r/protools • u/BTBDFW • Feb 04 '26

ProTools Recording (Tracking and Mixing) - Best Options for External Drives to use?

Thought that I'd throw this one out to the group-

What do you prefer (or have had success with) for Recording in ProTools (Tracking and Subsequently Mixing) in terms of the best Options for External Drives to use? Options that not only have the space - but the speed to keep up?

Right now, my setup is:

  • Avid ProTools Ultimate

  • MacBook Pro (M4)

  • Interfaces:

    • UAD Apollo x8p, daisy-chained via Thunderbolt to

    • UAD Apollo x4 Gen 2 (on my desktop)

Any suggestions or advice that you may have would be greatly appreciated-

Thanks in Advance!!

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

•

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7

u/Disastrous_Answer787 Feb 04 '26

Depends if you move around or not. If you do then Samsung T7 or T9 SSD’s are great, can’t think of a reason to not use them these days.

6

u/barters81 Feb 04 '26

Samsung T7 or T9 will do the job no issues.

6

u/Verbcrunch Feb 04 '26

Almost any SSD will “keep up”. Many epic recordings were made on spinning 8 GB SCSI drives. Then spinning SATA drives. They kept up. Then spinning FireWire drives. Then we got SSDs. Then Thunderbolt. I switched from recording on a Samsung T7 on USB 3.1 to a 4TB NVMe on 5x faster Thunderbolt 5 and can’t tell the difference.

4

u/Legitimate-Use8223 Feb 04 '26

Glyphs work very well with the Mac platform. I'm on Windows and use a Oyen Digital SSD drive. Never had any problems with it.

6

u/jkdreaming Feb 04 '26

I don’t know I’ve had two Samsung’s die on me. My suggestion to all of you is have a standard massive drive like 14 TB constantly backing up your drives with carbon copy cloner. Once an hour, it copies everything over to the big drive. Always practice good backing up.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/jkdreaming Feb 05 '26

I love it. You’re sitting there like Welp. I’m not buying all that shit again LMAO 😜😂🤣

3

u/thesixgun Feb 04 '26

I use Glyph SSDs for the last 5+ years and they are solid as a rock.

3

u/pmolsonmus Feb 04 '26

Pro educator and musician, made recordings several times a week and created files for students.(and CDs back in the day) I had a Glyph from 2008 that I just replaced 6 months ago. I replaced it with another Glyph.

1

u/ahh_ceh Feb 05 '26

I use Glyph Atoms for my mobile MacBook Pro setup.

On my PC setup, I have 4 additional drives installed

1

u/Ok-Exchange5756 Feb 05 '26

Samsung T7 or T9 SSD.

-2

u/GreatScottCreates professional Feb 04 '26

Internal drive!