Don't Hot swap firewire drives
Always shut down the computer before unplugging or plugging in a firewire drive. This goes for all firewire drive types both buss powered or those that have their own power supply.
Although Firewire drives are promoted as being how swappable (can be plugged and unplugged whilst computer is running) in reality there are a number of known problems which can result in the drive or worst of all the firewire port on the computer being damaged even permanently.

Be careful how you insert the firewire cable.
People have managed to insert the firewire cable the wrong way round even though the connector is 'keyed' to prevent this. Take extra care to line up the slanted corners correctly.

Name Tracks
Always name your tracks. It helps to keep track of what goes where and also helps to name files and regions more clearly as Protools default region names are based on the track name.

Name Regions.
Always always name your regions as soon as you finish recording them and before you start editing it as you can't rename a file once you have started editing it.

Re-naming trick
You can't rename a region whilst it is recording, however you can rename it whilst you are recording the next one!

I/O Settings
Use I/O Settings so your inputs, outputs & busses are labelled with something useful.

Plug in Settings
When you get a good plug in setting save it in the Root Settings folder for future use in other projects.

Processing Power is at a Premium
If processing power is at a premium then use a TDM version of the plug in to audition the plug in then copy the settings, remove the TDM plug in and then highlight the regions you want to process and open the same plug in as an Audiosuite one and paste the settings across and hit the process button.

Disk Space
Check Disk Space before you start a new session and regularly though out to make sure you don't fill up your drives. This is especially important on smaller drives. You should leave around 500 Mb spare space.

Backup Strategy
Have a backup strategy. If you don't you are living on borrowed time! For more details see our suggested Backup & Archiving ProSolutions

'Command+E' no.1
Use 'Command+E' to place a 'spice' at the cursor position.

'Command+E' no.2
Use 'Command+E' with a 'selection' to seperate it into a region with one click.

Command+T
Use 'Command+T' to delete evrything else around it as far as the next region boundaries. Great foe when you want just one clip from a larger region.

'Shift+Tab'
'Shift+Tab' highlights from the cursor position to the next region boundary to the right.

'Alt+Shift+Tab'
'Alt+Shift+Tab highlights from the cursor position to the previous region boundary to the left.

'Return'
'Return' takes the cursor back to the beginning of the session. 'Shift+Return' highlights from the current cursor position back to the beginning of the session.

'Alt+Return'
'Alt+Return' takes the cursor to the end of the session. This is great for checking the duration of the session. 'Alt+Shift+Return' highlights from the current cursor position to the end of the session.

For more tips like these see our range of ProGuides

Digital Sync
Check that your digital sync mode is correct. Now that for most hardware the 'sync' and 'input' settings are seperate, it is easy to get intoan "unsafe" mode like an input from a digital source and the sync set to 'internal'