New iMac still need an external hard drive?

[lheagle]

Hi I bought an iMac 21.5

2.7 Ghz Intel Core i5

4 go 1333 Mhz DDR3

AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512

Hard Drive serial Ata 1To 7200
Running with a Mbox mini 3G
My question is simple: Do I need a firewire hard drive to run PT9?

I get many 702 errors when I'm working on it and even if I deal with playback engine it's keeps doing the same.

[Darryl Ramm]

Yes. In general you always need a seperate drive for audio sessions.

7200 rpm, oxford chipset based, FW800. Avoid anything using "green" drives, etc. You can search here for recommendations/discussions.

Darryl

[lheagle]

Thank u Darryl, will this one do the job?

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive-mini.cfm

[Darryl Ramm]

Yes. If you get the 7200 rpm version. In fact that is the exact drive I use with my MBP. Nice and portable.

Darryl

[lheagle]

Alright I'll go get it, thank u very much for your time!

[Obsidian Dragon]

Although processors and RAM are getting faster, multitrack digital audio still streams from the hard drives. SATA speeds have changed little in the last few years. Therefore a second hard drive is still required. The problem is that the OS and other behind the scene applications continually put demands on the hard drive which prevents it from working continuously on Protools activities. Admittedly you are able to run with a small number of tracks with only one drive in a pinch but to truly get the best performance out of Protools, you still need that second drive. Drives are relative cheap compared to what they cost years ago and capacities are way up. It is the right purchase to make if you intend to use Protools (including Protools 9.x)

[trakbytes]

I'm going to be the contrarian here and say that no, you don't really "need" an external hard drive for this setup. Running an Mbox Mini, you are never going to record enough tracks simultaneously to overwhelm your internal drive. SATA drives are faster than FW 800, so the drive should handle throughput with no problem.

Now, that said, I would still recommend an external drive for reliability and portability. The drive recommended is a quality product, and is great if you need it small. You can get FW 800 drives much cheaper in a full-size form.

As for drive access, once the operating system and programs are loaded, the computer itself doesn't access the drive much, unless you have some backup operation going (Time Machine for example.) Speaking of which, you should get an external drive large enough to do a backup of your internal system drive, "just in case" you need it. Eventually, you will.

[Darryl Ramm]

It is not just how many tracks you are recording, playing back enough tracks can also hit disk related problems and "enough" may be only a few tracks depending on what else is going on. Many of us will cheat and do quick things with just a single disk drive (I do frequently when I don't want to hassle with the external disk). But hopefully we know that is living on the edge. The message really needs to be clearly stated for new users that they really need a separate drive for audio sessions.

Darryl

[Jon_Atkinson]

Indeed... The issue here is seek time...

The large (and pretty slow...5400RPM) drives which come as standard in today's computers are simply not spinning fast enough to be able to retrieve enough information quickly enough. Especially with dense edits in the audio.

SATA is not the issue here, as SATA II is plenty quick enough.

The issue is that the OS drive is constantly referencing parts of the OS needed for PT to function, whilst simultaneously trying to lift audio from a drive spinning too slowly, and with fragments spread too far apart (on a large drive) to be able to do it without issue.

In the future SSD's may solve this, as the seek time is not hindered by spin speed.

But for the moment, an additional SATA drive, or FW800 is the only solution.

[chrisdee]

Doesnt the new imac come with a two disk solution?