Exernal hard drive & macbook Pro...advice Please

[pguy]

Hey all,

Running Pro Tools on a laptop and on a mac is virgin territory me...clueless, but, I'm gathering information quickly...of course with the help of all of you here on this forum.

My question is....do I need an external hard drive to transfer and run a pro tools session from my PC desktop to a soon to be bought Macbook Pro Laptop?

.....or....is it possible to do a save copy in of your pro tools session and burn it to a DVD or CD disc and then just insert the disc in the Mac and import the session in to pro tools? ...anf then start mixing?

Is the external drive really necessary for just transferring sessions?

Previously, prior to working with Pro Tools, I was using Sonar from 2000 to 2008, and that's how I transfered my sessions from one PC desktop to another.

Thanks Everyone!

[Bob L]

How about a large-ish thumb drive? You can do DVD or CD, but if you don't really need to archive, just move the files....

[pguy]

Yes...I was also thinking of those little USB 2 or 4 gig drives.

You can almost keep on your key chain.

I know the importance of a second audio drive for storing you Pro Tools sessions. You certainly do not want all of your pro tools sessions stored on you're system drive.

Although.. I were to use an external hard drive with the Macbook Pro.... once you load your Pro Tools session up from it, do you still have to keep the drive connected to the laptop while you're mixing you're session?

[Bob L]

There aren't just "stored" on the external, they "run" from the external. If you're doing anything serious, you're still looking at a firewire drive connected while you're working. Not that serious? You can try running your session from the system drive. Maybe it works, maybe not.