Recording live drums to 8 tracks using Comping mode. No effects at all.  Roland Studio Capture. 48k, 24 bit. Project files on an external USB hard drive.
After about 20 takes (having kept about ten take lanes), I keep getting the error "Audio Engine stopped unexpectedly." 
At that point, I can't even play the song for more than 6 seconds and it crashes. Restarting Sonar has no effect. Loading a different song which has no drums recorded yet works perfect.  But I'm sure it too will begin crashing after a bunch of takes.
 
Anyone know what is happening?  Should I abandon Comping mode when recording and use Overwrite instead?

Do you have another option available besides the external USB hard drive (anything internal)? You may have a substantial choke point with that setup.

No, I don't have any other option and I don't want to buy any hardware. The laptop is a very powerful computer, and I don't think I'm doing anything extraordinary recording-wise. Does having all those take lanes recorded really tax the system? It was working fine until I had a bunch recorded.

I'm amazed it was working before to be honest. The more tracks you are playing the more bandwidth you are using up between your PC and your USB hard drive.

You need to run your projects on something like a eSATA, SD hard drive, or even FireWire 800. Hard drives need to be fast with DAWs.

Try copying the project files to your internal hard drive for the moment. Better though to get a disk upgrade.

You may also want to take a look at the windows event viewer for errors.

Doktor Avalanche
The more tracks you are playing the more bandwidth you are using up between your PC and your USB hard drive.

I understand that, but what I don't understand is how the large number of take lanes affects things.
 

More files to access at the same time,and see above. Simply put don't run your projects off USB hard drives. USB is generally best for storage and backups.

Your next move is to try it on a faster disk (I.e. internal). If you are using a C drive (not ideal best use another faster drive if you have it) you might want to defrag it first for best results.

My laptop only has one hard drive, and no room for another.
 
I just realized something though. My external drive is USB 3, but it wasn't plugged into a USB 3 port (I thought all the ports on this laptop were 3.0, but apparently not). I just plugged it into the USB 3 port and the song is playing fine now. Do you think it will work when recording? I realize that it would be best to have a laptop specially configured with 2 drives, but that isn't an option at this time.

Backpeddle USB3 should be fine. Sorry. Got into USB2 mode.

The speed of your hard drive may be a factor..

http://community.avid.com...s/p/101848/586457.aspx


Happy recording..

Here's the drive I'm using:
Toshiba 2TB Canvio® Connect II
Product Specifications

• Interface: USB 3.0
• Transfer Rate: Up to 5 Gb/s
• Speed: 5,400 RPM
• Average Seek Time: 12ms
• Cache Buffer: 8MB