Protools Home studio set up

Heya, any advice would be really appreciated -

I have a macbook (it has one firewire port) I'm looking at getting m-powered protools and a profire 2626 interface from m-audio. I have checked all the specs and this should be fine, however.....

I've read a lot, and it seems a lot of people suggest you shouldn't record onto your integrated hardrive - why?

What do I need to get instead?

and I only have one firewire port so If I use that for my interface, then I can't use it for an external hardrive :s ....?

I'm slightly confused! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks, Tom

you should use external hd for recording with pro tools.try this chain.
computer to audiointerface to externalhd.use only firewire 400,if your computer output firewire 800 use an adapter.your external hd should be 7200rpm.i use westerndigital and lacie myself.M-powered beeing installed in the mac of course.;D

Hey Tom,

I haven't checked in here for a minute. If you haven't already gotten your answers, hopefully this will help a little...

I recently got an iMac. I daisy-chained the external hard drive off the interface. The interface is plugged directly into the computer. The hard-drive is plugged into the interface (Presonus Firebox). It might not be necessary, but I use an external power supply for both units just for less stress on the computer's power supply.

I purchased the following 750gb drive from OWC...
750GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 7200RPM 32... (MEAQ7750GB32) at OWC

You don't have to get a 750gb drive from OWC, but try to get something with a 16 or 32mb cache, (the above drive is 32mb and it's plenty zippy).

The above hard drive has both 800 & 400 firewire ports. It also comes with cables. However, since my iMac is firewire 800, and the interfaces are pretty much all 400fw still, I purchased an 800-to-400 adapter cable. I think they probably have fw400 only drives too. I just wanted options.

This set-up has worked perfectly for me so far. I plugged everything in and it literally worked right out of the box.

To answer your other question... My understanding is that a dedicated drive for audio files keeps things clean and fast. If the files are on the system hard drive they can (supposedly) get fragmented (??). Also, the computer can supposedly get bogged down while performing menial system tasks, and running applications & plug-ins while trying to access audio file data.

Hope that helps! Keep us posted!

Best,
Dave

compura said:

use only firewire 400,if your computer output firewire 800 use an adapter.

Click to expand...

I've never heard this...why?

Cheers LiddleBuddha and compura, this really helps