HDD and P2

[jackfate]

When using an HDD for P2 download, how big of a drive would you need? For example with 2 8gb P2 cards...

If you download the footage onto an HDD then delete the P2 cards, could you keep dowlonading more footage onto the drive.

Meaning could you potentially have 500 GB of footage from the same 2 cards on an external HDD? Or does the drive have to be clear everytime you want to put the footage on to it?

[Barry_Green]

Yes, that's how it works, but downloading from the camera directly to a drive is limited to only 15 partitions, so with 4GB cards you only take advantage of up to 60GB of hard disk space (regardless of how large your drive is!)

[jackfate]

So if you download it to the computer and just save the footage onto the HDD the limited partition space doesnt apply? Can you use the same drive with both ways (straight to HDD from camera and bypassing it with computer?)

[Barry_Green]

Correct -- the partition limit only comes into play if you use the camera to offload directly to the hard disk. If you go through the computer, there's no issue.

If you use the drive straight with the camera, then you can plug that drive into the computer and read the existing contents, but you really shouldn't try going around using that drive for any other purpose. You'd need to reformat it and repartition it if you wanted to get access to the rest of the space on it.

[gaston]

What if I'm shooting on an FS-100? Can I drag and drop onto an external 500Gb and use up every bit of space without making partitions? How would I go about this in the correct manner?

[Barry_Green]

Yes you could do that, but you'll need a computer between them of course. Just use the "organize P2" function on the FS-100, which should make one big properly-organized folder, and then plug the FS-100 into the computer, and the external drive into another port on the computer, and then drag 'n' drop. But keep in mind it'll take quite a while to copy 100 gigabytes of data over a firewire connection.

[gaston]

Thanks for the reply Barry. What happens when I want to transfer the 2nd batch of footage onto the external? It's going to tell me that "contents" already exists and "lastclip" already exists. With the first "contents" folder, I can also go to import on FCP and review my footage to make sure everything is A-OK. How can I save my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. batches to be able to do this as well?

[James Jones]

Just make a separate folder for each FS-100 dump....something like "FS-100 Batch 1" folder, "FS-100 Batch 2" folder...you get the picture. Then you will not run into redundant folder names.

James

[gaston]

Ok, I think I figured it out. Please let me know if this is an appropriate way of doing this. I simply made different folders on my 500Gb external (Such as Shoot Day 1, Shoot Day 2, ext.). I dragged/dropped that day's "contents" and "last clip" from the FS-100 to the external's Shoot Day 1 folder. I then reviewed the footage from the external in order to make sure there were no transfer errors (I review the footage by going to FCP's import->P2, but only using the viewer, not importing). Once I verify that everything transferred properly, I format my FS-100 and keep shooting. Then I do it all over again using the Shoot Day 2 folder in my external for the next batch of footage. I'm able to view it in the same manner through FCP to make sure the footage transferref properly. I also don't get "contents and lastclip already exist" because they are within their own folders on the external. How does that sound?

[Barry_Green]

Yes, exactly as James said, that's how to do it.