User`s guide

Chapter 8: Record Setup 79
Recording to Multiple Hard
Drives
To increase system performance, Pro Tools
lets you record each track to different hard
drive.
Since Pro Tools III systems use a Disk I/O
card for SCSI connections, it may not be
necessary to allocate tracks to multiple
drives. However, using Round Robin Allo-
cation can minimize the performance bur-
den on a single drive.
To record to multiple hard drives:
1 Choose Setups > Disk Allocation.
2 In the Disk Allocation dialog, assign a
hard drive for each track by clicking in the
Record Drive column.
To assign all tracks to the same hard drive,
press Option (Macintosh) or Alt (Windows)
while selecting a drive name.
3 To automatically distribute any newly
created tracks among the drives connected
to your system, select “Use Round Robin
Allocation for New Tracks.”
If you are using Round Robin Allocation
and want audio to be recorded to your sys-
tem’s startup drive, select Include System
Volume (see “Recording to the System Vol-
ume” on page 80 for details).
4 When you are finished, Click OK.
When recording, each track is routed to the
selected drive. If Round Robin Allocation is
enabled, new tracks are automatically allo-
cated to subsequent hard drives. A folder
with the session name is created on each
hard drive, containing folders for “Audio
Files” and “Fade Files.”
To save Disk Allocation settings for use
with future sessions, save the session as a
template. For details, see “Creating Custom
Session Templates” on page 48.
Disk Allocation and Cross-Platform
Sessions
Pro Tools for Windows supports recording
and playback of audio from multiple hard
drives, but to ensure cross-platform opera-
tion, it also requires that Macintosh
Pro Tools sessions and their associated
audio files be on Macintosh-formatted
(HFS) drives.
Similarly, Windows sessions and their asso-
ciated audio files must reside on Windows-
formatted (FAT16) drives. If you want to
share sessions between Windows and Mac-
intosh platforms, consider these restric-
tions when allocating tracks to drives.
Disk Allocation dialog