Fire Wire Hard Drive Query

[Walter Biscardi]

LaCie and G-RAID’s are the two firewire drives I recommend. Excellent products. You can safely daisy chain two drives together. After that, it becomes dicey.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Ed Dooley]

And yes, you can use an external FW drive as your boot drive. I have a G4 MDD with a FW boot drive. I use it
for administrative stuff now, but it was my main FCP station.
Ed

[Howie Young]

A few new questions…

1. If I am daisy chaining additional external firewire drives do I need to set-up my computer so they are all on their own individual bus and install new dedicated firewire cards for each drive, or, do the drive plug into one another without any problems?

2. Can my video deck be on the same bus as either new drive?

3. Do I need a cloning program to copy all of my files to the new firewire drive or can I drop and drag?

Thanks again,

Howie

[Walter Biscardi]

[Howie] “1. If I am daisy chaining additional external firewire drives do I need to set-up my computer so they are all on their own individual bus and install new dedicated firewire cards for each drive, or, do the drive plug into one another without any problems?”

You can daisy chain two drives together per bus from my experience. I’ve not daisy chained off a card. I only run four total firewire drives on a regular basis here on two different workstations. Two LaCie BDE’s and two G-RAID. I also run a FibreChannel array. If you use too many drives, you’ll definitely start to drop frames and have other problems. Get fewer larger arrays than a bunch of small ones.

[Howie] “2. Can my video deck be on the same bus as either new drive? “

I’ve had no issues daisy chaining a DV deck off the back of a single Firewire drive. Don’t do it often, and primarily when using the laptop, but it does work.

[Howie] “3. Do I need a cloning program to copy all of my files to the new firewire drive or can I drop and drag?”

You can use Apple’s Disc Utility to make a Disk Image and then move it to the new drive, or use Carbon Cloner.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Howie Young]

Hey Walter

Thanks very much for your feedback.

I’m looking into the following LaCie drives:

600GB BIGDISK EXTREME USB 2.0
500GB BIGDISK EXTREME USB 2.0
250GB PORSCHE EXT FIREWIRE HD

Do you have any experience with these particular drives?

Howie

[Steve Eisen]

Stay away from USB!

G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
15″ Al Powerbook 1.25 1GB RAM
OS 10.4.2 FCP 5, DVDSP 4, QT 7.02, Boris Red 3GL 2.45 TB External Stor

[Howie Young]

Do you mean a USB external drive or a Firewire and USB drive?

[Howie Young]

“You can daisy chain two drives together per bus from my experience. ”

I have 2 Firewire ports in the back of my mahcine. I have my deck plugged into the first one. Does this mean I’ll be able to plug the first new fw drive in the other port and daisy chain the second drive off the first?

“You can use Apple’s Disc Utility to make a Disk Image and then move it to the new drive, or use Carbon Cloner.”

What is a carbon cloner? Can you recommend a good one?

How can I make a disc image of an entire harddrive?

Thanks again!

[Howie Young]

Walter

Thanks for all your feedback.

Now a little more information…

I currently have 3 media drives in use. I believe my fourth drive needs to be replaced. It makes a grinding noise and hangs when I try to copy files to a disc to back-up. Have you ever heard of this?

Also, I am currently in the middle of a large DVD project. I am running OS 9.2.2, FCP version 2.0.2 and iDVD version 1.1. Instead of upgrading my current system drive to OS X Tiger during this project it was suggested to use an external firewire drive as a new OS X system drive for iDVD 5. This way I can complete my project in FCP 2 but still be able to author my DVD with the latest version of iDVD.

Will I encounter any problems running a new FW drive as my OS X system drive?

Howie

[Howie Young]

Walter

I just wanted to say thanks for your feedback.

Howie