slow disks…changing scratch disk before its full up

[Grant Gomm]

Hey Mike,
I’ve been through pretty much this same problem… The bottom line is external drives that run on usb or firewire are a pain. If you add effects or multiple layers of video in HD, you’ll end up with the pinwheel of death, or have to render every five minutes (and if your computer isn’t fast enough, you’ll still end up with the pinwheel of death).
The best thing to do is switch everything over to a second internal drive (not your startup disk). Just copy and paste your files from your external drive to the new caviar maintaining the same file structure. Then reset your scratch disk in FCP. The sooner you get away from externals like that, the better your footage will play in FCP.
Ideally you’d want to use multiple disks in a raid so that each file is saved over several disks. That way multiple disks can send data at the same time as opposed to just one doing all the work.
Also, USB 2.0 (480Mb/s) is actually faster than firewire 400 (400Mb/s). If you’re using USB 2.0 and Firewire 400, that could be it. I don’t know much about USB 3.0 vs firewire 800, so if you’re using those, i’m not sure…
Best of luck.

-Grant Gomm
http://www.blacklionproductions.com

[Jeff Greenberg]

Download AJA’s disk utility here and actually measure the drive(s)

Why is it running slower? Possibly the RPMs are 5400 and the USB drive is 7200? Also how are both drives formatted?

Generally USB 2 BURSTS faster than firewire, but firewire is faster sustained. USB is host controlled – meaning your mac has to route all the data.

IF you just configure the third drive, you’ll have your projects media in a folder based on it’s name, in two capture scratch folders and a two Render folders (and audio renders).

You can manually move that stuff now (and relink) or at the end of the project use the Media Manager to consolidate everything to a single drive.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Mike Albertini]

Thanks to you both for getting back to me…
So, after ive copied all the files from the OWC to the caviar black and then added the caviar black as the third scratch disk in fcp7, do I untick all of the boxes next to the OWC scratch disk or just leave them ticked? (considering the OWC still has 1.8 TB of space left, I’m thinking untick, but just want to make sure)
Btw, the WD drive was USB 2 and the OWC was firewire 800…I thought about getting an esata card for the OWC drive but read it wouldn’t work that well on my Mac Pro (4-core) 1st Gen – 2006-2007…and am planning on upgrading my mac in the autumn to a new mac pro with thunderbolt…
Btw, I downloaded the AJA disk utility and ran the tests a few times…for disk read/write on 720×486 8-bit (file size 128 mb) the OWC firewire 800 drive recorded on average – write: 55mb/s and read: 55.5 mb/s….the WD usb2 drive – write: 27.8mb/s and read: 36.9mb/s…
This is really slow isn’t it?…the internal caviar black is running at 130mb/s for both read/write…Any idea why the externals are being so slow?…I paid $247 for the OWC 2TB drive thinking it was fairly high performance and am now thinking I wasted my money and should have just gone for a WD firewire 800 for half the price…or perhaps a G-Raid…

[Grant Gomm]

Jeff brought up a good point – Disk Speed. Maybe your disks are 5400 rpm instead of 7200? Whenever I buy a disk I don’t even consider the 5400rpm disks. Esata would be great, but why won’t it work on your mac pro?

-Grant Gomm
http://www.blacklionproductions.com

[Mike Albertini]

Hi Grant,

Not sure about my WD usb one, but the OWC is a Mercury Elite Pro and does go up to 7200rpm…esata will work with my mac pro but the firmtek card i was looking at and which sold for around $!00 didnt improve the speed of transfer from the OWC to a fairly old mac pro like mine compared to the firewire 800 connection on the OWC…according to an article i read…that’s why i thought twice about buying it and eventually didnt…so do i untick the boxes next to the OWC scratch disk in system settings once ive copied the files over and set the caviar black as the third scratch disk?

Thanks
Mike

[Jeff Greenberg]

On drive speed.
That’s why I suggested the AJA utility. You were guessing before. Now you know. So, your internal is significantly faster than your firewire or your USB, and your USB is the slowest of the three.

Drive speed is dictated by, well mostly, drive speed. 10,000 RPM drives go faster than 5400. Somewhere in there will be elements like interace (the internal sata connection is faster than firewire…) and another element will be other items on the bus. Try removing all USB devices (if you can) and re-running the test. $247 sounds cheap for a performance 2tb drive.

Raids are a WHOLE ‘nother story.

Meanwhile, on FCP’s System Preferences and media management in general:

1) I like to have a folder at the top level of my drives called “Final Cut Pro Documents”. Why? Because that’s what Apple does by default in your user.
2) I don’t ever change the autosave or the caches – they don’t have tick boxes, and these files are mostly small and temporary.
3) I have several entries in the system prefs (one for each drive) but I only have one checked at any given moment (controlling where my media goes). If you have more than one checked, media goes to the drive with the most room first.

Know that if you point FCP to a folder like this, three folders will be created – Capture Scratch, Renders and Audio renders.
Inside of that folder is a folder based on the name of the project (never change the name of the project!)

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Mike Albertini]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your help…much appreciated.

Cheers

Mike