Recording to Macintosh HD (Macbook Pro)

[shtik]

Hey Everybody, small question.

My studio owner has brought a new Macbook Pro today for smaller/remote jobs with Mbox 2 Pro to compliment our HD rig.

Is it O.K. to record to the Macintosh HD or should we create a partition especially for audio on the same drive? I basically want to avoid recording on external HD because it's going to make the laptop rig much less portable.

All projects will be transferred to the studio's main hard drive soon after recording/basic editing.

Hard drive speed is 7200 RPM.

Thanks in advance.

[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by shtik

Hey Everybody, small question.

My studio owner has brought a new Macbook Pro today for smaller/remote jobs with Mbox 2 Pro to compliment our HD rig.

Is it O.K. to record to the Macintosh HD or should we create a partition especially for audio on the same drive? I basically want to avoid recording on external HD because it's going to make the laptop rig much less portable.

All projects will be transferred to the studio's main hard drive soon after recording/basic editing.

Hard drive speed is 7200 RPM.

Thanks in advance.

The official word is that you are to record to a second physical drive, (not a separate partition as that does nothing to reduce the head movements on the same drive that is servicing the operating systems requirements). This is the way Protools has always worked and you are just inviting buffer errors by trying to record to the system drive no matter how fast it is.

Having said that, you can experiment with it to see how many tracks you can get before the the buffer error start. Keep in mind that the more data and fragmented your drive becomes and the more applications requiring disk access will negatively affect your results over time.

[The Dougfather]

One word........suicide.

Regardless of the spec and speed of your machine recording to the internal drive is a disaster waiting to happen. Whether it happens now or later the problem will inevitably arise. Purchasing an external firewire drive will ensure a smooth and optimized Pro Tools system, make sure the drive has an oxford chipset. In the Us OWC provide great drives at great prices.

[shtik]

Thanks guys, this is what I was afraid of...

This system is not intended to record more than 6 tracks at once max.
Fragmentation is what makes me worry. I'll try to see what happens..

Keep in mind that the more data and fragmented your drive becomes and the more applications requiring disk access will negatively affect your results over time.

Maybe divide the system HD anyway and format the audio partition often? Maybe this can prevent this problem.. Or not..?

As I said, It's not a problem working with a dedicated external HD, It's just that I wanted to avoid the hassle of carrying it every time we record in remote location (just take the laptop and Mbox)

[sowby]

I have an old Powerbook G5 single core 1.67 GHz. I have successfully and frequently recorded 16 tracks of live shows, 2+ hours, all on the internal disk, with no problems. Now, that's with an old computer.
You should just try your rig and see what it can do. Set it up and let it record for a couple hours with however many channels you will be doing. That should tell you how it will work.

[rpb1966]

The only way to do this properly is use an external FW800 drive using your Express 34 port, and using a FW800 card, this way you should have NO issues, I manage to run 24 tracks of audio and BFD 2 playing live with 0 latency, with no drop outs or errors using PT8. installing Pro Tools on MACINTOSH_HD. Pro Tools Audio files on the EXTERNAL drive (FW800, 912 chipset) as well as the BFD2 samples on the external drive, I am yet to find anything which will work better.

As the guys stated above using the MAC HD for audio files is bad idea and Digi do not recommend it. The safest way is an external FW800 drive with an Oxford chipset. You can use the FW800 port on the MBP, but I cannot as I also use a 002 Rack which used the FW400, so if I used both at the same time I will encounter issues due to the FW400/800 ports share the same buss.

Russ

[albee1952]

Not to beat a dead horse here but, if you are doing this as a hobby, record to the internal drive and take your chances. If you are charging people for recording services, buy a firewire drive and get a pelican case to transport the whole package neatly and safely. If you work for a commercial studio and show up at a paying gig with everything in a milk crate and doing it in a "less than pro" manner, you won't be doing any favors for the image of your company. Not a rant, just food for thought.

[The Dougfather]

Just to add, you can get bus powered 2.5" external hard drives. This way they are compact and give you the benefits of external. I have a 2.5" OWC on the go and it's loaded with a 5400 120GB travelstar and i can record 10 tracks at a time, no probs. You might consider loading it with a 7200rpm to be a safe.

[shtik]

Thanks to all of you..

I see that the best way to deal with it professionally will be getting another external HD for this rig.

Just to add, you can get bus powered 2.5" external hard drives. This way they are compact and give you the benefits of external. I have a 2.5" OWC on the go and it's loaded with a 5400 120GB travelstar and i can record 10 tracks at a time, no probs. You might consider loading it with a 7200rpm to be a safe.

This can be cool, but is it going to be as safe as 3.5" when it comes to moving it around? (2.5" mechanism is more sensitive to vibrations or small bumps) if I can do all this with 2.5" HD it's going to be much easier.

[albee1952]

I think as long as you get a 7200 rpm drive, it will work fine. No hard drive wants to be subjected to bumps and such so the smaller size should make no difference. Anybody try any SSD for recording yet? Solid State drives look interesting but I am curious if they work good in the real world.