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FCP Tip: Second Hard drive for scratch

M

Macpropro80

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 31, 2009
408
0
I thought I would share a very important tip to the FC newbies. Get a second hard drive exclusively for render files, If not your main disk may fail. When I first got Final Cut I read that i should never use my boot disk, So I went to the apple store and bought a 1TB G-raid2 (raid 0) External Firewire 800 hard drive. Get an external Hard drive that is firewire 800, for your render files or YOU WILL BE SORRY!

Just a tip.
 
It failed after 3 months? WTF man! Just kidding. I've just been fortunate never to have a failed drive on me after something like 6 years of video projects. And really hope I never do!
 
Correlation does not equal causation.

What you are implying is that editing and rendering HD video will cause your drive to fail sooner than it normally would, which is probably not true.

That being said, you advice to use a separate scratch drive is good advice.
 
correlation.png
 
slu said:
Correlation does not equal causation.

What you are implying is that editing and rendering HD video will cause your drive to fail sooner than it normally would, which is probably not true.

That being said, you advice to use a separate scratch drive is good advice.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I ment that I saved my boot drive from failing by using an external hard drive.
 
the posters are trying to tell you that you didn't save the drive... having the scratch on the external is not why your OS drive still works.

you could only say that you saved your OS by not having it on the external.
 
For example,

You should always use an external camcorder as your webcam instead of the iSight in your iMac. I had a camcorder that I used as a webcam and after 3 months it blew up. If I'd been using the iSight, it could have fried all the internals of the iMac as it would also have blown up after 3 months if I'd been using it for webcam video.

See the problem with the conclusion?
 
jdavtz said:
For example,

You should always use an external camcorder as your webcam instead of the iSight in your iMac. I had a camcorder that I used as a webcam and after 3 months it blew up. If I'd been using the iSight, it could have fried all the internals of the iMac as it would also have blown up after 3 months if I'd been using it for webcam video.

See the problem with the conclusion?
Click to expand...

Your missing the point! GRR
 
Macpropro80 said:
I thought I would share a very important tip to the FC newbies. Get a second hard drive exclusively for render files
Click to expand...

Why is this news? Keeping media and renders on a drive other than your boot drive is the preferred way to do things ... and is stated clearly in the users manual. It's been this way since FCP 1.0 almost 10 years ago.

That said, you can get by with editing while media or renders reside on the boot drive, but it will usually fill up quickly and performance will suffer.

If newbies took the time to read the manual (or at least skim through it), there's be much fewer postings here.

-DH
 
I refuse to use any kind of hard drive as I've read that doing so may cause hard drive failure. I went straight to the stationer's and bought a pad and pencil and now do all my editing with them. Get a pad and pencil or you'll be sorry!
 
how to configure teh ext drive

I have ordered an external drive to use with FCE. How do I set it as the render drive?


Also, my mac is connected to my time capsule with a 1 Gbit connection. Considering in theory the connection is faster than FW 800, could I use t as a scratch disk?
 
DP-Paris said:
I have ordered an external drive to use with FCE. How do I set it as the render drive??
Click to expand...

When you first connect the drive to your Mac and power up, you'll need to format it as "Mac OS Extended" (aka HFS+) using Disk Utility. Next , launch FCP and set the drive as your Capture/Scratch volume in FCP's preferences.


DP-Paris said:
Also, my mac is connected to my time capsule with a 1 Gbit connection. Considering in theory the connection is faster than FW 800, could I use t as a scratch disk?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't. Leave it for backups and general strorage only.

-DH
 
-DH said:
When you first connect the drive to your Mac and power up, you'll need to format it as "Mac OS Extended" (aka HFS+) using Disk Utility. Next , launch FCP and set the drive as your Capture/Scratch volume in FCP's preferences.


I wouldn't. Leave it for backups and general strorage only.

-DH
Click to expand...

It is supposed to be already formatted for mac, so I guess it should be easy.

I may try using the time capsule, just to see if the network is fast enough:)

Thanks.
 
don't do that... 1GigE is theoretically faster than FW800, but not for large sustained reads (like video). Also the hard drive inside the timecapsule is probably not very fast. Using this as a scratch is a complete waste of time.
 
bigbossbmb said:
don't do that... 1GigE is theoretically faster than FW800, but not for large sustained reads (like video). Also the hard drive inside the timecapsule is probably not very fast. Using this as a scratch is a complete waste of time.
Click to expand...

It is 7200 RPM, but I have given up on the idea. Will wait for the new one.

Thanks.
 
3 drives

well i tend to have a lot of media and jobs on at once but this iwhat i do

System drive generally just for operating system
(tend to use my old G4 for other tasks such as web and mail and word.)

Project drive
where i store my project files and various info

Scratch disk
for media files

If i have a system disk failure i still got all my project stuff

if a i have a project disk failure i just go to the final cut auto save vault on the system drive

and if the scratch disk fails well i ges theres a lot of media capture to do but at least i have my project in tact

you could just put it all on ya scratch disk or get a raid but i aint that much of a geek to even know what that is.
:)
 
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