sluggish copy and paste?

[tadpole]

Hey all,
Working on a record that needs lots o' edits (more than usual), and experiencing really sluggish copy/paste and fade functions once the editing gets heavy (even with only 12 or so tracks in the session and not any MIDI tracks to speak of either). To give you an idea, some regions number in the -800's or more (long songs.. don't ask).. I've worked with PT since 4.3 and have been using 5.0.1 for a while so I'm not a newbie... but I've never experienced this type of sluggishness. Sometimes it will take 10 seconds or more just to cut copy and paste one lousy edit! I hide all unnecessary tracks and remove all the unused (auto created) regions from the regions list (which sort of helps) but to no avail. Playback is fine, but I'm sick of watching those fingers roll when I need to edit...any ideas? A clean install? (I dread those) More RAM? Consolidate the edits i know I want to keep? I'd hate to waste the drive space. I'm at a loss...

system lowdown:
B&W G3
512MB RAM
2-18G cheetahs
can't think of my SCSI acc card (it's too late at night)
PT 5.0.1
Mix Plus w/Core and 2 Farms
AD8000's and a USD

All my DAE,PT, and ATTO prefs are set to the proper values and all of the wrong extensions have been disabled. Playback buffer is set to 2. Display prefs are set to 256 colors and all ATI ext. are disabled...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks and have a great holiday season!
Tadpole

[Avid]

You didn't say how much memory you have allocated to Pro Tools, but have you tried giving it more? Often necessary on really big sessions with lots of regions like you have.

------------------
Bruce Paine
Digidesign

[Noise]

Once you get done with your edits & fades, try duplicating the files, then deleting the old ones. If you want to save your old files, coy the session before you duplicate, then just REMOVE the old files. This works great for me. (and it happens all the time)

[tadpole]

I tried both suggestions and they all seemed to help. PT still gets pretty slow sometimes though... Oh well?

Thanks guys, and happy new year!
tadpole