ATTN: Rafael Amador – DiskWarrior question

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Roth Weiss] “Sorry J.G., but that’s like one of those Internet hoaxes you get in emails from your friends. “

🙂

I know from experience, so I figured I would just throw a wrench into the cog.

I stand by the advice of not running disk warrior unless it’s necessary. I feel it’s not a maintenance tool, it’s a tool used to repair broken parts. Again, speaking from experience.

Jeremy

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I know from experience, so I figured I would just throw a wrench into the cog.”

I understand. I once threw up after eating potatoe salad, and it turned me off to potatoe salad for along time. However, lots of people eat potatoe salad without blowing their lunch, so it ain’t all bad, and lots of people use Disk Warrior all the time with zero problems. So…

In any case, I’m sorry we disagree and I’m sorry you had a bad date with Disk Warrior. Meanwhile, I’ll still go out with her any old time.

Have a great weekend,
David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Rich Rubasch]

One thing about disk Warrior, I too run it about every other month on all my drives, plus all the drives in the facility. But here’s the deal. First i will run Apple’s Disk Utility just to do a quick check and make sure Apple says the drive is fine. If I have to I run Apple’s utility until it comes up with no errors, just a green ok.

Then I run disk Warrior. But here’s the deal. If you get any red errors and choose to fix them, you must run it again, and again, and again until you don’t get any more errors. some errors are more problematic and it can fix them, but once fixed, it needs another pass to clean up the lesser problems etc.

I love the app and have never had a gaff because of it. Has always kept our drives humming as they should.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Tom Brooks]

This is all good info, argument and humor.
The problem with my FCP system was a “hit or miss” on renders. Sometimes they’d render, sometimes I’d get “A file of that name already exists,” or “Unknown File.” The disk was my RAID-5 which is connected to a Highpoint 2322 controller card. I ran Apple Disk Utility on it and it errored something about “broken keys.” Highpoint was no direct help, but they said many of their customers report that Disk Warrior can be used with success. One pass with DW eliminated the problem.

At this same time I was building a second system disk in the G5 with a whole new install of Leopard and all my apps. Before DW, the system could not mount the RAID except in Read-Only mode. That problem was also fixed by the DiskWarrior pass.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
1. It’s OK to verify the RAID in Disk Utility to point out problems.
2. It’s OK to use DiskWarrior on this type of Highpoint RAID Mac OS Extended volume.
3. It might take more than one pass of DW to fix all problems.

There’s more to do as soon as I get time. I’ll read the DW manual more carefully, I’ll verify again in Disk Utility and run DW again (I can always cancel out if no problems are found). I can also go over the DiskWarrior report to try to understand what went wrong with the disk in the first place.

I built the RAID myself and this shows exactly why you’re twisting in the wind with a DIY system when troubles hit. It’d be safer to go with a complete system from one vendor, or at least a RAID controller from a company that knows video and really supports the product. On the other hand, it’s always a learning experience.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.4, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.5, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Harry Bromley-davenport]

Wow! A genuine Dan Quayle “potatoe” moment.

Best

Harry

[David Roth weiss]

[Harry Bromley-Davenport] “Wow! A genuine Dan Quayle “potatoe” moment.”

And 100% intentional, just to see if anyone would notice. You get the gold star Harry.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Rafael Amador]

Dear friends,
Back from the field (hope al my COW fellows had enjoy the break:-)
Tom, I run DW in he system every two weeks or so or whenever I see that FC start to get lazy or makes funny things. Also when I see that the Mac takes more than the usual to start or close.
About the the media HDs, some times I run it in a daily base (takes some 30 seconds). My eSATAs in normal conditions write/read some 50-60MB/s. As son as I run DW I get 85-90 MB/s. The diffrence is huge. As you point, some times is necessary to run it two or three time to get the graphic clean and “0” items out of order.
I don’t work with raids so I can not talk about, but I don’t agree with my dear friend Jeremy. For me is the most important maintenance tool available for Mac. When I bought my G5 back in in 2004 I had a Kernell panic every 10 minutes. Sent to Singapore (US$500 FEDEX) and the G5 kept crashing. I bought DW and since then not a single problem with the G5 or the MBP. Maintenance and prevent-problems tool.
About the Disk Utility, well, lets say that is better than nothing. In my experience when the Disk Utility shows something wrote in red, that means that you will be buying a new HD in a matter of hours.
Even the green color doesn’t means much. I still have a couple of HDs that shows no problems when “Verify Disk”, but no way to format them.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Rafael Amador]

Dear friends,
Back from the field (hope al my COW fellows had enjoy the break:-)
Tom, I run DW in he system every two weeks or so or whenever I see that FC start to get lazy or makes funny things. Also when I see that the Mac takes more than the usual to start or close.
About the the media HDs, some times I run it in a daily base (takes some 30 seconds). My eSATAs in normal conditions write/read some 50-60MB/s. As son as I run DW I get 85-90 MB/s. The diffrence is huge. As you point, some times is necessary to run it two or three time to get the graphic clean and “0” items out of order.
I don’t work with raids so I can not talk about, but I don’t agree with my dear friend Jeremy. For me is the most important maintenance tool available for Mac. When I bought my G5 back in in 2004 I had a Kernell panic every 10 minutes. Sent to Singapore (US$500 FEDEX) and the G5 kept crashing. I bought DW and since then not a single problem with the G5 or the MBP. Maintenance and prevent-problems tool.
About the Disk Utility, well, lets say that is better than nothing. In my experience when the Disk Utility shows something wrote in red, that means that you will be buying a new HD in a matter of hours.
Even the green color doesn’t means much. I still have a couple of HDs that shows no problems when “Verify Disk”, but no way to format them.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
I’ve had DiskWarrior jinx a project – and give me a load of media asset problems after running it (on an early version of Tiger and FCP 5).
BUT, it wasn’t my project from the outset – and I was already trouble-shooting the FCP red screen of death in this inherited project.

And I had identified some corrupt DV media files with QT Player, and replaced them with proper versions – but running DW at that stage caused me to have to spend another half-day of wheedling out corruption. 😉
Actually I don’t begrudge DW that – because maybe those inherited files were incipiently dodgy…

Since I’ve routinely run 22 or 23 individual eSata or FW800 drives on my G5 Mac since mid-2006 whilst editing (no RAID 0 – once bitten twice shy) I’m fairly highly sensitised to OS X’s start-up/shut-down delays – which can vary considerably depending on the daily disk usage. DW seems to be more necessary with the 6 or 7 FW800 drives.