Am I going to burn out my USB 2.0 drives?

GrenadeArtist

GrenadeArtist

Active member
Hi guys,

I just got an HVX. I am now completely spoiled by the P2 cards. But I am also scared, because I am dumping all the footage onto my three USB 2.0 hard drives (set up via a hub). I don't have a back up for the footage, so what if the constant usage these drives are getting makes them fail?

And are there settings in Final Cut that will reduce the odds of me having a disk failure. I hear these drives spinning up and down a lot.
 
Hard Drives are pretty cheap at the moment and you can pick up a dual drive box for $119 at some online shops that are Firewire 800, 400, and USB2. I'm running 4.5 Terrebytes with 5.5 gig of ram on my G5 dual 2.0 and this works well for me. You can get a 4bay hot swapable box and plug and play extra drives in them. I still use a older scssi box with a uncompressed card setup that is a 4 bay hot swapable. With 750gig drives hitting $120 its cheaper than tape to back up to and instant access. Everybody does something different but I'm using 8 external drives 4 of them being dual drives set up each as an array (meaning one drive). I don't use mirroring I just have lots of drives and back up accordingly. This works well for me. I will go to blue ray shortly when the prices make it worth while. Setting up an array is very simple as well is a raid system on Mac or Pc. 5 minutes of reading in the help menu and your ready to go. It takes all of 30 seconds to set up one once you have your drives in a box. I use drives for all of my audio files and sound effects and video clip libraries and for my motion libraries. This way they are quite easy to get at and I make disk images of them and this way I can have 50 dvds open at the same time if I want which gives me excess to a lot of data instantly to pull from. I pick what files I need for a project and put them in a project folder so the NLE can find them when all the disk images are closed. Takes a lot of drive space but its quick to work with. When you need to have 100 gig of files along with you footage this method works for me. Firewire 800 is just great and I like it a lot better than usb. Good luck!
 
Last edited:
Hard drives fail much less often than people fear they will.

I've seen people replace hard drives because their OS is screwed up or because their motherboard blew and the machine wouldn't boot.

I have lost one hard drive to failure since 1989 and that was due to a river silt dust storm and a desktop machine running outdoors.

Data drives rarely have problems...OS drives on the other hand...they can require a format before rebooting if they lose system files.
 
I had a drive fail on me yesterday. It sucks. The notorious clicking sound. It started a few days ago and when I went to start copying everything it died and couldn't be mounted. Lucky it was just music.
 
Could you clarify that you are editing from the USB drives in FCP from a hub?

What drives, with what mechanisms on what Mac?
 
technically, usb2.0 isnt adequate for edit use in FCP - it can work, but its not suggested.
 
RAID 5 Arrays

RAID 5 Arrays

I prefer RAID 5 arrays and ususally leave one drive as a hot spare in case one of the active drives fails. I have experienced many drive failures in the past 10 years, but it is not usually a problem since the data is redundant.

Worst case scenario, you can take the drive to a restoration service that can save your data since the platters are usually fine and the problem is most often mechanical in nature.

Disk space is so cheap now, IDE or SATA RAID conigurations make a lot of sense.
 
If you're using Mac, I'd shift over to Firewire 800 drives, put your USB drives on the shelf and use them as back up media. I back all my files up on external USB drives and use an internal RAID array for files I'm working with currently.
 
Hey guys thank you for your thoughts, but can someone please point me in the direction of an explanation about how to set up a RAID system?

I mean, I know nothing about how to do that. Like literally nothing. Or is there just a big box I can order that would do that?
 
As I asked earlier, What drives, with what mechanisms on what Mac.

For example, you can easily set up a RAID on a MacPro or a G5.

But without knowing WHICH MAC you are editing on, it's impossible to advise.

That's why providing detailed information about your set up is important, because we cannot see what you have from here.
 
David S. said:
As I asked earlier, What drives, with what mechanisms on what Mac.

For example, you can easily set up a RAID on a MacPro or a G5.

But without knowing WHICH MAC you are editing on, it's impossible to advise.

That's why providing detailed information about your set up is important, because we cannot see what you have from here.
Click to expand...


I'm sorry. It's the new iMac 24 inch with 2.4 Ghz and 2 gigs of RAM.

It only has like two USB 2.0 slots and one FireWire slot.
 
Given the fact that the macsales.com configuration is eSATA and he has an iMac with no way to expand it, it will not work.

Is it worth a thousand dollars?

It's your video footage. If you can recapture it, then don't worry about it.

You might look for something less expensive from G-Technology.

But eSATA won't work with an iMac.
 
David S. said:
Given the fact that the macsales.com configuration is eSATA and he has an iMac with no way to expand it, it will not work.

Is it worth a thousand dollars?

It's your video footage. If you can recapture it, then don't worry about it.

You might look for something less expensive from G-Technology.

But eSATA won't work with an iMac.
Click to expand...

David - As an alternative, what about the idea of simply backing up my media files from the P2 cards onto a secondary drive? It's not as automatic as the other options, but I would like to save money. That way, at least I would have a backup of the raw files.

Mike
 
uh, no. its not. the link i sent is FW800/400+USB2... not sure where you got the eSATA thing?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top