2TB-4TB eSata

[lukpac]

Since you keep editing your posts after the fact...

noone else here would be as foolish to attempt what u are doing because we understand this introduces + increases the chance for problems.
besides that its over kill. and YOU ARE WASTING 50% OF THE DRIVES CAPACITY!!!

So what? Drives are cheap, and this particular model has been noted as being quite reliable. What does it matter to you if all of the capacity isn't used?

Why would a large drive increase the chance for problems if the "extra" space is never being accessed in the first place?

use a normal size drive. (500gb, 750gb, 1TB, 2TB --- NOT 4 TB)

"normal size"? What exactly is that? Is that defined somewhere?

Do you know that a 2 TB drive will work with Pro Tools? How about a 1 TB drive? Do you have experience with this? How about partition size? How large of a partition can Pro Tools handle successfully?

If nobody knows those specifics, that's fine. But it's pretty foolish to simply say "it wont work lol" when you don't know.

make a fileserver.
store your files on your server
copy them to your dedicated audio drive when u need to.

When sessions can be 5 GB or larger, that isn't ideal.

LOL u are cracking me up bud..
u just dont want to give up eh?? hahaha i admire that.. but this is the wrong thing to be a stubborn bullheaded donkey about.

See above. Do you actually have answers to my specific questions or are you just going to LOL all day? You suggested using a 2 TB drive instead. If I partition that the same way, is it going to work with Pro Tools? Do you have experience? What about a 1 TB drive?

Asking specific questions isn't being stubborn. It's called troubleshooting.

[lukpac]

read the other threads on this forum where diehard explictly says not to use volumes larger then 190gb

Now we're on to something (maybe).

My 500 GB drive was split into volumes that were (if memory serves) about 155 GB. So it's possible that something around 190 GB is a problem for ProTools. Which, if true, is good to know.

It would mean the problems I've seen likely don't have to do with the drive size at all, but the fact that my data partitions are 970 GB each.

Tonight I'll see if I can find a spare drive and play with the partition sizes, using 190 GB as a benchmark.

[MacTron]

- In some cases 4TB HD seems to work, but when they are half filled are problematic.

This may be due to a erroneous format or any other weird cause, but the the Mac os 9 seems to deal ok with this drive until his capacity is filled up to 2TB, and afterwards everything goes wrong with this hard disk.

To be clear: the upper limit imposed by OS 9 is not based on a hardware limitation, but APM, which can only address 32 bits worth of blocks (for ~2 TB total).

Yes, this is the point.

I've read about (but not experienced, since I haven't tried it) size limitations for boot volumes. I wonder if there is a similar issue with Pro Tools.

Well, I don't know how Pro Tools was developed, but from my little experience as a Mac programer, it is usually, to have to choose between "old procedures" and "new procedures" for most of the things you wish to coded in Mac Os 9, this old routines usually have even more limits than the new ones, that's will explain some weird behavior of some Apps with large RAM partitions (over 1 GB) or big hard drives ( over 128 GB), while in other Apps, there isn't any problem, while the actual limits aren't reached.

[Knezzen]

Do you know that a 2 TB drive will work with Pro Tools? How about a 1 TB drive? Do you have experience with this? How about partition size? How large of a partition can Pro Tools handle successfully?

From experience I can add that a 400gb drive partitioned with one partition that takes up the whole drive works just fine in Pro Tools 5.1.3cs11. No issues to report what so ever. The only problem was defragmentation, but that got solved anyway.

The only reason I put in the 200gb drive when the 400gb failed was because it was what I had laying around.

[lukpac]

yes the underlying technologies support larger drives, but the OS hasnt been updated since 2002.

As I've repeatedly noted, OS 9 itself seems to be working fine. The issue is Pro Tools specific.

u must be a gambler..
im not.. i play it safe. risk is not exciting for me.
either that or you are a "more is better" obssessive compulsive... MUST have the biggest....
biggest does not always equal best

No, it's called I needed more space.

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_1086_210_212&item_id=057970
4tb drive =  Our Price $189.99

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_1086_210_212&item_id=042241
2tb drive = Our Price $99.99

u are wasting literally 100$ by even having this disk in the g4.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145912

$179.99, and when I bought it a few weeks ago it was only $164.99. And it's also been noted as being very reliable. Plus, I can use it in another machine in the future if I wish.

So again, why are you concerned with how much I spent for the drive?

- In some cases 4TB HD seems to work, but when they are half filled are problematic.

This may be due to a erroneous format or any other weird cause, but the the Mac os 9 seems to deal ok with this drive until his capacity is filled up to 2TB, and afterwards everything goes wrong with this hard disk.

What do you mean? It literally isn't possible to fill it up any more than 2 TB. It's not as if you have a 4 TB volume available that stops working at 2 TB; 2 TB is all that's available in the first place.

I've read about (but not experienced, since I haven't tried it) size limitations for boot volumes. I wonder if there is a similar issue with Pro Tools.

Well, I don't know how Pro Tools was developed, but from my little experience as a Mac programer, it is usually, to have to choose between "old procedures" and "new procedures" for most of the things you wish to coded in Mac Os 9, this old routines usually have even more limits than the new ones, that's will explain some weird behavior of some Apps with large RAM partitions (over 1 GB) or big hard drives ( over 128 GB), while in other Apps, there isn't any problem, while the actual limits aren't reached.

As far as I know, Pro Tools uses its own routines for disk access and bypasses the OS. This almost certainly explains why PT has a problem but other apps don't. I just don't know what the specific issue/limit with PT is.

Do you know that a 2 TB drive will work with Pro Tools? How about a 1 TB drive? Do you have experience with this? How about partition size? How large of a partition can Pro Tools handle successfully?

From experience I can add that a 400gb drive partitioned with one partition that takes up the whole drive works just fine in Pro Tools 5.1.3cs11. No issues to report what so ever. The only problem was defragmentation, but that got solved anyway.

The only reason I put in the 200gb drive when the 400gb failed was because it was what I had laying around.

Thank you. Good to know. Although, FYI, I believe I'm using 5.0.1.

[Knezzen]

Thank you. Good to know. Although, FYI, I believe I'm using 5.0.1.

No problem. Have you tried updating to 5.1.3cs11? Would be interesting to see if this issue is due to the 5.0 version of Pro Tools. There is alot of new features in 5.1.3, so I really recommend you to upgrade or at least try 5.1.3cs11 if you have a spare boot drive laying around for experimenting purposes.

Are you running a 24-system or a 24 MIX-system BTW?

[supernova777]

24 lengthy replys ive made to this thread already....
im done responding to this thread. this guy is trolling hard.
seriously .. noone answer this guys questions anymore.. hes just going to go on and on.
we dont work for digidesign + we arent your customer support.
everyone here has already gone head over heels to provide u with the information u need to know.
but its not good enough, because u are too stubborn to listen to whats being told to you.

but why.? but why?
f*&kin read.. for your damn self.

how f**king ignorant u must be to ask these questions when everyones told u not to do what you are doing and u keep doing it
and then make us go further out of our way to help u.. because u cant be bothered to listen to us.. the people who have gone out of our way to help people we dont even know... obviously im not answering in this thread JUST to help u but to make sure that the info is publicly available somewhere on the site..
and it will be found via search engines for others in the future.

[lukpac]

Thank you. Good to know. Although, FYI, I believe I'm using 5.0.1.

No problem. Have you tried updating to 5.1.3cs11? Would be interesting to see if this issue it due to the 5.0 version of Pro Tools. There is alot of new features in 5.1.3, so I really recommend you to upgrade.

Are you running a 24-system or a 24 MIX-system BTW?

It's actually LE, with a Digi 001 system. I guess I'm not sure exactly what updates are (were) available.

I see 5.1.1 is available here:

http://secure.avid.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm?digiArticleId=43852

Maybe I'll check that out tonight and see what happens. It would be nice if that solves the issue.

I'll keep you posted, and thanks again.

[Ed Redfern]

OK I'm going to shoot myself in the foot here but from my assessment of it, here goes.

you're using this as a media server right? ok here's an idea that really will make a difference. as is highlighted here. any hard drive above 2TB is pointless because of the various partition map formats not being able to handle anything over 2.2tb, here's a rather direct solution to this. find an X-Serve RAID which can handle basically more than a 4tb max of a single SATA 4TB, a fibre channel PCI-X card and set your G4 as a server to handle the X-Serve RAID as a media centre storage array. have the drives configured as RAID 1 striped or whatever you need depending on your drive capacity. bear in mind my suggestion links to using a stock of 500GB 7200RPM IDE drives loaded into an X-Serve RAID to give about 6TB or more storage. They are reliable as I've used one in a client's studio and often thought of owning one. still am thinking of it but did own an HP SureStore via SCSI as a system backup solution for the old G3.

it's just a thought of mine. please don't shoot me for the suggestion. trying to influence a G4 mac to handle top of the range brand new hardware  is like telling a budha to paint and decorate a mantion! lol

ed

[lukpac]

you're using this as a media server right?

Nope. 95% is for audio production, and maybe 80% of that is Pro Tools.

Thanks for the thought anyway, though.

[supernova777]

why do u i feel like im in a legal battle in a court case??
being asked to provide evidence... ORDER IN THE COURT..
i will find you in CONTEMPT!!

[Ed Redfern]

OK I'll give you a set of solutions that will work and you're talking to a protools tdm pro user that's worked with TDM 5.1.3 on a g3 beige for 14 years. in that time, I've designed a few mac setups for clients and friends depending on their needs and trialed them before they left.

It would be handy to be reminded of what mac you're using? if I understand it right an MDD?

OK here's a number of solutions available.

if it's a G4 MDD we're talking about then here's a spec I recommend.

Internal setup of your mac.

4 x 146GB or higher 15krpm SCSI HDD's either 68 pin or SCA80 (using SCA80 to HD68 pin connector adaptors and ATTO SCSI dual head controller. Set 1 as mastter, 3 as RAID for project support.

For large projects using  a mass array, I would use an external SCSI storage base with approx 16 drives (HP Storageworks or similar, or an X-Serve RAID. set up the X-Serve as your audio pool / scratch setup. IDE drives are fine for this. the reason I advise SCSI within the mac itself is due to efficiency of data in the mix system. SCSI has been used as the recommended standard for ProTools Mix based systems up until protools 8 where SATA became an open standard.

What is your protools setup consisting of? what cards are you using in your mac? are you connected to a magma chassis? how many channels of data are you working with in total?

When working with projects, larger drives aren't always the best options. work on spreading your data over a SAFE RAID ARRAY where data redundancy can be factored into the equation so that if a drive fails, the raid will rebuild once a new drive is installed.

this is what I'd consider a working spec.

If, however you wanted to upgrade to Protools TDM 6.4, I could help you there. that's if your mix system can handle that.

ed

[Ed Redfern]

it's ok chris. I know how you feel. me reading this with voiceover is the ultimate headache lol. wow, coffee anyone? think I'm going to chime out of this. the specifications proposed are not exactly stable and from experience, PT is a real drive breaker on the road. always worth having an emergency box of hard drives sealed safe.

anyway, how's it going?

ed

[lukpac]

OK I'll give you a set of solutions that will work and you're talking to a protools tdm pro user that's worked with TDM 5.1.3 on a g3 beige for 14 years. in that time, I've designed a few mac setups for clients and friends depending on their needs and trialed them before they left.

It would be handy to be reminded of what mac you're using? if I understand it right an MDD?

OK here's a number of solutions available.

if it's a G4 MDD we're talking about then here's a spec I recommend.

Internal setup of your mac.

4 x 146GB or higher 15krpm SCSI HDD's either 68 pin or SCA80 (using SCA80 to HD68 pin connector adaptors and ATTO SCSI dual head controller. Set 1 as mastter, 3 as RAID for project support.

For large projects using  a mass array, I would use an external SCSI storage base with approx 16 drives (HP Storageworks or similar, or an X-Serve RAID. set up the X-Serve as your audio pool / scratch setup. IDE drives are fine for this. the reason I advise SCSI within the mac itself is due to efficiency of data in the mix system. SCSI has been used as the recommended standard for ProTools Mix based systems up until protools 8 where SATA became an open standard.

What is your protools setup consisting of? what cards are you using in your mac? are you connected to a magma chassis? how many channels of data are you working with in total?

When working with projects, larger drives aren't always the best options. work on spreading your data over a SAFE RAID ARRAY where data redundancy can be factored into the equation so that if a drive fails, the raid will rebuild once a new drive is installed.

this is what I'd consider a working spec.

If, however you wanted to upgrade to Protools TDM 6.4, I could help you there. that's if your mix system can handle that.

ed

G4 MDD 1.25 GHz DP, 2 GB RAM
Pro Tools LE 5.0.1 with a Digi 001 interface
Mac OS 9.2.2

I was previously running an 80 GB drive on the ATA/66 controller as a boot drive (although I did have some data on it), plus a 500 GB drive on the ATA/100 controller, split into 3 equal partitions. Performance was never a problem.

I also have an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card installed (not for use with Pro Tools), as well as a SCSI card for a Plextor CD-RW drive and a film scanner. So 3 PCI cards total.

I got a new drive due to lack of space.

The new drive is on the ATA/100 controller (connected via a SATA to IDE adapter). Currently split into 1 100 GB volume and 2 970 GB volumes (leaving the upper ~2 GB unused). All 3 volumes work fine outside of Pro Tools. Files can be opened, moved, copied, etc.

Inside of Pro Tools, the 100 GB volume also works fine, exactly as it did with the previous drives. However, the 970 GB volumes have issues. Sessions open up fine, files import fine, and waveforms are displayed correctly, but during playback, the actual audio heard is often either noise or audio from a different file. The problem is not performance, the problem is Pro Tools accessing the wrong data.

"Use a smaller drive" isn't an answer, since at the moment nobody seems to know exactly what is causing the problem. I know a 500 GB drive split into 3 partitions works, and I know a 4 TB drive works with a 100 GB partition but not a 970 GB partition, but that leaves a lot of wiggle room in between, both in drive size and volume size. I'm guessing PT (at least LE 5.0.1) has a problem with volumes over a certain size (and 970 GB being over that size), but that isn't entire clear yet. As noted, a smaller drive may have exactly the same problem depending on how it is partitioned.

I appreciate your thoughts regardless, even if we're not really talking about the same thing.

[supernova777]

The new drive is on the ATA/100 controller (connected via a SATA to IDE adapter). Currently split into 1 100 GB volume and 2 970 GB volumes (leaving the upper ~2 GB unused). All 3 volumes work fine outside of Pro Tools. Files can be opened, moved, copied, etc.

Inside of Pro Tools, the 100 GB volume also works fine, exactly as it did with the previous drives. However, the 970 GB volumes have issues. Sessions open up fine, files import fine, and waveforms are displayed correctly, but during playback, the actual audio heard is often either noise or audio from a different file. The problem is not performance, the problem is Pro Tools accessing the wrong data.

Because the first 100gb is within NORMAL DATA RANGE that was CURRENT when the FUCKING PROGRAM WAS WRITTEN. god u are thick bud..
WE DONT KNOW THE SOURCE CODE OF PRO TOOLS DUDE SO IM SORRY THE LEVEL OF EVIDENCE YOU ARE *REQUIRING* FROM US ISNT GOING TO BE EXPLICIT + HARD EVIDENCE

"Use a smaller drive" isn't an answer, since at the moment nobody seems to know exactly what is causing the problem. I know a 500 GB drive split into 3 partitions works, and I know a 4 TB drive works with a 100 GB partition but not a 970 GB partition, but that leaves a lot of wiggle room in between, both in drive size and volume size. I'm guessing PT (at least LE 5.0.1) has a problem with volumes over a certain size (and 970 GB being over that size), but that isn't entire clear yet. As noted, a smaller drive may have exactly the same problem depending on how it is partitioned.

I appreciate your thoughts regardless, even if we're not really talking about the same thing.

re read the damn thread
im not about to write a fucking 20,000 page report (oh but i almost have havent i?) to you illustrating the other 100's of threads where we hve covered topics relative to this. but trust me we have.. and thats why i said.. READ.. for your *Damn self*.. the info is here on this site.. we have all worked hard to ensure that..but even re-reading your own posts you have written yourself there is evidence enough to come to the right conclusion... that u refuse to accept.

just because it appears to be 'workng fine' doesnt mean that it will continue to do so once u get past x% capacity on the partitions u have made..

bugs are always like this in this operating system.. because there is no subsystem to handle such problems.. things will go from "Seemingly ok" to
"critical failure" in an instant..  which is why i told u.. you are asking for trouble even using this disk in a g4.. mactron told u.. u are in unexplored territory..
i told u u are a gambler.... u are asking for UNPREDICTABLE RESULTS.... most people with common sense by then would listen and say.." ok my data is important to me.. im not going to push my luck.."

everyone take note hes also got 2gb of ram installed in mac os 9..
*facepalm*

hold on while i knock my head against the wall repeatedly

RECCOMMENDATIONS:
take out 1gb of ram.. and lose the 4tb drive.

MORE does not always equal BETTER (ie this is one of those times)

[Ed Redfern]

solved your problem in a flash my friend. here's the issue. you've just given some key areas of the problem. you're connecting a 4tb hdd to the ATA/100 bus via an IDE to SATA drive adaptor so that protools uses this drive. here's the problem. that type of adaptor isn't stable for data caching for projects and isn't recommended. my advice here is to use a silicon image compatible PCI SATA controller card. I've recently acquired one from Ebay with 4 channel support for a very good price. the issue also surrounds the drive in question if the drive speed is below 7200rpm which most 4tb drives are, there's your other problem. Digidesign hardware needs to work with 7200rpm drives or higher, hence my SCSI recommendations.

as for hard drive space, my heavens, I've recorded full 48 track live sessions in protools TDM 5.1.3 via a series of scsi 146gb drives at one time and still had plenty to work with.

I'd seriously consider looking into moving to tdm 5.1.3 with a mix plus system. you'll get more out of it.

ed

to clarify my comment. I would use 4 x 2TB HDD's SATA spec on a 4 channel PCI SATA controller and run from that point.

ed

[lukpac]

Because the first 100gb is within NORMAL DATA RANGE that was CURRENT when the FUCKING PROGRAM WAS WRITTEN.
WE DONT KNOW THE SOURCE CODE OF PRO TOOLS DUDE SO IM SORRY THE LEVEL OF EVIDENCE YOU ARE *REQUIRING* FROM US ISNT GOING TO BE EXPLICIT + HARD EVIDENCE

I require nothing. But if you don't know the answer, which you clearly don't, why do you keep responding? Especially when you already stated that you wouldn't be responding anymore.

Previously you've recommended a 2 TB drive, which is presumably outside of the "normal data range" when PT 5.0.1 was written. Heck, 500 GB was too, but we already know that works fine.

There are plenty of known limitations with old hardware and software. We know exactly why only ~2 TB of the drive can be used with OS 9, for example. There are various other known issues. But what we're talking about now - Pro Tools not reading files correctly that other programs can - isn't a known issue.

"Use a smaller drive" isn't an answer, since at the moment nobody seems to know exactly what is causing the problem. I know a 500 GB drive split into 3 partitions works, and I know a 4 TB drive works with a 100 GB partition but not a 970 GB partition, but that leaves a lot of wiggle room in between, both in drive size and volume size. I'm guessing PT (at least LE 5.0.1) has a problem with volumes over a certain size (and 970 GB being over that size), but that isn't entire clear yet. As noted, a smaller drive may have exactly the same problem depending on how it is partitioned.

I appreciate your thoughts regardless, even if we're not really talking about the same thing.

re read the damn thread
im not about to write a fucking 20,000 page report to you illustrating the other 100's of threads where we hve covered topics relative to this. but trust me we have.. and thats why i said.. READ.. for your *Damn self*.. the info is here on this site.. we have all worked hard to ensure that.

I've read the thread. The answer doesn't lie here. Hence the continued conversation.

solved your problem in a flash my friend. here's the issue. you've just given some key areas of the problem. you're connecting a 4tb hdd to the ATA/100 bus via an IDE to SATA drive adaptor so that protools uses this drive. here's the problem. that type of adaptor isn't stable for data caching for projects and isn't recommended. my advice here is to use a silicon image compatible PCI SATA controller card. I've recently acquired one from Ebay with 4 channel support for a very good price. the issue also surrounds the drive in question if the drive speed is below 7200rpm which most 4tb drives are, there's your other problem. Digidesign hardware needs to work with 7200rpm drives or higher, hence my SCSI recommendations.

as for hard drive space, my heavens, I've recorded full 48 track live sessions in protools TDM 5.1.3 via a series of scsi 146gb drives at one time and still had plenty to work with.

I'd seriously consider looking into moving to tdm 5.1.3 with a mix plus system. you'll get more out of it.

ed

to clarify my comment. I would use 4 x 2TB HDD's SATA spec on a 4 channel PCI SATA controller and run from that point.

ed

It's a 7200 RPM drive.

Have you run into this problem with a SATA adapter before? If it was the adapter, why would the 100 GB partition work without problems?

[lukpac]

just because it appears to be 'workng fine' doesnt mean that it will continue to do so once u get past x% capacity on the partitions u have made..

Past what capacity? As previously noted, it isn't physically possible to write any data past ~2 TB, since there are no partitions in that space.

And as for 2 GB of RAM, 1) that was the way the machine came when I got it (used), and 2) I also use OS X sometimes. So facepalm away.

[supernova777]

just because it appears to be 'workng fine' doesnt mean that it will continue to do so once u get past x% capacity on the partitions u have made..

Past what capacity? As previously noted, it isn't physically possible to write any data past ~2 TB, since there are no partitions in that space.

And as for 2 GB of RAM, 1) that was the way the machine came when I got it (used), and 2) I also use OS X sometimes. So facepalm away.

DUDE WE HAVE TOLD U>> MANY TIMES
ITS NOT RECCOMMENDED TO USE A 4TB DRIVE
U ARE ASKING FOR PROBLEMS
U ARE ASKING FOR UNPREDICTABLE RESULTS & HEADACHES

^^^^ RE-READ THESE LINES

why dont u call up digidesign + ask them if its ok to use a 4tb drive with pt5

i cant wait for u to post back..
"hey guys i reduced my ram + my drive capacity + Alls good now! whaddya kno!! maybe the guy with 5000 posts on the forum might have a fuckign clue what hes talkijng about afterall"

[supernova777]

also;
pro tools le 5.01 also was made during or just before the time that the B&W G3 was brand new...
this would be sometime in ***1999***
2-3 years before the mdd was even made

please meditate on that fact for abit

carefully re-examine
http://archive.digidesign.com/compato/os9/001/



gee i wonder why theres no MDD on this list..

by the time the mdd was out.. pro tools 5 was old news to the digi development team and they were working to get up to speed on developing for osx...
the program u are using wasnt even written to be used on that computer.. because that computer didnt even exist when it was written.
during the whole time that 9.2.2 was the current os there was no pro tools major revisions at all.. it was still running off the old code.. (that dated far back into the early 90s) they did some small work (ie putting out the 32 track update.. updates to the tdm systems etcc) but really this app was the same old pro tools from yeras before that had been updated ever so slightly..

EVEN THE DIGI002 page doesnt mention so much as a QS Model
http://archive.digidesign.com/compato/os9/002/

now.. examine THIS page;
http://archive.digidesign.com/compato/osx/001/g4.cfm
notice how THIS PAGE references the MDD...
pro tools 6 was written pretty much 100% for the MDD..
truth be told. mac os x was very much already in the picture before they designed + created the mdd machines... they were totally invented + created to run mac os x!!!! originally tested probably running puma + cheetah.. jaguar would come out end of summer 2002

there is a good possibility that the 5.1.1 update can solve some of your problems..... and it is definately reccommended that u use 5.1.1 over 5.0.1
ESPECIALLY if you are using an MDD...

http://archive.digidesign.com/support/readme/PT_5.0.1_ReadMe.pdf
dated 05/16/2000

examine this document closer
http://archive.digidesign.com/support/compat/compatodocs501.pdf
and u will see that pt 5.01 REQUIRES mac os 8.6 or 9.0 (ie: these are versions of the os that came before 9.2.2 or the hardware that runs on 9.2.2) and the ram requirements were spelled out in a few hundred MEGAbytes not Gigabytes..

http://archive.digidesign.com/support/compat/compatodocs53.pdf
this document seems to be updated to mention 9.2.2 but interesting to note they still reccommend G4 (AGP) as the highly reccommended option... i guess they extendended the definition of this, which orignally referred to the sawtooth 400/450/500 AGP... to also include the QS/MDD machines which as we know are also G4 + also use AGP graphics ports.

more support docs here:
http://archive.digidesign.com/support/docs/

u can read thru all of these documents..the "answer" lukpac is looking for doesnt exist..
in a document because nowhere will they mention an upper limit of partition size because there wasnt one... because there were no 1tb or 2 tb or 4tb drives existing then..  in 1999 when pro tools 5.01 was written, 20gb was a large drive size, and there was barely 40gb drives. do u understand how radically different the internals of a 4tb sata drive is compared to a 40gb ata hard drive?

see this article: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9901/21/honkin.idg/

Hard drive experts often talk of a "sweet spot," the drive capacity where dollars-per-megabyte and supply converge to create the most popular configuration. "In 1998, the sweet spot was around 4GB," says Robert Katzive, an analyst at Disk/Trend. "In the next year, it should be somewhere in the 5GB to 10GB range," Katzive says, with 6GB or 8GB the most likely capacity.

The top size of the most expensive desktop drives could easily be nearly two times the 16.8GB that IBM reached in early 1998 with its DeskStar 16GP drive. "We're looking at a 30GB drive by the time the year 2000 rolls around, and for $200," predicts Martin Reynolds, another Gartner Group analyst.

so there u go - when pro tools LE 5.01 was put on the market... a 30gb drive was the normal size. 80gb drives would be coming out in the months that followed.

heres another article on hard drives from summer of 1999
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1999.html



so there u go. summer of '99 300-400$ cost for a 20gb hard drive..

like ive said a bazzilion times in this thread MORE DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL BETTER
ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO SOFTWARE on 15 year old computers....

WITH THINGS REGARDING INTERACTION BETWEEN SOFTWARE + COMPUTER HARDWARE ENVIRONMENTS.. change is not GOOD..
introducing unexpected changes to software or hardware results in unexpected results..