[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] ” Relibaility being one of them.”

I agree. I saved some money, but should have gone the quality route instead.

[Jeremy Garchow] “This is insane.”

Could be, but I haven’t had this problem since I began using Disk Warrior.

[Jeremy Garchow] “My feeling is you have a bad enclosure, or simply failing hard drives.”

Maybe yes on the enclosure, but after the first bad experience, I took the drives out and used them separately, one for capture and the other for backup, and never had any issues with the drives used by themselves for about 6 months. I also ran every test I could on the drives and they came up fine.

[Jeremy Garchow] “How are you setting up Raid 1?”

It’s a small app from OWC called “Oxsemi Configurator”. I believe it gives me the choice of RAID 1 or 0. I’ve been with Macs since the Mac Plus and worked for a while in IT, but this is my first personal experience with RAID. Have you heard anything good or bad about the enclosure itself, OWC Elite-AL Pro? I remember seeing this enclosure recommended back in the FCP 7 days.
—

The reason I came up with the corrupted directory structure as the possible cause of my problems and why I went to Disk Warrior was reading different posts over at FCP.co. BenB especially recommends running DW frequently as regular maintenance, but I’ve seen many others there also say the same thing. I haven’t seen DW recommended as much here at the Cow, but I assumed others here likely used it also.

I must say that since I broke down and ponied up the $100 for Disk Warrior, I went ahead ran it on all my computers and drives. This MBP i7 was taking about 90-120 seconds to reboot. Since running DW, it’s back to about 30 seconds. Disk Utility did basically nothing, but I’m now a believer in DW.

[Dave Gage]

[Dave Gage] “also using the Finder to move events and projects manually (always on the same drive though as from “Final Cut Events” to “Final Cut Events NOT-USING”.”

I just re-read and wanted to be clear that I always move events and projects manually without FCP X open. I could use Event Manager, but since I don’t have a ton of stuff, I’m fine with simple dragging and dropping.

dg

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Stop what you’re doing any buy the Sonnet PRO express/34.

6Gb version: https://sonnettech.com/product/temposatapro6gbexpresscard34.html“
I only need one port and prior research told me that the speed limitation would be the drives and not the connection. My OWC 2-drive enclosure maxes out at 3Gb. But, I have heard excellent things about the Sonnet cards. It seems like at this point, when I’m ready to upgrade, I should just go directly to TB.

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
I don’t understand. What do you mean by this?”
The RAID becomes unreadable by the OS and Disk Utility and asks to reformat it when connected. I and MacSales.com thought it was a bad enclosure (although I’m beginning to trust their support less and less). The second time the disk became unreadable, I bought Disk Warrior and gave it a shot. (The first time I took the drives out, reformatted, and copied from a backup). Disk Warrior saw the drive, fixed the directory structure and all data was intact.

[Jeremy Garchow] “How exactly does it get hosed and why is FCPX the culprit?”
I think it may come from a combination of moving events and projects from within FCP X and also using the Finder to move events and projects manually (always on the same drive though as from “Final Cut Events” to “Final Cut Events NOT-USING”. The last time it happened I had recently used the Move and Consolidate functions from within the program which crashed the FCP X and forced me to re-boot FCP X and the computer before it would work again.

I assume FCP X is the culprit because the only time this drive is used or connected is when I’m using FCP X. There is nothing else on there but events, projects, and media. A couple of years ago it was the FCP 7 Capture drive, but I never had any problems with it.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t have to reboot using eSata. What card do you have?”

I’ve got the OWC Slim eSATA ExpressCard/34 Adapter. Keep in mind this is a MBP. I don’t think the Mac Pro eSATA cards have the same issue.

As I mentioned in the original post, FCP X continually hoses the directory structure of the RAID (until the drive is un-readable by the OS), so I was forced to buy Disk Warrior and now run it regularly. The Disk Warrior senior engineers stated that eSATA is not hot-swappable and that certainly has been my experience. I asked specifically about the kind or quality of eSATA ExpressCards and they didn’t think it mattered, you should still re-boot when finished (and boot up from a cold boot with the drive on and connected).

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “if you copy and paste a Compound clip”
I’m not copying the whole Compound Clip, only the content within. Sometimes I even just copy and paste the parts from a recent similar Project.

In fact, because I do the same type instruction tutorials over and over again, I’ve recently created a Project Template with a gap clip for the middle content that I can duplicate, re-name, and work on top of. This seems to be the easiest and fastest.

Thanks,
Dave

[If you have a minute, could you take a look at this thread? I’d love to have your take on these eSATA issues-
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/14591 ]

[Dave Gage]

Bret,

Thanks for the reply.

[Bret Williams] “With a more advanced eSata card you could double your raid speeds, into the 200s.”
I was a bit gun shy in the beginning to go with RAID 0 and went with RAID 1. But, I always back up immediately after working, so RAID 0 would probably be the way to go. I don’t have the stats as to how much faster 0 is over 1, but I know it is. (Maybe into the 200s?)

[Bret Williams] “And thunderbolt fairly easily doubles that.”
I’ve got a 2011 MBP i7 with Thunderbolt, but my understanding is that it’s my two RAID 1 7200 drives at this point that keep the speed lower vs. the eSata connection. It seems ThunderBolt would be overkill. If I’m incorrect about this please let me know.

As soon as get the money and time, I’ll double my ram from 8GB to 16GB, upgrade to 10.0.6 (still on 10.0.4) and move from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. My understanding is that each one of these should give me a nice speed boost. And, re-format to RAID 0.
—

I’ll keep using the eSATA vs. FW800 connection as long as I can remember to re-boot when finished. I forgot a couple of days ago and the next day I had a major crash (for some reason, it always seems to be the next day). Evidently, eSATA cards in Mac Pros don’t have this problem, but if you are using it via an ExpressCard slot like I am, you MUST reboot when done.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

I’m still on 10.0.4 and won’t have time to upgrade for a while, so I’m taking notes.

My situation is very similar, but different. What I’ve been doing up to this point (pre-10.0.6) is to use Compound Clips to house my standard intros and outros and lower 3rds, etc. To avoid CC complications, I’ve just been opening the CC in a timeline and then copying and pasting the content into the project where it’s needed without actually bringing in the CC.

Even with the new CC behaviors, I can’t see how the CC would know the difference with copy and paste unless it has some weird compound clip memory associated with the paste (which I just made up, so it’s not likely).

Any one see a problem with this method?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Kevin Patrick] “Unless I missed something in the article, I’m not sure what to do if you want to actually need to use your older version of FCPX. Drag the new version to the trash and drag the old version to the Applications folder?”

I wondered the same thing. I’ve kept all the versions going back to 10.0.0. But without the pre-upgraded projects and events, they are likely worthless (unless you are only starting with new events and projects).

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] “Yep.”

Yep, you nailed it. Sometimes I’m amazed at how some things that seem like they would be a pain to do end up being quite simple. Yeah for multicam (and Bret)!

This is going to be perfect for tutorials where occasionally I want to switch camera views, but other times, a split-screen or a corner inset is what’s needed.

Thanks again,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] “At the point you want to do a split screen simply duplicate that clip on top of itself, set it to the other camera angle, and apply the appropriate transform to each clip to achieve a split screen.”

Cool. Just to clarify, as I won’t be able to play with this for a few days, I’ve got the multicam in a Project with pre-made cuts and I take one of the segments and Option-drag above and change it to the other angle.

1. This is all done within the Project?

2. The new clip above will still allow me to right-click and choose a different angle?

The transform changes will be easy if I get it this far. I can verify in a few days, but I didn’t realize the new copied connected clip from the multicam would allow me to change it’s angle also.

Thanks,
Dave