An inSync reader inquires:
“Now that Mac OS8.1 supports bigger partition sizes, do I still need to partition my 4 gig Hard drive for use with Pro Tools?”
You don’t have to, but we recommend you do unless you are an experienced user. Even though the Mac OS partition size has increased, the file size limit is still 2 gig. Any time you arm a track for recording it tries to allocate all remaining space on the partition to that track. If you have a 4-gig partition (with all 4 gig available) then PT creates a 4-gig file. When the recording is complete PT “gives back” the unused space and you now have a normal sized file. However, there are a variety of circumstances that can lead to this temporarily larger file being a problem. If your first record passes on large drives are multitrack passes (you are recording several tracks at once) then you should never have a problem with large partitions because each track is a separate sound file and, as such, are not likely to get large enough to be a problem (even while recording).
One last point of note: The Mac OS now comes with an alternative hard drive formatting system called HFS Plus. This system, among other things, does support larger file sizes than the original HFS system. Unfortunately Pro Tools does not reliably support HFS Plus at this time (Pro Tools will not key if your drive is formatted this way). Maybe in the future…