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External Hard drive issue
Happy New Years Everyone!
For the past three days, I’ve left my external hard drive on because whenever I turn it off and disconnect it, for reasons unknown the computer won’t reconnect to it. After importing footage and want to connect back up to my hard drive, it just blinks and nothing happens. It will work if I hook it up to another computer just fine, THEN it will connect to mine. I use the same usb port for importing footage, could that be an issue? Also do I risk damaging the hard drive by leaving it on.
Any and all suggestions appreciated
Jason
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11 Replies
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Are you properly ejecting the drive before turning it off?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Hi
Here’s a mount procedure that is needed with some LaCie USB drives:
Disconnect USB2.0 cable & drive PSU from mains.
Connect to mains and power up unit using blue button.
Wait for blue lamp to stop flashing.
With computer running connect USB cable to computer’s USB socket. -
[Jason Kennedy] “. I use the same usb port for importing footage, could that be an issue?”
This is a rule of thumb in digital video: NEVER use USB drivers for media or renders files with FC.
The minimum requirement is FW 400.
USB-2 can reach almost the same transfer speed, but can not maintain it.
Cheers,
Rafael -
[Jason Kennedy] “Also do I risk damaging the hard drive by leaving it on. “
Jason,
Hard drives are guaranteed for hundreds of thousand hours of continuous use. Three days therefore won’t hurt too much. Turning drives on and off, or keeping them non-operational hurts them more than running them.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “Turning drives on and off, or keeping them non-operational hurts them more than running them. “
At one time that was very true, but with today’s systems and vastly improved power supplies / power management, we have seen absolutely no performance issues with powering down drives each evening so long as they are properly ejected before shut down. We also leave all FW / SATA drives off unless they are necessary for work and I have about 10 different FW units sitting in a cabinet that we bring out as necessary. My old LaCie’s are over 5 years old now and still power up and mount just fine even using them just once in a while.
So power cycles on drives units doesn’t seem to be as big an issue as it was say 10 or 15 years ago.
I’ll also agree with Paul that USB drives are not recommended for editing. FW400 are the minimum recommended drives.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Are you guys saying that you eject firewire drives before every computer shutdown? I always eject drives before I disconnect them from the computer but I don’t eject those drives if I’m just shutting down the computer to which they are attached. Doesn’t the computer shut-down process include properly handling whatever external FW drives are connected? Or am I trusting the OS too much?
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Don’t know if I’m suppose to or not, but I always unmount external HD before shutting down my G5.
David
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Rafael,
To import footage, I use my camera (hvx200) and connect through the usb port, can that be damaging to either computer or camera?
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Walter,
When powering down, I eject the external hard drive from my finder window, once the lacie hard drive is no longer on my desktop, I pull the plug, which turns the hd off. That is the proper shut down method, correct?
In the past though, there were a few times when the plug was pulled from the computer while the hard drive was being used ;-(
Thanks for the input. For now, I’ve been leaving the hard drive on, connected to my computer. Also one other thing, am I not supposed to use the same port that I use when importing footage from my camera then disconnect from the camera so I can transfer footage to my hard drive? I received a post that kinda made it seem that I was doing something incorrectly.
Jason
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[Jason Kennedy] “In the past though, there were a few times when the plug was pulled from the computer while the hard drive was being used ;-( “
That’s bad and affects the inner workings of the drive. When that happens, you should either move the media off so you can completely erase the drive, or run Disc Warrior on the unit.
[Jason Kennedy] “Also one other thing, am I not supposed to use the same port that I use when importing footage from my camera then disconnect from the camera so I can transfer footage to my hard drive?”
If you have a FW drive and a FW connection from your camera, you can connect the drive to your Mac and the camera to the Drive. No clue on USB devices though.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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