Best way to utilize disc allocation

[jphippmail]

I guess you could consider this a disc allocation question or you could not.


Should you run your session off of the same internal drive that is running pro tools for best performance?

Or another internal or external?

[albee1952]

Any drive that is NOT the system drive(and Pro Tools goes on the system drive). A second internal drive is cheapest and fastest. Firewire drives need an Oxford chipset(in the drive) and prefer a T.I. driver in the computer. eSATA seems to work good as well. USB drives are not supported.

BTW, most modern desktop computers have space and ports for several drives(I run 5 in mine). Mac Pro's have space for 4. iMac's and laptops as stuck with externals.

[JazzyJ]

Remember that you will need to defragment your external/other audio drive from time to time.

Drive Genius 2 is a good program that does this as is Techtool Pro.

[Craig F]

reformatting is way better for performance than defraging

[Ormond]

I always put away any session I am not working on to a storage partition on an external drive. The partition I use for a working session ONLY has the working session on it - nothing else. And the partition I use for my ProTools program drive on my iMac only has one program on it - ProTools.
so - I have partitions on the internal drive and external drive and zero clutter of any kind on the PT system drive and working file drive. You cannot possibly get any cleaner or more efficient setup than this.
And when I am done working on a session I put the session on the storage partition of another drive and Zero Format the session drive - every time.
Sure, this involves some extra time and work - but there are never any problems with latency or slow seek times or anything.