Do's ans Don't's for a Crash free DP

[XYZ]

Free BSD UNIX, which is the base operating system for Macs usually recommends getting more disk space once you start approaching 10% free space for what it is worth.

[dpg4macman]

Most of what I've been reading here I actually do. : ) I use seperate drives for media, apps, etc.. I always bounce to a seperate drive from the one I am working the session on. I use a G4 800 with 1.5 gig ram and three hard drives. The only time I will have issues is when I try using more plugins than my processor can handle. VI's are hogs as well so I tend to stick with outboard MIDI. I'm constantly learning tricks to maximize my track count like burning the effect to the track and then removing it from the loop (compressors, EQ, etc...) Since I've been reading forums here and learning different techneques I haven't had a "crash" in months. I've never cleared history and I stopped deleting unused soundbits because I was saving multi takes as Bla.v1, Bla.v2,etc...
And along the way I was bouncing tracks together and so I found the hard way if I deleted unused soundbites they would not be available for me in the earlier session. (I admit I did receive a warning - I ignored) No crashes lately to report.

dpg4macman

[arion]

After having continously crashez, quits on save, etc finally I cleaned my disk containing audio and voila - ALL PROBLEMS ARE GONE.
LEAVE ALWAYS 50 % OF YOUR DISK FREE.
I have been working - sometimes relaxed - without problems for 4 weeks after one year suffering.
( Yes the start was also fine, untill my disk became 90% full. )
I never got a hint tot this direction from the supports of the suspected manufacturers.

g5 Quad ppc, 8G RAM, osx 10.4.11, dp 5.13, mach5, msi, MIO 2882, micro express

And finally my happy statement was false. The crash on stopping the record process came back. That has no connection to the amount of free disk capacity. Sorry.

[José Herring]

How many crashes in an average workday do you guys experience?

[croftish]

How many crashes in an average workday do you guys experience?

If I'm using Play's Voices Of Passion or the Trilogy/Atmos wrapper, then around 10.
If not then 0.05!

[daniel.sneed]

Around 0.02 crash a day.

And some very rare COQ with no consequences at all.

[José Herring]

That's very reassuring.

Thanks!

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

I'm finding that if I listen to my little hard drives clicking away and wait until they stop after something like a recording pass, or edit or something, I rarely have some of the crashes I used to often get when hitting rewind right after recording a new take or throwing a bunch of commands at it before it's done writing all the last batch of 1's and 0's...

I can be pretty demanding on my gear when I'm working fast, but I guess (if this is actually accurate) it could be learning to listen to your machines kind of like you listen to your car. You know when your car is starting to struggle; either revving too high or even pinging, or grinding gears, so you might back off a little and work with it...

My G5 and external drives are right under my desk so it's pretty easy for me to hear them. Another solution I guess could be a utility that graphically shows you drive access.

So I wonder how many of my huge crash and burns could have been saved by this technique and I wonder if this is a feature MOTU could add to DP. (The "Let your hard drives catch up" preference : )

[daniel.sneed]

I agree with you RecordingArts.
Allowing needed time to DP and the hard drives is a good habit (should I say *hobbit* ?).

If your setup si prone to crash, investigate in this direction is a must.

BTW the small Activity Monitor floating CPU bar (one for each, in case multiple processors) is very usefull to learn what is happening under the hood.
It's always on in my setup.

BTW my Seagate HD is totally silent !

[ramadev]

Another solution I guess could be a utility that graphically shows you drive access.

MenuMeters works well for me; it shows HD access, CPU usage, memory and network status in the menu bar. And it's free.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10451

Also here:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17713

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Thanks : )

Another solution I guess could be a utility that graphically shows you drive access.

MenuMeters works well for me; it shows HD access, CPU usage, memory and network status in the menu bar. And it's free.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10451

Also here:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17713

[monkey man]

Another solution I guess could be a utility that graphically shows you drive access.

MenuMeters works well for me; it shows HD access, CPU usage, memory and network status in the menu bar. And it's free.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10451

Also here:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17713

Thank you, ramadev!

Whilst not official, folks reckon it runs fine under Leopard.
I noticed you don't appear to be running Leo yet.
Would you risk it? (my system suffers from quite a few unexplained issues).

[ramadev]

Thank you, ramadev!

You're quite welcome Mr. Monkey, I hope it works poo-fectly for you. And you're welcome too RecordingArts. Always glad to be of service; I've learned so much here, so I'm grateful for an opportunity to contribute.

I noticed you don't appear to be running Leo yet.
Would you risk it? (my system suffers from quite a few unexplained issues).

I sure will, as soon as I finish a couple of reeeeaallyy old projects that one client just can't let go of. I'm reluctant to upgrade the OS in the middle of these very large projects; we're actually still in DP 4.61 for these, and we started them in DP 3.0!! (Yes I did upgrade to OSX and DP 4.12 & 4.61 during these sessions after meticulously backing up and crossing my fingers.)

But my system is also having a few issues, notably the ol' "error message = -199" one. Seems some files won't open on my system, but they do open on others. I've tried removing audio files, trashing analysis & fade files, removing plugs, and loading into a new project - nothing has worked. Doesn't matter if I try DP 4.61 or DP 5.13. I may have to wipe the drive and start over. Maybe I'll just save up for a Mac Pro; that would probably be easier in the long run since the G5 is usually running at 70-80% CPU usage on both processors, according to MenuMeters.

[monkey man]

Thank you, ramadev!

You're quite welcome Mr. Monkey, I hope it works poo-fectly for you.

LOL! Thank you mate.
I must be an easy room, 'cause I'm still laughing at your poo joke.

I noticed you don't appear to be running Leo yet.
Would you risk it? (my system suffers from quite a few unexplained issues).

I sure will, as soon as I finish a couple of reeeeaallyy old projects that one client just can't let go of. I'm reluctant to upgrade the OS in the middle of these very large projects; we're actually still in DP 4.61 for these, and we started them in DP 3.0!! (Yes I did upgrade to OSX and DP 4.12 & 4.61 during these sessions after meticulously backing up and crossing my fingers.)

But my system is also having a few issues, notably the ol' "error message = -199" one. Seems some files won't open on my system, but they do open on others. I've tried removing audio files, trashing analysis & fade files, removing plugs, and loading into a new project - nothing has worked. Doesn't matter if I try DP 4.61 or DP 5.13. I may have to wipe the drive and start over. Maybe I'll just save up for a Mac Pro; that would probably be easier in the long run since the G5 is usually running at 70-80% CPU usage on both processors, according to MenuMeters.

Sounds reasonable - take the king hit and get it out of the way... after you've finished that project, eh?
Good luck man.

FWIMBW, I dread the day I won't be able to load an old project, in fact I expect it seeing as I've around 200 unfinished songs.

[monkey man]

Update:

MenuMeters, whether I use the installer or drag the extracted Pref Pane to the relevant folder, always disables MainMenu, a utility I run in the background and that I use for my shut-down routine.
No amount of app launching (MainMenu) remedies the situation.
The MainMenu bar icon disappears the instant one clicks the "display" checkbox under any of the various MenuMeters tabs.

Just a heads-up to watch out for that one; I'm not convinced MenuMeters is Leo-compatible yet, even though folks have said it runs fine for them.