Error Message: disk is too slow or fragmented?????

[Animal]

I've been gettting this a lot lately. I 'm using LE on a G4 800 and running my sessions of drives that have space available (usually about 2-5 gigs) but not a ton of extra room. I ran norton utilities and defraged all my drives. Why do I keep getting this error message? The sessions have 20-24 tracks usually and a small handfull of plug...and I would be surprised to get a "you're running out of memory" but I almost never get that, I just get the "disk is too slow or fragmented." It's driving me crazy. What can I do?

[qgrm]

I've had that before too. really weird, because it should have definitely been CPU error, not fragmentation (that was after "save session copy" and reinstall on a fresh drive) try that, it really should work even though it didnt for me!

In the end, i streamlined my automation data, used some audiosuite to cut down on CPU usage (which made the problem disappear) finished the track and forgot about it. If some one had explanation for this, I would love to know!

B.

[Shawn Simpson]

It's never fragmentation.

What's your DAE playback buffer set to?

[Animal]

it's set to ....um, I think it's 85%. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Any ideas? The only work around I've found is too heal seperations in audio and process plugs via audiosuite instead of rtas...but that's often a problem down the line when I need to change a setting or whathaveyou. I'm updating my 5.1 to 5.1.1 today and then installing the 32 track beta. Hopefully that'll help.

Any other ideas?

[Shawn Simpson]

Perhaps you should look at your playback engine settings again and see what the DAE Playback Buffer is set to. I'll give you a hint, it's Level 0, 1, 2, 4, or 8. Level 2 is the default.

[nukmusic]

Having a few of these errors too and I'm a 1.7g Pentium 4(PT le 6.1.1). So it must be something in Protools causing this.

[where02190]

IF your drive only has 2-5gb of remaininsg space it very weel could be too fragmented, or your disc is too slow. As a disc reached capacity, it reads and writes slightly slower. As a rule of thumb, you should never allow a drive to go beyond 80-85% capacity.

Back up the drive (which you should do anyway) and reinitialize the drive. This defrags most efficiently and cleanly. Now restore about 60% of the files from backup and try again.

[Animal]

IF your drive only has 2-5gb of remaininsg space it very weel could be too fragmented, or your disc is too slow. As a disc reached capacity, it reads and writes slightly slower. As a rule of thumb, you should never allow a drive to go beyond 80-85% capacity.

Back up the drive (which you should do anyway) and reinitialize the drive. This defrags most efficiently and cleanly. Now restore about 60% of the files from backup and try again.

that seems like a reasonable explanation, thanks. I think it's time to reconsider my whole backup strategy as I have a 250 gig drive for backup, but I want 2 copies of everything so that if that drive fails, I don't lose any data.

Thanks again.

[blackaxe]

I got this message when using an external firewire drive, its 80 gigs and theres only one PT session on it!!! DAE is set to default level 2, any ideas on fixing this problem??

[nukmusic]

IF your drive only has 2-5gb of remaininsg space it very weel could be too fragmented, or your disc is too slow. As a disc reached capacity, it reads and writes slightly slower. As a rule of thumb, you should never allow a drive to go beyond 80-85% capacity.

Back up the drive (which you should do anyway) and reinitialize the drive. This defrags most efficiently and cleanly. Now restore about 60% of the files from backup and try again.

Been there Done that.................with no luck. It must be Protools.
Thanks