Logic Pro 9 Disk too slow beach ball mess

[JGS]

When playing a project and working as usual, stopping and starting etc. I'm suddenly getting the beachball from hell. It spins for a long time and then I get the error message:

Logic error message 'Disk too slow. (Prepare) (-10001)

When I try to continue playing the project, my Vienna Ensemble server connections are no longer connected. It also wipes my patches in the Vienna instances.

Main computer: MacPro 8 core 2.26 Ghz , 24 gb Ram, OS 10.5.8
2nd computer: iMac quad i7 2.8Ghz, 16 gb Ram, OS 10.6.3


My samples are coming from an internal separate drive and my project is on a different drive as well. I'm mostly running soft synths hosted outside of Logic with Vienna ensemble pro server 32 bit on the main computer, 32 and 64 bit on the slave computer.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. I've repaired permissions, run Disk Warrior, restarted. Journaling is off on my project and sample drives.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
cheers,

Judith

 

[SubBlack]

I don't know the direct answer to your problem but here are a few ways you might be able to determine what's causing problems:

1. As a test, save an entire project (including samples) to the same drive. You can do this by going to the File menu > Save As... and then checking every box in the 'Assets' section of the window. Close all projects and open this newly saved one...If all works well then it might be your network, or one of your drives might be slowing down.

2. Raise your buffer size(s). As a test try setting all cpu's to a buffer size of 1024, and make sure all devices are on the same buffer size. Yes I realize you have tons of RAM and this is not a really usable buffer setting, but if it works then at least you know where the problem is.

3. I don't have tons of experience with the Vienna server, but might there be a problem with mixing 32-bit and 64-bit plug-ins? Maybe try running all rigs at the same rate to see if this helps.

And I've seen that same error msg before, but only when I was synced to timecode while Logic was using a lot of plug-ins. What are your sync settings, are both rigs set to sync to the same source? Hope this helps, maybe someone with a similar rig will chime in.

 

[JGS]

Hi, Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll keep your suggestions in mind if and when the problem surfaces again. As a last resort last night, I restarted from a system backup drive and ran Disk Warrior and lo and behold, I've been working all day today without one error message or crash!

This is the first time that Disk Warrior has ever made a tangible difference but it saved the day for me!