[Dave Gage]

[Michael Garber] “How much time to you get currently without the drive?”

I’ve not edited before on battery, but when I’ve gone to the library to work, I think I’ve easily gotten 4 hours out of it. If I’m using it sporadically throughout the day, I can go a day or two.

[Michael Garber] “LaCie rugged drive.”

What drive do you have in that LaCie? Is it 5400 or 7200 and how does it handle video? Ever run into FCP X slowdowns with it?

Thanks,
Dave

P.S You mentioned LADWP. Weren’t you the fellow that did the video some months ago about a local Los Angeles record store?

[Dave Gage]

[Morten Schmidt] “solved with Disk Warrior ;)”

I’ve had similar experiences twice since FCP X came out. My external RAID enclosure got hosed big time and Disk Warrior saved my butt. I initially blamed the OWC enclosure and then FCP X (as the RAID is only plugged in and then used for FCP X), but I had a discussion with Jeremy about this in the Techniques forum and he thinks it is more likely hardware related.

I am using an OWC eSATA expresscard in my i7 MBP and according to the Alsoft senior engineers, they don’t consider eSATA plug-and-play as do Apple and OWC. I don’t really know any thing for sure, but since I’ve been re-booting before plugging in the RAID and then re-booting when done editing, I have not had any hard kernel panic crashes (which would randomly show up within 24 hours of disconnecting the eSATA RAID) and the drive directory structure is orderly.

Time will tell, but since buying Disk Warrior and re-booting when done, I’ve not had any problems.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What is bothering me is that you say that FCPX “hoses the drive”.”

I’m sure you can see how I would come to that conclusion. It just doesn’t seem like hardware could screw up the directory structure. As I said earlier, the last time the drive got hosed, it was immediately after doing some moves with media from within FCP X and then the program got confused and beach balled. I did all the usual stuff like quitting and trashing prefs and such and then went back into FCP X and needed to re-import and re-link some files. I made it through the session, but the next time I plugged the drive in… hosed. Certainly could have been coincidence, but it didn’t feel like it.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” This can be caused by a number of things, but it is usually related to some hardware type of weirdness, at least in my experience.”

That’s new to me, but I don’t have a ton experience with this particular issue.

[Jeremy Garchow] “OSX has the capability to build a Raid1 on its own.”

I asked OWC about that when I re-did the RAID setup last time and they recommended I use their app and not the Disk Utility version.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I would want to restripe your drives with the OSX raid1 and see if it does any better.
if not, I’d swap the SATA card.
If that doesn’t work, I’d swap the enclosure.”

All good suggestions and I’ll likely go in that direction in a couple of months. The economy and youtube has really killed my business and I’m about 4 years behind the curve in getting video up on my websites (which is why I’m here in the FCP world in the first place). I’m fairly optimistic that with a few months of shooting and editing, I should be able to get going again financially. Then, I’ll upgrade RAM and FCP X and the OS and take a hard look at where I want to go with the drive situation. As I mentioned earlier, I’m diligent with backup, so when I re-do the RAID, I will likely go to RAID 0. In the meantime, it’s workaround city and try to keep working.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “it’s part chance, part decision. I think I have been locked out of both of those.”

I doubt it. I think it’s more about something strange with your account. Like you said, the first 3 names are there and have been there as long as I can remember, somehow they’re like pinned in. None of them post here that much any more. I don’t think it’s anything at all personal, it’s just strangeness somewhere in the forum programming. I believe at the time I mentioned it, there was someone else who posted a lot but was never up there. It might have been Tim Payton, but it was a few months ago. [I just went back and found the email. It was yourself and Tim Payton and Steve Connor that didn’t seem to make it to the top.] I believe it’s one of those things they call a “bug”, maybe you’ve heard of them.

I bet if any of you created a new account, it would be fixed. Clearly, not a big deal, but that’s my guess. I just mentioned it to Tim Wilson because I felt I should be replaced (“I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy.”)

[Dave Gage]

Jeremy,

Completely off topic here, but you’ll notice that my photo is now at the top of the forum due to the amount of current postings. I had a conversation with Tim Wilson about this a while back because at the time I felt a bit strange that my photo was up there and someone like, you for instance, was not. I asked him why your photo wasn’t up there and he didn’t know. In theory, because of the sheer number of your posts, you should be up there and especially because you are one of the more helpful pros in the forums.

That’s all. I just mention it because I was reminded of it after seeing my photo at the top. I was originally under the impression that the photos were of the pros that gave support here, but I guess it’s more about the current number of posts. Strange that your pic never shows up there though.

dg

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Wait a minute. After you format the disk, you can’t see both drives?”

It’s been a while since I did it and haven’t given it a thought since. I think you are correct, at this stage it may look like two drives, but I honestly don’t remember for sure. I can tell you’re getting at something, but I don’t know what it is yet.

dg

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What I don’t understand is if it’s a hardware or software raid.”

I couldn’t tell you. I never really got that deep into it. It seems to be a hybrid if that makes any sense.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” I looked at the website and it says it comes with SoftRAID.”

That SoftRAID doesn’t sound familiar. My enclosure is about 2 years old now, it might be a slightly different model and software.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” Even if you weren’t using FCPX and you started moving files around, it would probably fail.”

That very well could be, but since it’s dedicated to FCP X, I will likely never know.

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
You shouldn’t have to run Disk Warrior that much.”

I don’t know if I need to, but it’s very fast to run and it makes me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of it. I suppose once every few months would be fine.

[Jeremy Garchow] “If you put in two brand new drives in that enclosure, what do you have to do?”

Go to Disk Utility and format each drive to Mac OS Extended (non-journaled in this case). Open the OWC Config app: Use raid 1 check box only (everything else should be left blank).
—

I just found a few of my notes from my last major crash:

“9/19/12 Called and talked to Chris again. Raid 1 enclosure won’t mount now. Error comes up “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer”. Took the two drives out and tried them separately, but both drives had the same “not readable” error. Ran Disk Utiltiy’s Disk Repair and it had the errors “Invalid B-Tree node size” and couldn’t fix it. Bought Disk Warrior for $108.90.”

“Note also the further comments from OWC relating to my question of what is the configuration if there is a failed drive. This is fairly important as well. The RAID Mirror is rebuilt from the Primary Drive (plugged into the circuit board). So if the Primary drive fails you will need to swap them over before inserting the new drive. Having said that, if I get failed drive I will probably back-up to another disk (which I sort of do anyway) and rebuild the Raid entirely.”

Q: One of my drives failed and I replaced it. Do I need to connect it to the computer to rebuild the data?
A: No, the rebuild will occur without being connected to the computer as long as the power is turned on to the enclosure.

Also according to my notes, my enclosure is officially:
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad”- 2 drive enclosure, Oxford 936 chipset.
—

Anyway, I don’t know if any of this sheds more light on the issue or not, but now you know what I know.

Thanks for your time,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
If the raid1 is split, can you format two drives separately? Meaning, even though there’s one connection, can you see two drives when you aren’t in raid1?”

I think I understand your question, but maybe not. If I take them out of the enclosure, they are obviously identical and Carbon Copy Cloner sees them as the same drive if both are mounted on the desktop simultaneously. If I throw one into the NewerTech Voyager, all is normal with each drive. This particular enclosure will only do RAID, it’s not possible to use the drives separately within it (isn’t that called JBOD? If it is, it won’t do that.)

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
Ha! Thanks so much, and congrats on your 8 and 10 year old newborns! ;)”

I just got back from a bike ride with them. For me, it gets more fun the older they get. They’re like little people now. Who’d of thunk it?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “OWC is a good company. My experience has always been good.”

That’s good to hear. My recent experiences with eSATA cards and enclosures have been mixed, but I’ve been happy with everything else, especially RAM upgrades ($107 now for 16GB).

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
What exact enclosure do you have? It’s a double enclosure with one sata port?”

This is it:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID

RAID 1 setup with two Samsung 1 TB drives. (I’ve had great luck with the Samsung drives. Very quiet, and haven’t had one die on me… yet).

This is the eSATA card I bought from them-
(Whoops, they don’t have it listed any more. After our conversation here, I wonder if they had complaints and removed it or, they could just be out of stock.)

Dave

[By the way, I saw a couple of months back you had a newborn. Congratulations! I hope all is going well. I have 2 newborn boys that just turned 8 and 10 last week. It goes very, very quickly.]

[Dave Gage]

I just checked out the price for the Tempo SATA Pro 6Gb ExpressCard/34 card. I guess with ThunderBolt out, they are really dropping the prices on these cards. It was down to about $118. I’m too broke from the lousy economy to buy anything at the moment, but I will keep this in mind. Although since I have my workarounds in place, I might be better served putting the money to upgrading my RAM to 16GB.

Dave