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Two partitioned drive questions: can i mount both at once AND do i need extra space?
So, I have a 6tb drive I got for film editing with FCP7. I have two questions before I partition and fill it up:
1 – I am using the drive for a film project I already started with two other drives. What I want to do is partition the new drive into 3, using two of the partitions to duplicate the drives I already have. This way I don’t need to reattach all the files when I use the new drive. This makes sense if I can mount multiple partitions at the same time from the same drive? Can I do that? I assume so. But reading online i haven’t found conformation.
2 – I know the rule of thumb is to keep 10% of a hard drive free. If I partition the drive, do I need to keep 10% of each partition free or is 10% overall OK?
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7 Replies
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Partitions make sense if you need more than a copy of the operative system, but for storing media or any other kind of documents make no much sense.
Instead of making partitions, just make 2 folders with the name of the external drives and put inside the media on the drives. Final Cut is very good at reconnecting media. You won’t have problems.
rafael -
I gotta admit, I find FCP to be a bit disappointing with reconnecting media. Maybe it’s cause the project is so large (it’s a 52 minute film) but when I’ve had to reconnect, I’ve sometimes had to run it a few times much to my disappointment….
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Hi Noam,
First off, yes all the partitions of a drive mount at the same time. Of course, you have to remember they are actually one drive so any concurrent i/o operations on different partitions will be bottlenecked by the drive’s mechanism. I personally find it clearer for cloning smaller drives than creating folders and it will confine some HDD structure errors to a smaller portion of data. On the other hand, any writing between partitions on the drive is a copy operation, not a move. Since the partitions share the read/write mechanism, this copy can be slower than between two separate drives. It’s something to keep in mind when deciding if partitioning makes sense in your workflow.
Each partition is seen as completely separate by the system, which means you have to keep breathing space on each partition individually.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Do i need breathing space on it? Someone on another forum told me unless I’m booting from the drive, I don’t need to set aside free space. True?
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You need a minimum of breathing space. Try filling a drive to the gills and the read and write speeds will plummet when you get to the end. On today’s high-capacity drives, you can maybe go under the usually-quoted 10% but low space will affect speed on any mechanical drive.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
OK. but, that said, if i partition a drive into three, do all three drives need breathing space or can i fill up two of them and leave the third partition with tons of space?
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Once partitioned, they are individual drives to the OS, so each needs its individual space reserve if you want one.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com
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