Pro Tools Error

[Catoogie]

I have been transferring some audio cassettes to Pro Tools recently but my computer temportarily locks up and I get the following error:

DAE Can't get audio fast enough from the drive(s) fast enough. Your drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to the extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load. (-9073).

Here are the specifics. I have a 2.0 Dual Core G5 into which I recently installed a Western Digital Serial ATA Hard Drive (WDC WD4000K0-00NAB0) dedicated to audio. I moved all of my audio files (mp3's, wave's and the entire Pro Tools Sessions Folder into it).

Any suggestions? Should my Pro Tools folder (the actual application) be on the system hard drive or the new audio drive? It is currently on the system drive. Is it having a problem retrieving the audio from the new drive? Please help.

Thanks

[digitaldrummer]

its probably something else. running antivirus? active network ports? Pro Tools does some weird stuff sometimes. start disabling things you don't need until it works again.

[palinilap]

The Digidesign folder needs to reside in the Applications folder. It has to be on the system drive. If this started immediately after running sessions off the WD then maybe it's an issue with that drive. Perhaps try reformatting and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? A lot of compatibility information can be found here:

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?lan ... emid=23142

[Catoogie]

The Digidesign folder is still on the applications drive, the Pro Toos Sessions folder is on my Audio Drive.

I'll check out the suggestions. Thanks. Please keep them coming.

[@?,*???&?]

-9073 and -9128 are two of the most prevalent errors Pro Tools produces. Your drive is too slow or too fragmented. You are ending up with a break in the data flow feeding the buffers.

How many drives are you running?

How big are they?

How fast are they?

How full are they?

[Catoogie]

I have two drives. Application drive is the original WD with maybe 35-40 gb's left. The new Audio drive is also a WD 7200 with like 325gb left.

This computer is used for recording only, not connected to the internet. And I'm getting these errors when Pro Tools is the only application running. No plug-ins. It happened when I had 1 stereo track, I thought that might be the problem because I had 4 songs (appox 16 minutes of audio) so I cut the songs up and put them on their own stereo tracks..........same problem.

[@?,*???&?]

I just posted this in another thread, but it relates here:

Here are some hard numbers from an application I use called 'Timedrive' of some of the drives in my system.

I have many hard drives, but these numbers are for only 3 of them.

I use a Mac G4 with an OWC 1.5 Ghz processor. Buss speed is 99Mhz.

Main system drive is a Maxtor 7200 rpm 10 GB in Size. It's numbers look like this:

Latency: .260 ms
Average Seek Time: 7.442ms
Maximum Seek Time: 13.013ma
Write transfer rate: 23928 Kbps
Read transfer rate: 24774 Kbps
Typical Rate: 1923 Kbps

This is an ATA/IDE drive.

A second Maxtor Data 7200 rpm drive that is 120GB in size looks like this:

Latency: .104
Average Seek Time: 6.686ms
Maximum Seek Time: 13.067ms
Write transfer rate: 11878 Kbps
Read transfer rate: 13931 Kbps
Typical Rate: 1251 Kbps

This drive is partitioned into small 14 GB sections.

A third Seagate Cheetah 10000 rpm SCSI drive that is 18 GB in size looks like this:

Latency: 2.986
Average Seek Time: 2.083ms
Maximum Seek Time: 6.931ma
Write transfer rate: 13516 Kbps
Read transfer rate: 17860 Kbps
Typical Rate: 909 Kbps

This last drive is hooked up internally to an Adaptec Power Domain 29160 SCSI card.

Interesting that the Maximum seek time drops on the 10000 rpm to half what it does on a 7200 rpm drive. Data transfer rate remains about the same though. More interesting is that the most efficient drive of the bunch is the main system drive.

Could an argument be made to have a large main drive partitioned so that system is on one small area and the data is stored on another?

Maybe.

[@?,*???&?]

I have two drives. Application drive is the original WD with maybe 35-40 gb's left. The new Audio drive is also a WD 7200 with like 325gb left.

This computer is used for recording only, not connected to the internet. And I'm getting these errors when Pro Tools is the only application running. No plug-ins. It happened when I had 1 stereo track, I thought that might be the problem because I had 4 songs (appox 16 minutes of audio) so I cut the songs up and put them on their own stereo tracks..........same problem.

This is your problem.

You probably have your record allocation set to 'use all available space' on your 325 GB drive. Not recommended. In your preferences, under the 'operations' menu, set a 10 minute limit to that and your drive will work much more efficiently. Try and keep that length slightly larger than the length of the song you are working on.