External Drive issue–footage unusable in FCP

[Nelson Goforth]

“Looks like that will be okay except for this immense transfer time (currently reading at 15 hours for 258gb?!?) Anyone have any idea how to solve that?”

A good night’s sleep? There really isn’t anything else except to go to eSATA (that’s what I do) or the new Thunderbolt… which is only marginally available anyway. Just be glad you’re not on USB.

[Jocelyn Kelvin]

I am glad I’m not on USB 🙂

However, this is still happening because of an issue with the older drive, I believe. I just did a test–stopped the transfer, and had it transfer first to an internal, as I’ve done that before with the same drive/footage and it’s taken more like 2-3 hours (so 6 would still be less than 15.) It’s still showing up as 15 hours to transfer 258gb from the external to an internal drive….

Any ideas?

[Jocelyn Kelvin]

….any advice will be welcome. I have 2.7tb of footage to transfer. At this point I’m wondering if the old drive is so corrupt (even post-DiskWarrior) that it would be quicker/easier to recompresss the prores files all over again. Any advice is welcome.

[Nelson Goforth]

Sorry Jocelyn, I’ve been skating around the edge of my knowledge as it is. Do you need any advice on Photoshop, maybe? Or homebrewing?

[Adam Taylor]

sorry, i don’t think you have any other option than to wait it out.

2.7tb is a LOT of data. I regularly backup twice that amount (going via fibre channel / cat6 1gb ethernet and Raids) and it usually takes around 30hours. Thats what weekends are for!

The only thing that will happen by stopping your transfer to do tests is that you will take longer to finish the transfer!

and if your drive is faulty, the important thing to do first is get the data off it – the more tests you do, the greater the risk of disk failure before you complete the transfer.

Adam Taylor
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[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Having done the math, your drive appears to only be capable of approximately 40Mbs, instead of the theoretical 800. That would explain why nothing would play back. I’d say something is very wrong with the drive…

Do the math. If 258GB takes 15 hours, Copying everything would take roughly 11 times as long, which is 165 hours or 6.8 days.

So you can ether leave it copying for almost a week, and hope it keeps working the entire time or you can re encode the ProRes. Which will take longer?

[David Roth weiss]

[Jocelyn Kelvin] “….any advice will be welcome. I have 2.7tb of footage to transfer. At this point I’m wondering if the old drive is so corrupt (even post-DiskWarrior) that it would be quicker/easier to recompresss the prores files all over again. Any advice is welcome.”

Something is definitely wrong Jocelyn. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged in besides the source and new target drives?

If I were you, I would download the AJA Disk Speed test, and then run it on both drives and compare notes.

David Roth Weiss
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[Jocelyn Kelvin]

@Nelson – ha. someday i will get in touch with you for photoshop help, thanks. the homebrewing….might have to wait.

@adam/@john-michael – i’ve done this transfer, and this is abnormal, so i think the better bet is to transfer the section i have backed up on a different drive, and recompress the rest. i honestly believe that will take less time and have fewer possible issues in the files themselves.

@david – ran the disk speed test. new g-raid moved speedily; old seagate couldn’t even start moving. (hit start and it immediately went stop, hit start again, same, etc.) now the files aren’t showing up on the disk again AND they aren’t showing up in adobe bridge (thanks @steve)

i have all the raw files elsewhere to run through compressor, and about half of the pro-res files on another WD drive (which is moving speedily through 158.42gb right now–taking a little less than an hour). I vote NO to seagate, if anyone is ever curious. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen with a drive.

Thanks for all your help. Really appreciate having this community.

[Nelson Goforth]

[Jocelyn Kelvin] “I vote NO to seagate, if anyone is ever curious. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen with a drive.”

I can’t speak to Seagate – I don’t think I’ve used one in years, but any drive can fail. I have relied upon (and recommended) G-Techs for several years, but did see one die suddenly (and for no apparent reason) in mid-shoot once – which is why backup to more than one drive. I had a Red Drive go bad on me similarly -and being a RAID 0 that was scary, though I recovered all but maybe two minutes of footage.

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[Jocelyn Kelvin]

@nelson – definitely true—and i’ve seen drive failure before. but i will say this one has been nothing but trouble. that being said, when it worked it was super speedy, so maybe it’s just if you are working it really hard. drives are drives, i suppose. pretty scary to hear about the Red.