Best settings for 80 track recording to HD3 at 48k

[STUDiogeek]

Hi,
What are the best settings for capturing 80 tracks to an HD3 at 48k for two or more hours. The mac is a single 1.25 with 768 megs of ram. The drive is a 7200 rpm internal. This very setup usually will go for hours but sometimes will give a disk access error message. I'm trying to find the optimal settings for this application but the same settings seem to give mixed results. The internal record drive is usually empty at the start. What should I be doing to make this MOST successful on a nightly basis? There are no edits or plug-ins, just high track counts. What elements most affect the systems ability to capture this many tracks for that long a period of time? Am I correct in assuming that maxing out the ram will assist the buffering process? to what degree?
Thanks,
SG

[jeremyroberts]

You really need to be using at least 3 hard drives (spec says 4) for 80 tracks. FW is only rated to 24 tracks. Obviously, YMMV, but if I were doing it, I'd use at least 3 drives for reliability.

Digi compato docs for OSX/storage

Also, Digi suggest more ram. With only a 1.25 G4, and 768megs ram, you are stretching the hardware thin for 80 tracks. Read the compato docs -- it's very clear about minimum specs. Why press your luck?

[STUDiogeek]

Jeremy,
Thank you for your prompt reply. WOW, I had no idea they recommend 3 drives for this. This rig has recorded a major act for years nightly, with only an occasional hiccup. I am trying to eliminate the occasional hiccups. By the way, if anyone is interested, the drives we are using are Segate 7200 internals (edited). I will suggest multiple drives, but these guys have been doing it with 1 drive for years, so I prefer to find the optimal settings and conditions and get them back where they were with the gear they are using. Pardon my ignorance (I have used Logic for years) but how much of a hassle is it to reassemble songs for archiving when you record "round robin" This is an almost nightly job and I'd hate to complicate matters. Would using an external sata box with two 10,000rpm raptors be a better idea? Or even 3 Raptors internally with an SATA card? (one boot and two capture)? What do you guys think?
SG

[jeremyroberts]

Depending on how you backup (and name your drives) backup/restore is a no-brainer.

I use Retrospect - and have strict naming conventions for my drives and project folders -- so a restore goes back to where it came from.

Multiple drives will eliminate the "occasional hiccups". And it sounds like you've been recording to the internal system drive? If so, that's also a no-no.

Read digi compato docs -- if you don't want to be conservative, take their numbers + 50% and you may get away with it. Conservative (me) says not to exceed digi spec by more than a few tracks.

[STUDiogeek]

Thanks again,
We are recording to an internal, but not the boot drive. It's a second internal on the ata bus.
SG

[pxpx83]

I was running into a similar problem when recording 60+ tracks for more than 1 hour. I kept getting DAE -9073 disk errors. I am recording to 3 separate lacie d2 hard drives. I called digi and they recommended changing the max recording time (i think its under preferences/operations) to something like 2 hours. This fixed all the problems.