ERROR MESSAGE : "Could not allocate space for recording! " when recording audio.

[Save|The|Architect]

Hey guys,

I'm having a major issue with one of my pro tools LE projects. Im running a 3.5 minute song, with all virtual instruments, (22 tracks), mainly xpand2 an, mini grand and boom plug ins available with pro tools.

I was able to record audio until recently; I had originally been recording a vocal guide track or two (im composing as i record, so theres a ton of chopping and changing going on), but for some reason my session suddenly told me when i pressed record on the audio track that is "could not allocate space for recording).

This is really frustrating as I just cant put down any vocals, and its wasting a lot of my time.

Has anyone experienced this problem? I saw it in other posts as appearing but under different circumstances, so I apologize if im posting this in the wrong place, its my first avid forum post. ( Horray!)

Can anyone offer any advice? is it merely a settings issue?

Thanks a million!

(Speak slowly, im not that clever... 0_o )

[Park Seward]

How much room is left on your recording drive? You are using another drive and not your system drive?

[Save|The|Architect]

Originally Posted by Park Seward

How much room is left on your recording drive? You are using another drive and not your system drive?

I have a 1 TB drive on my mac pro. Its partitioned into two parts, one is 900GB and the other is 100GB. the 100GB is for time machine backups etc.

I recording everything to the 900GB drive! I know optimally it should be recorded onto an external drive, but I dont currently have one.

The 900GB drive has 86% space left in it, so i dont know if thats the issue!

the 900GB drive has all the systems, library,applications etc. folders that are on every mac OS.

Im afraid to relocate my session files on the Mac, because i lost all my work in the past and had to rebuild. (I hadn't time machine set up and I am brand new to the mac OS way of thinking!

Have I answered the questions? :) Cheers for the speedy reply too!

[HD2]

Originally Posted by Save|The|Architect

I have a 1 TB drive on my mac pro. Its partitioned into two parts, one is 900GB and the other is 100GB. the 100GB is for time machine backups etc.

I recording everything to the 900GB drive! I know optimally it should be recorded onto an external drive, but I dont currently have one.

The 900GB drive has 86% space left in it, so i dont know if thats the issue!

the 900GB drive has all the systems, library,applications etc. folders that are on every mac OS.

Im afraid to relocate my session files on the Mac, because i lost all my work in the past and had to rebuild. (I hadn't time machine set up and I am brand new to the mac OS way of thinking!

Have I answered the questions? :) Cheers for the speedy reply too!

Firstly having time machine running while using PT's is not a good idea and secondly using a partitioned drive for your back ups is a pretty ridiculous idea anyway. if the hard drive goes bad having it partitioned isn't going to help as it is still one drive.
Third and most important you should use the system drive for your PT's sessions. Put another drive in that mac pro, they are cheap, and use that for your PT's sessions. You don't need and external drive as you have 4 slots in a mac pro.

[Save|The|Architect]

Originally Posted by HD2

Firstly having time machine running while using PT's is not a good idea and secondly using a partitioned drive for your back ups is a pretty ridiculous idea anyway. if the hard drive goes bad having it partitioned isn't going to help as it is still one drive.
Third and most important you should use the system drive for your PT's sessions. Put another drive in that mac pro, they are cheap, and use that for your PT's sessions. You don't need and external drive as you have 4 slots in a mac pro.

RE: Time Machine.

Why is it not a good idea? How am I supposed to recover older versions of a Pro Tools session? Just I didn't have it set up before, and it caused me massive problems because I couldn't recover a lost PT session file and I had to start again.

Is there any possible way to have the incremental saving of my pro tools sessions without having to have time machine enabled?

Im still weening myself of being a PC user for the last 8 years so its all a bit scary... :)

so to clarify:

My current situation:

- I have 1 drive (1 TB), which is partitioned 90%/10% and my time machine incremental saves are on the 10% (which i now know as being pointless as the work will be lost if my mac crashes)

- All my pro tools sessions are being recorded to the 90% drive, and my currently affected session has 26 tracks in it.

- I am unable to record ANY audio, due to the error message "could not allocate space for recording!" occurring in this session.

The way it SHOULD be:

- I should have a second drive. (preferably a second internal one (although theyr expensive for mac's are they not?) or else an external hard drive.

- my recordings should all be on to the external/second internal drive, and this should clear up my space allocation problem? (i still dont really get ehy i cant do audio..)

- i should have time machine disabled.


Is this correct?

[HD2]

Originally Posted by Save|The|Architect

RE: Time Machine.

Why is it not a good idea? How am I supposed to recover older versions of a Pro Tools session? Just I didn't have it set up before, and it caused me massive problems because I couldn't recover a lost PT session file and I had to start again.

Is there any possible way to have the incremental saving of my pro tools sessions without having to have time machine enabled?

I was told by digi tech support that it is not good to have it running in the background while working in PT's. You can turn it on after you have finished with PT's.
As for the session back up's, go into your preferences>operation tab> and check auto back up is enabled.

Originally Posted by Save|The|Architect

The way it SHOULD be:

- I should have a second drive. (preferably a second internal one (although theyr expensive for mac's are they not?) or else an external hard drive.

- my recordings should all be on to the external/second internal drive, and this should clear up my space allocation problem? (i still dont really get ehy i cant do audio..)

- i should have time machine disabled.


Is this correct?

Yes. look around for internal eSATA drives. You can buy a 1TB for about $100. Just make sure it is 7200 RPM. DO NOT buy "green" or "low power" drives".
Also your 90/10 partition is more than likely causing you problems because the 10% partition you have for time machine is probably too small to back up your system drive which is more than likely taking up more than 100GB.
And As I said using a partition to back up the other partition is useless.

[albee1952]

Agreed. Use an external(USB is fine) for backups/Time Machine. Buy a second SATA drive for recording. It needs to be formatted correctly and you may need to set it to "R" in the workspace window(R= record, T= transfer and P= playback only). SOmetimes you need to repair permissions too(a Mac thing I am not clear on as I'm a PC). Check the General Troubleshooting sticky thread for more details.

While you DO need a separate drive for recording(a partition does not constitute a second drive and actually performs worse), it does NOT need to be external(as long as you have room to add an internal drive, it will outperform any external drive). A Mac Pro can handle 4 internal drives and I would install at least 3(1-system, 1-recording, 1-samples). The samples drive can double as a backup too if you can't afford a 4th internal.

[Save|The|Architect]

Thank for all the help guys, its proved very helpful!

Strange thing is, the problem seems to have fixed itself!

I tried a homemade remedy, and i started a new pro tools session, tried to import the old session into a new one, only it only copied a few of the MIDI tracks. I used this minimalist outline of the actual song to record vocals too. I then went BACK to my OLD pro tools session, and added the raw audio file into it.

Unfortunately it would not sync properly for whatever reason, but it did unlock the block on recording audio in the original session. I can't explain why this happened, but that was my solution!

So I'm back on track and everything works fine! AND I've got Waves Tune coming in the mail so im happy about that too!

Thanks again guys.

[Park Seward]

It seems you may be incorrectly moving audio and session. You should use the PT copy command so it can copy all needed items fort a session. Don't "drag and drop".

See "Save Copy In Options" in the manual.

The reason for Time Machine is to be able to recover from a failed hard drive. If you only have one hard drive, using Time Machine is useless since it is just copying duplicate files to the same hard drive. If that drive fails, you are out of luck.

Also, good comment about the partition size. Your backup needs to be larger than your system drive since TM is copying everything that ever hit your drive so it keeps all your old files you have deleted from the system drive. That means your backup will be larger than your current, undeleted files.

The way you recover old PT sessions is to save them somewhere but not on your system drive.

PT has an excellent media manager for searching for files. You don't need TM for that.

Trying to record to your system drive while TM is active on the same drive will cause a failure.

You need at least two drives, one for audio and one for Time Machine. Turn TM off and use it manually when you are not in a PT session.