Pro Tools|HD for Macintosh — Hard Drive Minimum Requirements
- Dedicated audio drive or drives (internal or external). Recording to or playback from system drives is not supported.
- SCSI drives recommended for maximum performance.
- Note that there is limited support for IDE/ATA and Firewire drives, listed below.
SCSI Hard Drives
- SCSI interface: Wide single-ended or low-voltage differential (LVD or Ultra 160)
- Disk drive rotational speed: 7200 RPM or faster
- Buffer Size: 512K or larger
Additional SCSI Requirements for Macintosh Pro Tools|HD systems
- Mac OS file system: HFS or HFS+
- Drives should be initialized with ATTO ExpressPro-Tools v2.7 or higher, available on the Pro Tools 5.3.1 CD or from www.attotech.com/software
- If using non-ATTO ExpressPro-Tools initialized drives, click here for options
Hard drive families from the following manufacturers are recommended:
Manufacturer Drive Family Digidesign DigiDrive* Avid rS, iS Plus, iS Pro Seagate Cheetah, Barracuda IBM Ultrastar
* First generation DigiDrives are not supported in LVD mode
SCSI Accelerator Cards
Notes
- Pro Tools has a single audio file size limit of 2048MB, even when used with Mac OS 9.x and the HFS+ file system. This equates to about 4.5 hours at 24-bit, 44.1 kHz.
- High Speed Drives require manufacturer-approved enclosure to ensure correct heat dissipation, required for sustained drive reliability.
- Windows XP is unable to create a FAT32 partition on a drive that is larger than 32 GB. If your drive is larger than 32 GB, either use a partitioning application such as PartitionMagic® or use the NTFS file system.
Storage
Approximate Storage Consumption (Megabytes per Minute per Track)
Sample Rate (kHz) 16-Bit — MB per Min 24-Bit — MB per Min
As with all Pro Tools systems, drive performance depends on a number of factors, including track count, edit density, and the use of crossfades or processing like Beat Detective. For sessions with high edit density, we recommend the following configurations. Testing has been conducted using Digidesign's DigiDrives. Performance with other drives may vary.
SCSI Drives—Approximate Track Counts:
|
SCSI Drives
|
44.1/48 kHz
|
96 kHz
|
192 kHz
(No Chassis) |
192 kHz
(With Chassis) |
|
4
|
128
|
64
|
24
|
16
|
|
2
|
64
|
32
|
12
|
12
|
|
1
|
32
|
16
|
6
|
6
|
Note: above results are with approved G4 desktop models only. The Magma PowerBook Expansion Chassis/Pro Tools|HD combination will yield a smaller track count. In order to use SCSI drives with the Magma PowerBook chassis and G4 PowerBook models 550 MHZ and above, download and install ApplePCI — Apple Multiprocessor and G4 PowerBook Expansion Chassis Fix
IDE/ATA Hard Drives
IDE/ATA drives meeting the following requirements are qualified for up to 32 tracks at 44.1/48 kHz with Pro Tools TDM systems:
Firewire Hard Drives
The Avid MediaDrive rS80 and Digidesign DigiDrive FireWire 80 have been qualified with Pro Tools|HD systems for the following:
- Supported track count (per drive): 24 tracks per drive at 48 KHz/24-bit @ 500ms edit density
- Maximum 4 drives for a total of 96 tracks at 48 KHz/24-bit @ 500ms edit density
- More than 4 drives may result in -6042 errors
|
MediaDrive rS80 |
44.1/48 kHz
|
96 kHz
|
192 kHz
|
|
1
|
24
|
12
|
6
|
|
2
|
48
|
24
|
12
|
|
3
|
72
|
36
|
18
|
|
4
|
96
|
48
|
24
|
For more information and specific requirements, see FireWire Drive Requirements
Important Note About Mixing Drive Types With Pro Tools|HD Systems
You cannot spread audio files from one session across different types of drives. For example, if you have a session with audio files on SCSI drives, you cannot record or play back Pro Tools files from an IDE/ATA or firewire drive. (this applies to audio files only, video can be on a different type of drive, or the same type of drive as the audio files in a session)