Pro Tools 5.3.1-5.3.3 TDM for Windows — Hard Drive Minimum Requirements

Pro Tools 5.3.1-5.3.3 TDM for Windows — Hard Drive Minimum Requirements

To provide full 64 track, 24 bit, 48 kHz performance a TDM Pro Tools system must include at least two hard drives, minimum, three recommended. For 64 track sessions that have substantial edit densities (such as one edit every third of a second across 64 voices) or large amounts of crossfades, up to four drives may be required, allocated with 16 tracks per drive and two drives per SCSI channel. Pro Tools|24 systems (non-MIX) are limited to 32 tracks.

Additionally, these drives must meet the following requirements:

Minimum Drive 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 Windows Pro Tools|24 & MIX systems

  • Windows XP file system: FAT32 or NTFS
  • Windows 2000 file system: FAT32, FAT16 or NTFS
  • Drives should be formatted with Windows XP or 2000 disk administration without Dynamic Disk selected
  • HFS or HFS+ formatted drives supported when used with MacOpener version 5.0 or higher on Windows 2000
  • HFS or HFS+ formatted drives supported when used with MacOpener version 6.0.5 on Windows XP

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

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|24 MIX systems for the following:

  • Supported track count (per drive): 24 tracks per drive at 48 KHz/24-bit @ 500ms edit density
  • Maximum 2 drives for a total of 48 tracks
For more information and specific requirements, see FireWire Drive Requirements

Approximate Storage Consumption (Megabytes per Minute per Track)

Sample Rate (kHz)
44.1
48
16-Bit — MB per Min
5
5.5
24-Bit — MB per Min
7.5
8

Notes

  • Pro Tools has a single audio file size limit of 2048 MB, regardless of which operating system is used. 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 and Windows 2000 are 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®.