There has been a thread on the DUC on whether Apple’s Xsan will work with Pro Tools.
A user’s employer has purchased an Xsan having been assured it would work with Pro Tools but found….
The Xsan drive is recognized by OS X (Leopard) and ProTools (7.4.2) but we are unable to change the volume type of the drive from “Transfer” to “Record” in workspace. (When tried, we receive the error “”LA_Post” cannot be designated as an Audio volume because it is not a fixed, removable or MediaNet volume” (The volume is named “LA_Post”.)
The replied all confirming that Pro Tools won’t work with Xsan ever. For example…
Sadly Xsan can not be used as a audio drive (for record or playback) by Pro Tools and whoever sold it to you should know that; Digidesign have been telling people that it can’t since Apple released it.Like someone else said its to do with the way PT accesses the file system. Pro Tools doesn’t work with software based raid systems which is really what Xsan is. There are ways to fool Pro Tools to work with it but having tried it I would not recommend them. That said you can play video off a Xsan in PT which speeds thing up a great deal and depending on the speed of your fibre channel connection copying sessions to and from is very, very fast.
The iscsi route can use the Xsan storage, but be sure to test before buying.
and…
Pro Tools has it’s own way of handling File level Sharing or Block Level Sharing
You actually need a third party software in order to utilize the Xsan and for the storage pool to work with PT(read & write) via iSCSI:
The recommendation is to go down the iSCSI route and try either Fibrejet or Fibreshare or to go for complete solutions from Ardistech or Studio Network Solutions.
If anyone has any experiences with centralised storage with Pro Tools then please post your comments here.
Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.show me less content in the footer
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