"Disk too slow" error message

You're recording/playing back more data then your Hard drive can handle. I'm surprised that a desktop machine would have a slow drive, but you didn't mention how fast the machine is, or how many tracks you're recording. These can all be factors.

--HangTime [Will Compute for Food] B-(>

The speed of my computer is 895mghz.

That is on the slow side (895, though? I've never heard of that as an offered speed), however I use an underpowered machine as my recording computer and it's only 800Mc

Is there a way to remedy this?

Probably. Well, yes, upgrading to a newer computer, but I'm assuming that's not the option you're looking for. A possible solution is to get a fast external Hard Drive.

By adding an external FireWire drive I've been able to push 20 tracks (with no effects) on that recording machine (I then Mix, Effect, and Master on a more robust machine).

--hangTime [Will Compute for Food] B-)>

is there a way to remedy this?

The moving triangle glows red if you are taxing your processor.

If this happens or you get the message you described try locking tracks to free up cpu power. Software instrument tracks are the most cpu intensive.

Other ideas here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=153842

Kurt

"Disk too slow" means just that. It's the hard drive on your computer, not the speed of your G4 CPU. You are trying to record and play back more simultaneous tracks than your hard drive can handle.

You need a second hard drive to work alongside the one already in your computer.

Recording is always problematic if you only have one hard drive on your computer. Ideally you should have one hard drive for running the Mac OS and GarageBand, and you should create your GarageBand files and make recordings to a second external hard drive.

You can get a good fast external FireWire 400 hard drive for US $100.00--probably 80GB or larger. Make sure the hard drive you purchase is a 7,200 rpm ATA drive, or faster (affordable SATA drives are appearing on the market these days).

"Disk too slow" means just that.

The G4's have a 7200 rpm drive.

This is really a generic message that pops up whenever GB is taxed beyond its limit. Locking tracks or optimizing GB as listed in the article will solve the issue.

Until recently buying my external drive all recording was done on my internal hardrive. I had few problems with performance, especially since GB 2 came out. My biggest problem was running out of space as some of my longer projects were a gigabyte in size.

Kurt