How BIG is yours? PRO Tools question

[GaryNattrass]

How big is your hard drive for recording audio to on your pro tools system?

I have a 20gb drive that I have been using for the past year and have now just bought a 160 gb Maxtor diamond plus to act as an audio server.

I have partioned it into four 40 gig spaces and plan to use some as sound fx servers and others for recording projects.

Have any of you found any speed problems with using large drives?

I'm running PT V6.1 on XP.

[jreardon]

Gary

my hard drive is 200GB. No expert, as you know, but haven't noticed any speed issues. with recording I've done so far.

I use Guitar Tracks Pro 3 and my PC is a 2.1 GHz AMD with 1GB RAM on XP

[onemind]

I've been using a Firewire (400) external 80 gig with no issues....But I rarely track or even use more than eight or ten tracks..

Steve

[T.Wesley]

I dropped 2 80GB drives into my computer for Pro Tools and split them up into roughly 40GB partitions - 3 active, 1 backup, and an external 40GB Firewire for additional backup and/or transporting files. I also use my old 5GB iPod to transfer files to other studios sometimes.

--chiba

[Scumback Speakers]

I just outfitted my G4 with a second 160 gb internal, in addtion to the 80gb startup drive, and the 120gb external FireWire backup drive. The 160 gb internal I split (partitioned) into two 80gb halves, one for loops, and other plugins that I have on DVD or able to reinstall if the drive dies, the other partition is for the actual recording of the tracks. When you partition drives, one of the partitions is on the outside edge of the drive's platters. This one is faster for recording and playback, and is typically the first partition you make.

It's screaming along just fine.

A word to the wise from years of computer consulting...have at least as much backup hard disk space as you're using with your application for data files. That's why there's a 120gb external FW drive backing up my 80gb recording partition. Just a simple drag and drop every nite, and I've got myself backed up, and the data is in two places.

FWIW

[Scott Peterson]

I have two 200 Gig FastEIDE and 1 20 Gig SCSI for recording.

[js54]

Setup:
iMac G5 80gig internal (not used for PT audio)
External 160Gig LaCie FireWire 400.

No problems yet. I only get "USB H/W Buffer size error" I just click ok and things are fine. It's MBox USB related...haven't spent the time to fully handle it yet.

Sounds like I'll need to get an extra one for backups....one more thing on the ever growing "to-buy" list.

Joe

[Screamer]

I track to a 7200 RPM,160 GB, 8MB Cache, FW400 drive in Pro Tools. The rest of my drive in the system are:

Two 74 GB 10,000 RPM SATA Drives (1 OS, 1 APP)
1 250 GB SATA 7200 RPM Drive where I keep my loops and samples, and video etc.

[MichaelK]

I have two Glyph UW SCSI drives, one 18G and one 36G. I bought the 18G in 1999 when I thought it was more than enough and now I just have my first album stored on it. The 36G is what I record with now. I also have two LaCie firewire drives that I use for backup and/or recording outside my own studio, one 120G and one 250G. The 250 is split into two even partitions per Scumbag's suggestion.

I'm a paranoid mofo so I back up my SCSI drives twice, once on each partition of the firewire 250. I also use them to back up my wife's and my laptops, and believe it or not the thing's halfway filled.

Finally had to retire my 18GB SCSI Cheetah drives. They were awesome but generated a small sun's worth of heat as well as being loud. Replaced them with a single 180GB drive, and backups go out to an external 200GB firewire drive.

With 10x more space I can't imagine filling this one up unless I go insane and move to 192kb recordings.

[KungFuLio]

Each client gets a 120GB minimum drive. I'll back it up until they leave the studio, then it's their responsibility. I am very clear with them about backing up. Nothing exists on less than 2 drives period, end of story, for ever and ever AMEN.

[melondaoust]

I've been using an 80 Gig FW drive for the past little while. As long as it spins at 7200 RPM, you should be fine.

If it is a question of freeing up space, maybe get rid of audio files that are unused after the track is finished.

[GaryNattrass]

Thanks for all your replies it is good to know that everyone is generally using similar system set-ups.

Ive got the 160gig Maxtor on now and it is great that I can split the drive into different partitions for library fx and video projects.

Its a Maxtor diamond with 8meg cahe and is running at 7,200 rpm via firewire.