External, Dedicated HD

[davidkain]

Hi folks,

First time poster here.

I have recently purchased a new PowerBook running OSX Tiger. While I wait for the good folks at DigiDesign to complete their much anticipated update for us LE users, I was wondering if you all could answer a rather basic question I have.

In many configuration suggestions, they mention an external, dedicated hard drive for laptop users. Now, I have an external Lacie drive that is currently blank, but I'm wondering exactly how I should set up PT LE to use said drive. Do I install the program on it, or should I be saving all my audio to it? This is a simple question, I know, but I'm brand new to ProTools, having used nothing more than Propellerhead's Reason prior.

Thank you in advance!

Cheers

[alex128]

Hi
I am a new M-box user too. I have a 15" Powerbook, I use a Lacie D2 triple 250gb external harddrive as my audio drive. I installed every application on the powerbook, save all the Digi sessions on the external drive. It makes a huge difference I must say, since my PB harddrive is 4,200rpm, it is a bit too slow for tracking and playing multitrack. I have tested the same session compare A/B and the disk performance and cpu are much easlier when I run the session on the second drive. I also have another desktop PC, I run the appz on drive 1, audio samples on drive 2, recording audio file on drive 3, it rocks big time, no glitch or what so ever.
P.S. If you plan to use this drive for PC and MAC, get this http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6// it works very well and my PC and MAC systems shake hands sharing file on the same drive.

[davidkain]

Great response, extremely helpful!

Will this improve performance in other software applications as well? For example, I use Reason almost exclusively for programming. Would it make sense to install the Reason application on my PowerBook HD and then save the song files on my LaCie?

Cheers

[alex128]

I do run Reason 3 on my PB with all the soundbanks saved on the internal harddrive, I didn't see any problem since Reason isn't a real cpu hog compare to other multitracking appz. If you really want to do that, I suggest saving all the soundbank and refills on the external drive then set the soundbank path in Reason, it will improve playback for sure. Remember, when you are tracking a bunch of tracks, two harddrives will share the stress, the internal harddrive doesn't have to move back and forth so hard to search for audio data while the 2nd drive takes care of that. On the other hand, 2 hd will playback smoother than 1.
Hope this helps.

[davidkain]

Very much so, thank you again!

[carlos santana]

make a [artition of youre external drive


one 9gb to recording youre sesion in it
the rest you can use to back up data

i use speed disk to keep my recording hard drive defragmented and it works great

good luck

[RinnyTin]

it's not necesary to partition or defrag your drives in OSX, and you won't get very far with 9GB worth of workspace. There's no point in backing up data to the same drive, partitioned or not, if the drive fails your backup is gone. Use the entire drive for your PT sessions, and backup to a seperate firewire drive. Drives are cheap. http://www.aicmicro.com is a good source, if you want one without a fan check http://eshop.macsales.com/.