question about FCP scratch disks and backsups- help please

[macusersince5]

Ok guys I am currently using a 2009 2.26 8-core mac pro and I also have a owc mercury proqx2 with firewire and esata and set up using raid and using final cut studio 2009 with compressor 3.5 and FCP 7.

1) Esata isn't technically supported on mac so is firewire better?

2) My question is what is the best scratch disk setup for fastest performance. Right now we have the owc box using esata as the scratch disk for video and the render files. Everything is usually stored/exported to the desktop. So in essence is it having to write twice? write the files to the owc drive and then to desktop?

OR would this be better. Keep applications users profiles and OS on one internal drive and then buy an additional internal drive and use that as the storage location for render files and scratch disk. Then retire the owc raid box, connect it using firwire 800 and use it for time machine. What do you guys think is the best for speed and performance and redundancy.

Thanks for reading long post. I really need help and appreciate it.

 

[Erendiox]

1) Nonsense. eSata is supported, and is a much faster connection than Firewire. All you need is an eSata PCI-e card.

2) You want your scratch disk to be the fastest disk you have. Your OWC RAID Box, connected via eSata, is going to be the fastest disk. You want to store your media and your render files there. For your Time Machine backup, get another internal drive and use that to back up your other disks.

What RAID mode are you using with your OWC? Hoping it's either 0 or 5. If it's 5, you don't need to worry about backing it up.

 

[macusersince5]

I think its raid 5 and i do have an esata pci card. I just did a test using final cut pro to see which render is faster. I connected a firwire 800 disk and cable to my mac and set that as a scratch disk. The render said 33 mintues. I then set the scratch disk to the internal drive and did a render and it said 21 mintues. Both used the same footage same timeline settings and codec. Does this make sense??? I am going to try the same test but this time using esata instead of 800.

Its just that the esata drive seems so slow.

 

[Erendiox]

I think its raid 5 and i do have an esata pci card. I just did a test using final cut pro to see which render is faster. I connected a firwire 800 disk and cable to my mac and set that as a scratch disk. The render said 33 mintues. I then set the scratch disk to the internal drive and did a render and it said 21 mintues. Both used the same footage same timeline settings and codec. Does this make sense??? I am going to try the same test but this time using esata instead of 800.

Its just that the esata drive seems so slow.

You seem to be misunderstanding what a fast scratch disk is going to allow you to do. Render speeds are dependent on your processor. Unless your disks are extremely slow, you won't see them change the speed at which the machine renders. A fast scratch disk will allow for better real time playback, especially when you have multiple video streams.

Also, don't use the render preview time to judge speed... you need to let the machine complete the render and time it.

 

[macusersince5]

ok then how would i get the fastest render times? the internal disks or an external disk? I don't really care about playback because I generally render everything out first and watch it before i export. or am i still not getting it?

And both disks in the owc and my internal mac are 7200 rpm. so they are faster than 5400 rpm