what Slim suggested and try recording for an hour or more on all 18 tracks with the interface, computer and hard drive you'll be using at the gig. If it doesn't crash during the test, chances are very good it won't crash during the show.