About to upgrade harddrive on laptop, anything i should lookout for??

[sidoZe]

Hey, so i think some of the problems I have been having are due to the fact my hard drive is only 5400 rpm and 8mb cache, im upgrading to a 7200 rpm and a 32 mb cache on my dell stuio 15 laptop, does the brand of drive i get matter? i couldnt find anything on digi's website about this,

Also, is windows 7 compatible? if yes what versions

Thanks alot,

[sw rec]

"Couldn't find anything on Digi's website about this"? You're just kidding, right???

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive.

Pro Tools supports recording and playback to a secondary drive that meets the following requirements:

7200 rpm or faster
9ms seek time or faster

Firewire drives must have the Oxford 911 (FW400 port), Oxford 912 (FW400 & FW800 ports) or Oxford 924 (FW800 ports) Bridge chip. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic.
You need a SECOND hard drive, recording to the system drive is not supported. So the choices are:

Firewire...tricky on laptops, especially DELL laptops which are a TOTAL crapshoot. You need a fw controller with a TI chipset, and a firewire drive with an Oxford chipset.
E-sata. MUCH easier, more predictable.
More info about your system would sure help, as well as more info about what particular errors you're talking about. Please post a Sandra report.
http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=193637
Okay Benoni, your turn.....

[kbruff]

Originally Posted by sw rec

"Couldn't find anything on Digi's website about this"? You're just kidding, right???

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive.

Pro Tools supports recording and playback to a secondary drive that meets the following requirements:

7200 rpm or faster
9ms seek time or faster

Firewire drives must have the Oxford 911 (FW400 port), Oxford 912 (FW400 & FW800 ports) or Oxford 924 (FW800 ports) Bridge chip. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic.
You need a SECOND hard drive, recording to the system drive is not supported. So the choices are:

Firewire...tricky on laptops, especially DELL laptops which are a TOTAL crapshoot. You need a fw controller with a TI chipset, and a firewire drive with an Oxford chipset.
E-sata. MUCH easier, more predictable.
More info about your system would sure help, as well as more info about what particular errors you're talking about. Please post a Sandra report.
http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=193637
Okay Benoni, your turn.....

good post...

I recommend this video for some people it can be very helpful...

http://www.showmeprotools.com/crash-proofing-pro-tools/

IN fact this guys web site has some great videos...

http://protoolskillertips.com/

All sorts of great stuff!

[sidoZe]

Sorry guys, Im not talking about my external recording drive, Im talking about my internal boot drive on my laptop.

[sw rec]

There was no mention of a secondary drive, guess that's why we went there!
7200-rpm drives with a 32meg cache are the best way to go, as you had asked.
Most of us are preferring the Western Digital BLACK-series drives.