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FCPX and very occasional lag.
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[Julian Bowman] “Hey Christian, thanks for this.”
Glad I can help, Julian.
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[Julian Bowman] “Hoping it works :)”
It should work, but have you considered also my FCPX suggestions? Depending on media type or event size those practices can help a lot… Even when booting from SSD and your media is on a internal SATA RAID, mind you. But this hardware upgrade should improve things regardless.
For reference:
– When using two LCDs, place your Event Browser at the secondary monitor and leave the Viewer smaller at the main one along with the Timeline, when full screen is needed, then you press cmd+shift+f.
– Hide the Inspector as much as you can
– To delete project renders in File/Delete Project Render Files is a good recurring practice too
– Finally, get used to Preference Manager to delete your preferences.
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[Julian Bowman] “1) I have googled and I see what you mean about the SSD in the second optical drive. Overclockers do a Intel 520 Series 240GB 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive for £240. Is that one you would recommend?”
It’s a no-brainer, go for it! As to the 520 series, I only have experience with the 320 series, but the 520 should be good. What it’s appealing with the 320s is that they’re older than the 520s, so they have a smaller capacity and much cheaper prices. The boot drive (the SSD) should only have the OS and all applications and the RAID should contain all media, events and projects, thus your SSD can be like 80 GB without a problem, as we are pointing all the documents to the RAID we are leaving the boot drive alone. 320s are slower (3Gbs) and have been supplemented by the 520s’ technologies, but the MacPro will still be very snappy with it, and you will be saving salt. This is very easy to do, and it takes only a couple of minutes to install a SSD on the ODD lower bay, so there’s that. On the MacPro upgrade I did, we bought a couple of 320s with 80GB. One for a certain combination of softwares and another one for a different combination and both have access to the RAID. More on that later.
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[Julian Bowman] “2) You said to ensure my 4 drives are all the same. Do you mean just the same size or the same size and brand etc.? I currently have 4 x 2TB drives in my mac and Disc Utility suggests that they are all Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 Media”
Exactly, same size and brand/model. What you have should suffice.
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[Julian Bowman] “3) When I Raid them all together, does it format them and delete everything on them? I’m guessing so and am transferring stuff I need to an external, but I don’t know so it may leave data on there.”
It’s a complete and irreversible reformat operation. Back up!
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[Julian Bowman] “4) I do a fresh install of OSX on my SSD and then set that as my boot drive. At that point I can delete the OSX on my current boot drive and RAID my 4 internals. Is that correct and it as simple as that?”
Yes, simple as that! One thing to consider though is that you should get 8TB of backup in FW800 drives for your new working set up. Software RAID 0 is the fastest and cheapest internal SATA option for the MacPro, but as all RAID 0s do, they spread bits all over the sum of drives being used. Meaning that a failure of operation in one of them should render your entire RAID completely useless/unrecoverable. It’s a trade you make here; the more speed you have, more chances to fail. This is where the FW800 drives comes in. Do use them to set up your Time Machine for hourly backups of your RAID (and boot drive as well)
Another aspect of that upgrade that you should also consider is the ability to work with separate sets of HDDs. (That alone would give anyone extreme advantages over iMacs and TB drives. But ultimately, it depends on the sheer volume of media needed one person have to deal with, and budget and workflow, of course). Example, you have your current setup, keep them as they are now, slide them out of the case, replace them with additional drives that will be then your new RAID, install SSD and have your new upgraded setup. Later on, you have decided that you want to boot from your old SATA drive and revisit some old project or any other personal task. Fine, take your new drives out, place your old drives inside and boot using ALT to choose your old one on start-up. This way you can work off of a FCP classic boot or another software (or version) you don’t use as much as your current upgraded FCPX setup. So, when finished, take them out and replace them with new ones raided together via software. Take note! They even don’t have to be precisely in the same bays as they were before. Just don’t forget to unplug the MacPro from the electric outlet before swapping any drives! You are now in business with both your new fast setup and your oldies as well. It will cost you some more money but you will be much more comfortable doing so, as you can have multiple setups and all its advantages. For instance, you can have two SSDs for booting two different systems or you can have double two drive RAIDs or a single three drive RAID plus an older HDD and so on, depending on what you are working with this can be the real deal. Note that a Disk Utility RAID will mount on any OS you boot on, including older ones like Snow Leopard (but not sure if that works with earlier ones). At the end of the day it’s your call and it all depends on your needs and your current capabilities. Again, good luck!
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Hey Christian, I appreciate all that. I am (psychologically at least) gearing towards trying this. I need to clear a current job (asap) before starting a new edit and will try the SSD and Radi in between. Have backed up everything I don’t want to lose. Only headache looks to be my Apple Mail app. Still doesn’t appear to be a simple way to just copy it over, though i googled some work arounds. Anyway, when I get it done I will report back to the forum as to whether it helped or not. Hoping it does as many others seem to be running FCPX without all the lag i get on machines about the same as mine.
Again, many thanks for the suggestion and the time taken in your explanations 🙂
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[Julian Bowman] ” Still doesn’t appear to be a simple way to just copy it over, though i googled some work arounds. “
IMAP is a savior here. If your email provider doesn’t have imap:
I haven’t used Mail in a while, but I used to drag the data over, then drag the preferences over and it would work.
Mail also has a decent “import” and “export” function.
Jeremy
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Cheers Jeremy. Will look into that a bit closer when D-Day arrives 🙂 Appreciated.
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No problem.
I’m not sure if that technique still works as Mail has changed a bit.
At the very least, you could export and import.
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