Today's tip comes from one of our friends at Digidesign and should answer a bunch of questions we've been getting lately.

Remember, Pro Tools LE software works with either the AMIII card (Toolbox XP) or with the 001 hardware. In either case, the hard drive requirements are different than they are with TDM systems. With TDM systems we REQUIRE SCSI drives. With LE systems, we don't. Here's a quote from Steve Rosenthal, the Digi-Guru of hard drives:

"You don't need a SCSI drive with PTLE/001, though you most certainly can use one. A 7200RPM ATA drive that supports UltraDMA 33 or 66 will perform well. It's true you can record and play back from your system drive, but it's generally safer -- as well as higher performance -- to use a separate audio drive. Partitioning your drive to create separate apps and audio volumes doesn't really improve the situation, since everything is still on the same drive. Plus, if the drive fails for one reason or another, you'll lose both your apps and your audio files. If you keep a separate physical drive for audio, you gain some protection by keeping things isolated. Adding an additional ATA drive to a G4 is a pretty simple and cost effective thing to do. Well worth it for LE."

So basically what he's saying is that with LE (Toolbox or 001), you can record to the internal ATA drive that comes with the G4's. It's not the ideal way to go, but it will work. And for a second, dedicated audio drive, you can use either a SCSI drive, or a second ATA drive. Just make sure the ATA drive supports UltraDMA 33 or 66. These ATA drives are significantly less expensive than SCSI drives, and they will support the full 24 tracks of an LE system.