Hard Drive And Track Count

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2002 8:15 pm

I am about to upgrade to HD3. My Hard drive is currently A Glyph 36 Gig SCSI (w/ my Mix Cubed). How will this work with HD in terms of track counts at different sample rates? Mainly, I think I'll still record at 44.1, but I want to be able to take advantage of the higher track counts allowed in HD. What do you recommend?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2002 10:22 pm

Danny,

Like I said earlier in an email to you, I thought I would post some of what we discussed, just in case any body else out there had some of the same questions.

SCSI drives are the recommemded platform for Pro Tools. How ever it is my oppinion that SCSI is on it way out. There are advantages at present for using SCSI, like quicker response and faster RPMs, but ATA, IDE, and firewire drives a closing in very fast. They are already solutions for some people. I prefer firewire to SCSI personally, so it can free up the PCI bus for PT to work more effeciently. But now that the new HD systems have alot more effecient TDM bus, it doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.

Now it is more of a cost/value thing. You get more bang for your buck when go firewire, ATA, IDE.

Back to the topic...
Track count. I've heard of people getting 64 tracks on the mix systems with a magma chassis, and a firewire drive, on a Titanium Mac PowerBook! I've gotten approx. 50 tracks running on my internal system OS drive before!! I haven't personally done any extensive test yet on the HD systems regarding firewire or IDE drives but I will. I'm interested to see if any one else has tried to push the limit with the new HD systems on what a firewire drive can do.

HTH

Darren
www.dixondigital.com

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2002 6:34 am

Hi Danny,

Digi have just posted a page of information on hard drive usage with PT|HD. It includes track counts and storage capabilities for IDE/ATA, SCSI and Digi's own Firewire drives.

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/hddrivereq.html

Greg

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2002 3:17 am

Thanks for the link Greg, that will come in handy.

This topic is quite the quandry for those looking to upgrade to HD. It doesn't seem to me that firewire is completely there for studio work yet, but it does seem to be an excellent solution for remote recording. As for the speed gap, before you close the lid on SCSI check out the specs on Ultra320. And then check out the specs on fibre channel. Ok, maybe I won't be a lazy arse and post them here when I have some more time...

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