001 question

[:prime-rate:]

i just got a 001 (i know, a little late...) and i was wondering - is it possible to install the software to an external firewire drive? Would this make any sense? My concern is having to lose all the stuff that's on my internal hard drive if i reformat it, which im willing to do but i just wanted to check. I was planning on getting a new firewire drive anyway and i was wondering if i could just install LE on that drive. Thanks. BTW om using XP.

[d franko]

Well if you wipe the system drive, it won't matter whether or not you have pro tools on a separate drive. All the registration and install information will be lost when you format the system drive, so pro tools will be without necessary files, and will not run. It's not hard to reinstall pro tools.

[@?,*???&?]

If you're using a MAC you won't be able to do that. The Pro Tools application has extensions, control panels and preferences which will all be placed in the system folder on whichever disc is deemed the startup drive. Putting the program on the firewire drive and then having all of the peripheral items on the internal will only slow the program down. I believe this concept applies to the PC domain as well- although there are no extensions in that format though. The DAE or it's equivalent will be placed with the system as well. I'd suggest taking this time to get cozy with what you really need on that main drive. If you're like me, there's much you can clean off or even back-up and remove. Being fanatical about the maintenance of your drives should become your burden now. File maintenance is absolutely essential.

[TapeOpHillary]

yeah, bottom line...if you want to put PT on an external drive of any kind, you gotta install a separate system folder on that drive as well...

not a horrible thing to have 2 system folders (on 2 different drives) - there's debate about this.

you could always boot from the firewire drive...
and reformat your internal drive that way too.

[:prime-rate:]

so i guess the sensible thing to do is just use my internal drive for live recording, and then store everything on the external drive? I mean, that's pretty simple - the only othr system i've worked extensively on was an 888 system on MAC, but i could run my sessions from a 120 GB firewire drive. I didn't set up the system, i just use it. and i know it works... So my question is, if i have protools LE installed on my internal drive, can i run sessions entirely from an external firewire drive? Or do i have to use in the internal drive and transfer them all later? Thanks.

[d franko]

So my question is, if i have protools LE installed on my internal drive, can i run sessions entirely from an external firewire drive? Or do i have to use in the internal drive and transfer them all later? Thanks.

You can use the firewire drive as storage, and run pro tools off the system drive. Once you create the session on the firewire drive it should save all the data on that drive.

[mandalamala]

Digidesign suggests that you create and store your sessions on a different drive than the system drive as d franco describes. I usually run protools along with the OS and all other software off the system drive while storing my session data to a different internal drive (on a different IDE channel). I have always wanted to try firewire as the sessions drive for portability and I think this would work great.

I'm interested to hear how your experiences once you get something working.

[PT]

...And what's the deal with using more that one external hard drive in a "round robin"?

There was another post in the computer section about this. Can someone give some detail about how this works and why it's a good idea?

I noticed under preferences or somewhere that you can set up PT to use the round robin action.

I'm just learning the program and haven't got my external drive yet. I will once I'm ready to record something for real. Should I buy two external drives while I'm at it?

[d franko]

I think round robin means; instead of writing all of the data to one drive, you can set it up to write to many different drives at the same time, meaning that the drives are only doing a small amount of work each.

please correct me if I am wrong...

[PT]

...thus increasing efficiency, I suppose?

But if it writes to two different hard drives, how do you keep track of your files? Are the different files for a session (the PT file, audio files, fade files, etc.) then stored on different hard drives?

[crookedsound]

I've had a 001 since it came out. I store my media on a separate drive from the startup drive. I have both an internal SCSI and an IDE that I recently purchased for video.
The sessions are broken up into different folders, but it isn't necessary to send different data to different media drives like they recommend for video. Just send the session to your external drive and run ProTools off of your main drive, you'll be fine.
I have actually recorded directly to my main drive (I'm running a G4 800 Quicksilver btw) and had no problems with it...but it makes me nervous for no reason other than I've heard it's not the best idea.
Make sure you use the Digidesign forum when you have questions. I had all kinds of minor adjustments I had to make early on while running it on an old Mac not supported by Digi for use with the 001. I was able to get pretty good and reliable performance due to the help of others on that board. Depending on what version you have of PT...they also have downloads for upgrades...including the 32 track version (not sure if it's for PC or not yet though)
Be warned...although those people are all using PT, they like to complain about Digidesign quite a bit.
Have Fun!!