Anybody ever edit with a MBP on battery with an external drive or 2 HDDs inside?

[Jason Brown]

Optical drive slot “too”?

That is the only internal drive that can be ejected…obviously u can’t eject ur boot drive.

I should note…it’s a 17″ mbp and running lion osx

[Dave Gage]

[Jason Brown] ”
That is the only internal drive that can be ejected…obviously u can’t eject ur boot drive.”

With all the research I’ve been reading the last couple of days, it appears a lot of people are moving their boot drive to the Optical slot and putting their 2nd drive (media drive in my case) in the original HDD slot for a true 6G connection.

With my early 2011 i7 MBP, the Optical drive slot won’t be as fast as the HDD slot-
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Electra_6G/
“2011 MacBook Pro 17″ Now 6G Capable!
Thanks to Apple’s Macbook Pro EFI Firmware update 2.2 released on 9/14/2011, OWC has test confirmed proper operation of OWC 6G SSDs in all 2011 MacBook Pro 17″ (Model ID MacBookPro8,3) models. After successfully applying this update, your Boot ROM Version will be: MBP81.0047.B1E. Please read our very informative Blog Post for additional information.”

More details here-
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDAMBS0GB/
“Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 MacBook Pros (ModeI ID8,1; 8,2; 8,3). If your OWC Data Doubler bundle comes with a 6G drive, you should ONLY install that drive in the main drive bay and utilize the Data Doubler to re-task your existing drive or install a new 3G SSD or HDD in the optical bay. PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed.”

Yet more details here-
https://blog.macsales.com/11895-2011-macbook-pro-sata-problems-resolved

Dave

[Andreas Kiel]

[Dave wrote]
Very cool solution. I literally only need an hour or two, so that would be way overkill for me. What kind of HD solution are you using with this setup? Bus-powered or AC?
I’ve used both. For some stuff we used an AC powered FW RAID 5 box to back up data on location.
As said the solution gives you some pounds (more or less depending on the setup) of weight, but it’s always a good feeling to have an hour or so after the “external” power supply fails.
One thing to note with this setup is: be aware that MBPs are very picky with external power supplies. A Windows laptop just accepts any DC power from a battery a MB(P) won’t.

And to confirm those others who replied: any drive except the boot drive can be be unmounted via Finder or Disk Utility at any time (as long no app is running which is using data from this disk). You also can write a little script to mount drives with a single click.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Jason Brown]

Hey Dave,

Just to be clear, I did install the 6G SSD from OWC as a replacement of my primary HD.

I took out the DVD drive and put in a data doubler from OWC and just moved the old internal drive to that position. Its a 750GB 5400rpm drive.

Running AJA system test, I get 84.8MB/s write and 90.4MB/s read from this drive. I edit ProRes and usually work off proxy, but have had no problem with ProRes LT in FCPX from that drive. (I haven’t worked on a BIG project yet, just small one off kind of stuff).

Hope that helps and clears things up.

-Jason

[Dave Gage]

[Jason Brown] “Running AJA system test, I get 84.8MB/s write and 90.4MB/s read from this drive. I edit ProRes and usually work off proxy, but have had no problem with ProRes LT in FCPX from that drive. (I haven’t worked on a BIG project yet, just small one off kind of stuff).”

I appreciate the extra details, it is helpful. That seems pretty good for a 5400 drive.

Because of the extra cost involved with the internal upgrades, I just ordered a bus-powered 7200rpm 750GB drive. With FW800, I will hopefully get similar read/writes to what you’re getting, but if not, I’ll just stick with proxies. Since it’s only the “away” editing drive, it should be fine. I decided to wait until after the 1st of the year for a big upgrade, when I can do it right and possibly put in 2 SSDs. I’m hoping the prices on SSDs will keep coming down, if not I’ll get the Seagate Momentus as a media drive. I will also do as you did and put the SuperDrive in an external enclosure (I still occasionally burn CDs).

Thanks again,
Dave

[Massimo Verona]

We actually have very similar rigs. I’ve been editing shorts only on FCP X.

Early 2011 2.3 Ghz i7/1GB VRAM/Boot Drive 300GB SSD / Optical Bay filled with 500GB 7200 which tests with
Black Magic benchmark at about 100 MB/Sec. SSD about 200MB/Sec.

My external AC FW800 only gets about 40-50 MB/s but it’s way too full.

Just upgraded to 16GB mem, but with shorts I haven’t used more than the 8GB I had before. I think a feature would eat more.

Battery life sucks if I’m trying out color correction or FX; only about an hour of rendering time, rendering triggers all the cores and bleeds the batteries very badly. Just looking at footage of cutting seems way less draining.

Can the person that used gel batteries tell me how you convert voltage? A 12v-110 converter? What brand?

Failing as fast as I can at writing producing.

[Andreas Kiel]

Can the person that used gel batteries tell me how you convert voltage? A 12v-110 converter?
I use a german 12 – 220/240 converter. So you won’t get this brand in the US.
But ask in any electronics shop and you will get one.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Dave Gage]

[massimo verona] ”
My external AC FW800 only gets about 40-50 MB/s but it’s way too full.”

I just received in the mail today the OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini- 750GB 7200rpm bus-powered external drive. I copied over my Events and Projects and needed media from my main RAID FCP X drive.

I ran QuickBench 4.0 on it when connected via FW800 and got:
[i]Write- 62 MB/s, Read- 82 MB/s[/i]

Not too bad for a single bus-powered drive. I can edit with Proxy instead of my ClipWrapped AVCHD media if it feels slow. This enclosure also has an option for for eSATA connection which I can do with my 2011 MBP. I will need to buy an extra $6 cable though that goes from the DC IN of the enclosure to the FW port of the laptop to power it since eSATA is not bus-powered. This should be a good solution until I can do it right and replace the optical drive.

[massimo verona] “Just upgraded to 16GB mem, but with shorts I haven’t used more than the 8GB I had before. I think a feature would eat more.”

I’m still on 8GB of RAM, but hope to go up to 16 after the first of the year. Prices are really coming down now. I don’t know how necessary it would be for me as I only do 2-10 instructional videos for the web, but for less than $100, it can’t hurt.

[massimo verona] “Battery life sucks if I’m trying out color correction or FX;”
I’ll be editing with the external drive on battery in the next couple of days. I am curious to see how much time I get with it.

Thanks,
Dave