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Sharewaredemon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 31, 2004
2,014
273
Cape Breton Island
Hi,

When I installed Tiger a few months ago I partitioned my Hard Drive into 60/80 partitions. I figured I could have all my captured media from FCP on the 80 GB partition and have OS X my music and apps on the other.

I hadn't noticed any problems until yesterday. FCP says that I am dropping frames a lot more than I've noticed. It will almost always drop frames when the playhead goes from a clip and music to just music with a black screen (no clip). Is this because I'm forcing the drive to work harder because of the partition (making the head have to go back and forth)?

If this is true, this means I have to reformat my drive, as that 80 GB is really a waste.

Do you think if I keep it like this it will cause any problems other than dropping frames in FCP? (I can live with that)

Will it get worse as I start working with more complicated media?

Thanks
 

LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
124
Los Angeles
Media should have a dedicated drive. System files and media on the same physical HDD is not a good idea. And if you are dropping frames now it will only get worse as the project grows. If yer HDD can't keep up now it won't get any better in the future.

The good news is HDDs are cheap.


Lethal
 

Sharewaredemon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 31, 2004
2,014
273
Cape Breton Island
LethalWolfe said:
Media should have a dedicated drive. System files and media on the same physical HDD is not a good idea. And if you are dropping frames now it will only get worse as the project grows. If yer HDD can't keep up now it won't get any better in the future.

The good news is HDDs are cheap.


Lethal


Well I have an external Lacie that I could dump my media onto, it just sucks that I'm going to have this empty partition 80GB partition.

Grrrrr.
 

Sharewaredemon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 31, 2004
2,014
273
Cape Breton Island
LethalWolfe said:
Just put all yer porn on it. :D

lol.

Well I was thinking more along the lines of projects that I'm not currently working on, all my random video files I've downloaded off the internet (Red vs Blue and whatnot), and the stuff that's on the Lacie.
 

Mechcozmo

macrumors 603
Jul 17, 2004
5,215
2
Partitioning made the problem worse... the heads on the HDD now need to read and write in two places on two partitions (System and Video).

If you have a PowerMac, it is really easy to add a new hard drive. 7200rpm and 120GB or 250GB should be good.

If you have anything else... FW800 enclosures and hard drives make nice pals.

And if you can't do that, then FW400

The FW800 just gives you more breathing room in terms of data being shoved though the pipe, but also leaves your 400 ports free.
 

Lacero

macrumors 604
Jan 20, 2005
6,637
3
If your editing DV which is 25Mbps, it won't even fill the theoretical max of the 400Mbps Firewire pipe. But on the issue of keeping media on the same HD but on different partitions, even then you should not be getting dropped frames. Leave 10% of your HD free, or it could be indicative of a running background process that is causing disk activity.
 

Sharewaredemon

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 31, 2004
2,014
273
Cape Breton Island
Lacero said:
If your editing DV which is 25Mbps, it won't even fill the theoretical max of the 400Mbps Firewire pipe. But on the issue of keeping media on the same HD but on different partitions, even then you should not be getting dropped frames. Leave 10% of your HD free, or it could be indicative of a running background process that is causing disk activity.

I am editing DV, and I have more than 10% of my HD free, and I also didn't have much going in terms of background processes. I've edited a few sequences before yesterday on this partition setup and didn't have any problems.

I think I'll just end up moving over to the FW drive.

I hate moving files around though it takes forever.

Grrrr.
 

Mechcozmo

macrumors 603
Jul 17, 2004
5,215
2
Lacero said:
If your editing DV which is 25Mbps, it won't even fill the theoretical max of the 400Mbps Firewire pipe.

Question-- when importing DV and exporting DV to a FW drive, are the ports on separate busses? Like, am I really using 50Mbps of bandwidth or 25Mbps on separate busses?
 
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