External Harddrives and Pro Tools Le 8

[ThatsNotMe]

Hi all, I have a question. I recently purchased an M-Box 2 Mini with Pro Tools LE 8 and I was going through the instructions and it said something about formatting an external harddrive specifically for audio files. Does this mean the external will only see Pro Tools audio files, or can you drag other audio files to it as well for back up? Also, using the external, can you run sessions (plug-ins, etc.) while it's turned on and just leave it running?

Thanks in advance!

 

[austinm08]

An external is always good to have for backing up your sessions + audio files, yes.

If you want to actually run a session from an external, it needs to be firewire (not USB).

If you're recording to a hard drive in your computer, you want to have a second hard drive (NOT the system drive, I.E. the drive that your OS is installed on) as your audio drive (where you save your sessions + audio).

Hope this helps.

 

[ThatsNotMe]

Hi, that does help thank you! What does it mean to format the external specifically for audio?

 

[austinm08]

Maybe it means format it and don't use it for anything other than your audio files? I don't know..

 

[philbagg]

Hi, that does help thank you! What does it mean to format the external specifically for audio?

You can put any files you want on it, I think it just means that you shouldn't run the Pro Tools software off the drive. If you're using only two drives (IE: one system drive and one audio drive), I'd run the session off the external (audio) drive, and then back it up to the system drive.

The reason for running sessions off a separate drive is so that the drive heads have less work to do and run smoother. The system drive can deal with running the software and the OS housekeeping tasks, while the audio drive can deal solely with the audio and other session data. Much cleaner and efficient.

 

[ThatsNotMe]

Okay, thanks that explains it better. How do you format the external just for audio files?

 

[austinm08]

You just format it. There's no special way of "formatting specifically for audio files".

 

[ThatsNotMe]

Ooooh okay, thank you! So just format it for Mac or PC? Whichever system I use it on?

 

[austinm08]

Yeah. If you're on Windows, you'll be using NTFS. Mac uses that HFS+ or whatever it is.

 

[philbagg]

If you're going to be transferring files between mac and windows however, make a partition on the external and format it as FAT32, so that both systems can read and write to it. However, you won't (or shouldn't) be able to run a session off the FAT32 partition, so you'd be running the sessions off the NTFS/HFS partition, and then using the FAT32 partition for transfer. Otherwise, you run into a few complications.

 

[pezking]

If you're going to be transferring files between mac and windows however, make a partition on the external and format it as FAT32, so that both systems can read and write to it. However, you won't (or shouldn't) be able to run a session off the FAT32 partition, so you'd be running the sessions off the NTFS/HFS partition, and then using the FAT32 partition for transfer. Otherwise, you run into a few complications.

+1

Just to further clarify this:

Windows can read and write to: NTFS and FAT32

Mac can read and write to: HFS+ and FAT32
Mac can read but not write NTFS.

N.B. both operating systems can read and write to a couple of other formats, however they aren't relevant here.

 

[cyrano]

Mac can read but not write NTFS.

Small, but maybe significant note:

Snow leopard can write to NTFS, it's just not enabled by default. You can enable it with a Terminal command or install MacFuse and NTFS3G. I recommend the latter since it's easier and seems more reliable too. There's also a commercial version of NTFS3G with better performance and support. And there's also a commercial driver for NTFS on OSX from Paragon.

I just think you 'd be better off avoiding an extra partition in FAT32. FAT32 is just too old to be used for anything...

 

[philbagg]

Small, but maybe significant note:

Snow leopard can write to NTFS, it's just not enabled by default. You can enable it with a Terminal command or install MacFuse and NTFS3G. I recommend the latter since it's easier and seems more reliable too. There's also a commercial version of NTFS3G with better performance and support. And there's also a commercial driver for NTFS on OSX from Paragon.

I just think you 'd be better off avoiding an extra partition in FAT32. FAT32 is just too old to be used for anything...

Actually, using Terminal, Macfuse, and NTFS3G, you can read and write NTFS on Leopard too. Just set it up the other night with a lot of headaches. I'm not sure about older Mac OS.

And for Windows, there's software called "MacDrive" that allows you to read and write HFS. I got the trial of it a while back and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Also, FAT32 is probably the easiest way to go for file transfer if you're going to be using friends/colleagues/clients computers and laptops. You don't want to have to be going onto their systems and installing software/using Terminal commands just to transfer some files on a once off. If you get a big enough hard drive, I'm sure a 50gb FAT32 partition wouldn't even be noticed. I have a 320gb hard drive and I've never filled it.

 

[austinm08]

I have the majority of my external HDD partitioned as FAT32 (primarily for the Windows > Mac and vice versa transfer, but also for transferring to my PS3 which has no NTFS support).

I don't think there's anything wrong with FAT32 if you want to use it for these purposes. Sure there's a file size limit of 4GB, but most audio files aren't going to make it that high. Then you can always split them if need be.

 

[philbagg]

I have the majority of my external HDD partitioned as FAT32 (primarily for the Windows > Mac and vice versa transfer, but also for transferring to my PS3 which has no NTFS support).

I don't think there's anything wrong with FAT32 if you want to use it for these purposes. Sure there's a file size limit of 4GB, but most audio files aren't going to make it that high. Then you can always split them if need be.

Isn't FAT32 supposed to have a slower transfer rate? Or am I mixing that up with something else?

Also, Austin, do you use Pro Tools? I'm not sure about other DAWs, but Pro Tools won't let you run a session off a drive that's formatted as FAT32.

 

[austinm08]

Isn't FAT32 supposed to have a slower transfer rate? Or am I mixing that up with something else?

Also, Austin, do you use Pro Tools? I'm not sure about other DAWs, but Pro Tools won't let you run a session off a drive that's formatted as FAT32.

As far as transfer rate, I'm not sure. But possibly. It seems a bit slow to me, but that could also be because I'm bottlenecked by USB for my ext.

Yes, I do. And, that's incorrect according to Avid (although I have not tried running sessions from my FAT32 partition as it is through USB and USB drives are not supported for PT). With PT 7.4 and higher, you can no longer record to a FAT32 drive, but you can still playback and transfer.

 

[philbagg]

As far as transfer rate, I'm not sure. But possibly. It seems a bit slow to me, but that could also be because I'm bottlenecked by USB for my ext.

Yes, I do. And, that's incorrect according to Avid (although I have not tried running sessions from my FAT32 partition as it is through USB and USB drives are not supported for PT). With PT 7.4 and higher, you can no longer record to a FAT32 drive, but you can still playback and transfer.

So, you can open a session from a FAT32 drive? Every time I've tried that in the past, it tells me that the volume is set to Transfer or something, and that I need to change it to Record, or Write or somethin... Then, it won't let me change it, and won't open the session. And I've never had a version of PT that was earlier than 7.4

 

[austinm08]

So, you can open a session from a FAT32 drive? Every time I've tried that in the past, it tells me that the volume is set to Transfer or something, and that I need to change it to Record, or Write or somethin... Then, it won't let me change it, and won't open the session. And I've never had a version of PT that was earlier than 7.4

Correct. I just tried it and even with my drive being USB, it worked.. however when I play the audio it sounds like a load of garbage... I'm guessing it can't transfer the data quick enough through the needle-sized bottleneck

Have you done some research on changing your drive to be readable or whatever for PT? It should be possible. Windows or Mac?

It doesn't make sense to me that you'd be getting this error unless you're trying to record to it... hmm.

 

[philbagg]

Correct. I just tried it and even with my drive being USB, it worked.. however when I play the audio it sounds like a load of garbage... I'm guessing it can't transfer the data quick enough through the needle-sized bottleneck

Have you done some research on changing your drive to be writable/recordable or whatever for PT? It should be possible. Windows or Mac?

Don't need to, already have a HFS drive for when I'm workin on the mac, and I have a few internal drives in the PC. Although I guess that coulda been useful a while back

Jeez, I'm feeling kinda nerdy... I'm gonna go out and sniff cocaine off a prostitutes ass

 

[austinm08]

Sounds like neither of us need to.. so forget all of this! If I had a firewire drive and FAT32 then I might be running sessions off it just for editing/mixing.

Good luck with that. lol