Mac? PC?

Either way, an external FireWire drive is probably the way to go. Avoid USB external drives, especially with PCs, as they can give problems with streaming audio.

definatley a mac w/ osx it is a usb HD by western digital

Be aware that USB2 only gets close to it's top speed in short bursts, firewire has a higher sustaine throughput.

8)

looks like my next buy will be the firewire drive then. But my main question is how i can directly record to the drive instead of the system drive?

You should have a preference in Pro Tools, that selects the recording path.

For details check out the User group at the Digidesign site.
And/or read the manual.

8)

Definitely DO NOT record to the system drive.

When you create a new PT session, there will be an option to select a
drive. There is also a drop down windo in the session to selectively pick a drive for each track.

Seriously read the manual.

thanks a bunch guys i will do more research and hopfully conquer this problem. I dont have the computer in front of me so i cant rem exactly what it was saying but i think it was saying that the drive was not set for recording or playing back. I will check into it further though. Thanks so much