odd OSX problem.

[mylesgm]

Here's an odd problem. Working on my 2011 macbook pro OSX 10.7.5, 2 internal HD (1x SSD for OS and 1x 7200rpm for audio), PT9. Not just my PT rig but also my only computer at the moment so all my email etc.

When in use the OS drive slowly fills up until I get an error message saying OS drive is full and all the programs pause. I have not been copying additional data to the drive. I close all the programs and restart the computer and magically there is 15-20gb free immediately. Over the course of the next day or so of work HD fills up again and then error message returns. When running PT and especially when tracking projects regardless of how track intensive they are I will get very occasional error message stopping recording because the computer can't access the drive fast enough. This is regardless of no other program being open and I might be recording only 8 tracks, no plugins etc. This happens very occasionally but it is annoying and I think the issues are related. Clearly something is constantly copying some sort of data to the OS drive which would be using bandwidth and access times though no issues with the audio drive. Any ideas?

[audioio]

Have you tried running diagnostics? DiskUtility or "sudo fsck -fy" in the Terminal?

[Text_Edifice]

How much ram do you have?

My gut instinct is that temp files are chewing up the hard-drive and creating problems - I have experienced similar kinds of behaviour when the harddrive is almost full (<3GB free). Wonder if it might be disk issues too? 10.6 was notorious for creating all sorts of file structure / indexing / disk issues.

[Drumstruck]

Interesting Myles.... I have a very similar setup (2011 MBP i7 / 8GB / 5400 system drive / USB3 7200 data drive) running PT9HD (i.e. CPTK)....

I don't get the O/S drive full message because I have a 750GB system drive BUT I do get the same error message with PT halting occassionally (error nnnn: can't access drive fast enough). Sometimes a whole session goes by with no issues / sometimes the error appears 3 times in a row / sometimes it appears even before I've laid down a track ..... Am using no plugs here either.

I think they're separate issues with your O/S issue being the system drive is filling up via virtual memory or a memory leak (I suspect PT has the memory leak).

The data drive access has perplexed me for some time. It's not the hardware or bussing because I never get that message using Reaper - I suspect it's PT specific - perhaps what we sarcastically call a special feature in the IT world.....

[mylesgm]

Any suggestions on what I can do to resolve the hard drive issue?

[Text_Edifice]

I don't know wht , but certain versions of pt don't like certain o/s and hardware configurations. PT9 works fine for me under 10.6 but I have resisted upgrading o/s because of concerns something will break.

Can you go to 10?

[mylesgm]

I could go to PT10 and I intend to but I'm in the middle of several projects and so don't want to do all the changes right now as I'll have to update osx, UAD, plugins etc. Was hoping to book a few days free to do this all at once and to give me some breathing space.

[Text_Edifice]

Also, sorry if you've done this but Bluetooth, WiFi and spotlight can all cause weirdness and I disable these and keep on top of disk permissions on my laptop when recording and mixing.

[mylesgm]

how do you manage disk permissions?

[Text_Edifice]

Disk repair or a programming called onyx. In the back of my memory there's a bell ringing about system drives and spotlight indexing under 10.7; I think the process of stopping the indexing (that can cause the disk too slow errors) needs to be done via a terminal command.

[gigpiglet]

spotlight indexing can definitely be an issue..
but - as you can see
there is probably no hard and fast "answer" to this one!

[Drumstruck]

Any suggestions on what I can do to resolve the hard drive issue?

In the old days you could allocate the amount of virtual memory / swap file you wanted - I couldn't find where to amend this in 10.7 - it looks like it's a no-option setting - hopefully some smarter Mac guy will know where this is....

fwiw SSDs have a limited write threshold - after that threshold is reached you can no longer write to the disk - I assume this would impact virtual mem writes....

You can deselect the Spotlight search settings or apply exclusions in System Preferences -> Spotlight.