Save Project to Raid, Network, or Locally?

[Kevin Monahan]

It’s best practice to have your FCP project file on your Mac HD. Backup the project to a folder on the network nightly.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com

[Josh Weiss]

Will you suffer any speed bump by working on a project folder on the network? Also, if you are going to back up the project file on the network nightly, why not work directly off of the raid?

[Kevin Monahan]

[Jwedit] “Will you suffer any speed bump by working on a project folder on the network?”
I wouldn’t want to be subject to any network traffic preventing my files from playing back.

[Jwedit] “Also, if you are going to back up the project file on the network nightly, why not work directly off of the raid?”
It’s for safekeeping purposes. If your computer gets crushed to dust, at least you’ll have a copy on the network ( I use my iDisk). You can save it anywhere for a backup, just somewhere that is NOT on your computer.

You should not keep your project file(s) on your Media Drive (RAID) as:
1) A drive may fail and if you are running RAID 0, you’ll not only lose the media, but the project file as well.
2) Drives should only contain media on them, as they need to be erased and maintained frequently.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com

[Mark Raudonis]

JWedit,

I ask that all our editors save in three places: locally, globally, and “mobily”. Locally (your internal drive), globally (the network drives: SAN, SATA, whatever), and onto one of the “removeable” thumb drives. If you follow this every day, I guarantee you won’t lose any data.

mark

[Tony! Hulette]

Do as Kevin and others suggest: Save your projects to your Mac’s internal drive (not your RAID). Save your media to the RAID. And backup to an external drive or to network location every-night.

Tony!

[Sean Oneil]

Make sure your Autosave Vault is on a different drive than your project. That way if one dies, you can always acess the other.

[Gary Hughes]

I completely follow this logic, as I have for years with other NLEs, but you said that the project should be saved on the Macintosh HD. Do you mean that drive exactly, or is any internal drive just as acceptable? I’ve seen posts and articles from others, Larry Jordan for one, that made the same claim, and just passed it off as “they really mean any internal drive”. So here it is again, so I ask for clarification.

I follow the save everywhere method, however, the project file that I actually work on is saved on a second internal SATA drive. My autosave vault is on the system drive. I use Folder Synchronizer from softoBe to synch my projects folder to my powerbook. Do I need to change something?

Thanks,
Gary

[Anders Haavie]

I work in a company that produce broadcast stuff all the time.. realityshows etc..

We ALWAYS save directly to our xraids, but use the internal disk for the autosave vault. We have zero problems with that. We work with dv, dvcpro50 and uncompressed SD material. (no hd yet)

Anders

[Kevin Monahan]

Well, what happens to the project file if the Xserve goes down?
I would not keep my project file on any media disk even though you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Perhaps you’re in a situation where you need to share the project file over Xsan?

I like Mark’s idea:
Local
Global
Mobile

[Kevin Monahan]

If it’s working for you, then no don’t change anything. As long as you have a “working backup”, it’s all good.