Pro Tools|HD with v5.3.3 for Windows — Hard Drive Minimum Requirements

Hard Drive Minimum Requirements — Pro Tools|HD

With Pro Tools 5.3.3 for Windows XP

  • 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 Windows Pro Tools|HD systems

  • Windows XP file system: FAT32 or NTFS
  • Drives should be formatted with Windows XP disk administration without Dynamic Disk selected
  • HFS or HFS+ formatted drives supported when used with MacOpener version 6.0.5

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 2048 MB. 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 partitions larger than 32 GB when using FAT32. If your drive is larger than 32 GB, either create partitions smaller than 32GB, use the NTFS file system or use a partitioning application such as PartitionMagic®.

Storage

Approximate Storage Consumption (Megabytes per Minute per Track)

Sample Rate (kHz)
44.1
48
96
192
16-Bit — MB per Min
5
5.5
11
22
24-Bit — MB per Min
7.5
8
16
32

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

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 DigiDrive FireWire 80 has 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

DigiDrive FireWire 80
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