I've been recording the Martha Bassett Show live broadcasts with Digital Performer for 5 years now, and on two occasions have run parallel Pro Tools recordings for test/comparison purposes, Mac OS.

Last night PT stopped recording at the 64 minute mark of a 68 minute segment, 44 tracks at 48K/24 with a message about being "out of disc space", but disc space was still close to 17GB and the capture for that segment was roughly 24.5GB. After restart disc space was roughly 30GB.
Disc space was the internal drive. Occasional glances at Activity Monitor showed no real pressure on the system.

Anyone have any insight? Does PT demand a higher amount of reserve space? Should I chalk it up to a random unknown?

While we’re at it, anyone have a nuanced view of the better DAW’s for high track count long recording time work, such as we do? And the worse end of the pool?

DP would record right up to the last remaining bit - might or might not stop recording and save successfully. DP seems inefficient on the creation of analysis files with long recordings, you can't rely on the ability to hit record again right after hitting stop without some undefined pause time while it writes files. One DP advantage has been the ability to record enable (or disable) a track while recording,

I would look a these places first. You said your CPU isn't heavily tasked, but I'd do these things anyway.

- hardware buffer size - for recording purposes where low latency monitoring isn't important change your buffer size to max (1024, 2048, etc whatever is highest)

- Workspace: volume - I find it is best to have only one drive as your 'record volume'. I normally choose a external SSD for recording purposes. We use a 1TB Sandisc SSD.

- video engine - turn it off in the playback engine

Are you coming in over USB, Thunderbolt, Dante?

What is Digital Performer not doing for you?
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I have left Pro Tools behind for live captures. Fine in the studio, but for live events it isn't stable enough. Reaper is amazing for live captures. It can Record en/dis during capture as well.

I record 30+ tracks in Reaper at 96kHz/24 regularly without issue.

Thanks. Video engine disabled. Buffer is 1024. Dante virtual soundcard.

Reaper has sounded like an efficient option, I’ve no experience with it.

DP is relatively responsive on an M1, any previous processor could have a multi-minute wait between stop and record with 44 track hour long recordings. Doesn’t feel designed for this usage. I’d rather be in DP for post, though there’s seldom post. The one crash during a show lost the entire hour segment (there are redundant systems), DP manages file recovery with small files but utterly failed here. No idea how PT responds.

Generally speaking, PT feels more crash free in studio work, though neither are bad.

How big was the drive you were recording to? If it was a TB or even half TB, 17GB of free space is too little to deal with. Generally once a drive fills up past 10% of the total space left, it's time to get a new drive. I try to keep mine at 25% or more of total space available.

I've done dozens of live concert recordings probably close to 100 now using redundant Protools systems on both Windows and Mac OSX. Haven't had any of them stop mod recording.

internal 1TB drive with roughly 120GB free - yeah, I know - but at the same time DP's not had a problem with that. I've had more problems with DP trying to write to external drives. it likes to tell you it's finished writing when it hasn't; disconnect a drive and find it was still writing something.

Answer is probably to free up more drive space.