System drives, media drives and journaling

[David Roth weiss]

Tom,

Your IT guys are wrong in this case. You might well drop frames because the system drive will be doing double duty. The system drive has mnore than enough throughput required for DV, but thats not the issue, it needs to be able to freely access application files, while the media drives need to freely access large media files and provide sustained throughput without conflict.

It seems to me that your IT guys installed a system drive that is simply way too large for normal use, and they’re simply trying to encourage you to make use of it in some way because they know its way too big for the job. You could always use it to store backup media…

DRW

[Andy Nitchman]

Just wanted throw in my two cents… I was unaware that journaling
was not recommended for media drives. Hence, I have done a lot of
editing on scratch drives with journaling enabled and I have never
had an major issues.

-AnDy
FCP 5
2.0GHz Dual-core G5
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA GF 6600 256

[David Roth weiss]

Apparently journaling is not really the issue it once was. Its not recommended for media drives and its unneccessary, but it can’t hurt you if you happen to do it.

[Tom Ackroyd]

[David Roth Weiss] “It seems to me that your IT guys installed a system drive that is simply way too large for normal use”

Thanks for your help David.

The “normal use” here is now to use it as a capture drive as well as system drive. Hence the 500Mb. It’s to do with managing scarce drive resources, beyond my control. I don’t have a problem with managing it this way; I just don’t want a drop in usability.

Will this configuration potentially mean problems while editing, not just while capturing? (I edit in DV space always.)

Regards,
Tom

[David Roth weiss]

[Tom Ackroyd] “Will this configuration potentially mean problems while editing, not just while capturing?”

Tom,

The concern in these situations is that you will have dropped frames that aren’t flagged at capture and that only appear later in the game when, for instance, printing to tape. That is the big hazzard that you risk by ignoring the recomendations. The thing is, you might get away it, but then again, you might not. The recommended approach assumes you’d like to know such an occurence will never happen.

DRW

[Ed Dooley]

Just had the same issue appear on the Dallas FCP list. I referenced the
Apple support page that talks about it:
>>>If your server contains high-bandwidth usage data files, such as large video, graphics, or audio files, you may want to weigh the benefits of using journaling against the performance needed to access your data. In most cases, the impact of journaling upon data access performance are unnoticeable to users, but its implementation may not be practical for servers where data access demands outweigh its benefits.<<< I got 2 responses that said Apple engineers at NAB told the respondents that journaling doesn't affect performance enough to not use it. I personally don't use it for my media drives because I want every last bit of performance. I *never* capture to my OS drive because it's running the OS and a number of apps at one time. The extra throughput needed for media can produce dropped frames (and I do uncompressed video, not just DV). Ed

[Tom Ackroyd]

Thanks David and Ed for your input, you’ve been a great help.

Tom