Optimizing A Windows System For Pro Tools - DigiDesign 003 Family Setup Manual

Disabling Spotlight Indexing
The Mac OS X Spotlight feature automatically
indexes files and folders on local hard drives in
the background. In most cases, this is not a con-
cern for normal Pro Tools operation. However,
if Spotlight starts indexing drives while record-
ing in a Pro Tools session with high track counts
for an extended period of time, it can adversely
affect Pro Tools system performance. You may
want to disable Spotlight indexing for all local
drives before using Pro Tools for big recording
projects.
Disabling Spotlight indexing also disables
the Find function in Mac OS X.
To disable Spotlight indexing:
Choose System Preferences from the Apple
1
menu and click Spotlight.
In the Spotlight window, click the Privacy tab.
2
To prevent indexing of a drive, drag its icon
3
from the desktop into the list.
Enabling Journaling for Audio Drives
To yield higher performance from audio drives,
enable journaling.
To enable journaling:
Launch the Disk Utility application, located in
1
Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities.
Select the volume in the left column of the
2
Disk Utility window.
Click Enable Journaling in the toolbar.
3
30 003 Family Setup Guide
Optimizing a Windows System
for Pro Tools
To ensure optimum performance with
Pro Tools LE, configure your computer before
using Pro Tools hardware and software.
For Mac System Optimization, see "Opti-
mizing a Mac System for Pro Tools" on
page 28.
Before configuring your computer, make sure
you are logged in as an Administrator for the ac-
count where you want to install Pro Tools. For
details on Administrator privileges, see your
Windows documentation.
Required Optimizations
To ensure optimum performance with
Pro Tools, configure the following settings be-
fore using Pro Tools hardware and software.
When you are finished changing Windows
system settings, restart your computer.
Enabling DMA
Enabling your computer's DMA (Direct Memory
Access) frees up CPU bandwidth so your com-
puter can do other Pro Tools tasks.
In most cases the DMA option will already be set
correctly, as Windows detects and activates
DMA mode by default.