External Hard Drives - ARGH!!! Please Help!

M

mmm

Veteran
I have just added a Lacie 320GB Firewire drive to my G4 to boost storage now that all the internals are full.

My 4 internal drives have never caused any problems but this Lacie is really buggering things up! Please help!

Occasionally it will freeze on the timeline and refuse to play certain sections of the footage. Also I can't print to tape without it dropping frames - ie, I can't print to tape!

I tested the Lacies speed - it can easily play 4 DV streams at once in Quicktime and I have Verified it in Disk Utility - No problems!

So why does it freeze in FCP4??? I have also noticed it will go to sleep and when you select it in finder it has to whir up to speed before being accessed.

Any ideas?
 
Did you reformat it before using it? If not, it's probably not formatted as HFS+, and could be formatted for Windows.
Select it and "Get Info" and see what the format says. You want it to say "Mac OS Extended" (and it may also say "Journaled" after that, which is OK). If it says anything else, you need to reformat it using Disk Utility.
 
x-angel said:
could it be the software itself?
Click to expand...

It only does it with my new hard drive though. I have NEVER had FCP fail to print to video before (well once actually) until I start capturing and rendering to the Lacie.
 
Do you have anything else hooked up to the firewire?
Antivirus software turned off?
Internet connection off during transfer?
No other programs running in background?
 
Scottdvx100 said:
Can you move other, older projects off your internals to the external drive?
Then clear off internal for new projects.
Click to expand...

I could do, but I just wanna use the thing normally. I may have to do that in order to finish the work I have at the moment.
 
Make sure that your settings don't allow the drives to go to sleep. I had the same problem but once I put the energy saver preference to "never" I stopped having problems.

-rook
 
Joe Kras said:
Do you have anything else hooked up to the firewire?
Antivirus software turned off?
Internet connection off during transfer?
No other programs running in background?
Click to expand...

I have the camera also hooked up, as I have to. I don't use antivirus and I am on wireless broadband, so it is permanent. I have other programs running, but that shouldn't stop it working.

I tried making a Quicktime .mov on an internal so that I could Print to Video from that. It starts, but after a while gives me a FILE I/O ERROR. It will encode to MPEG2 okay though, so the data is all there! ARGH!
 
if you have your camera and your firewire hard drive hooked up at the same time ... sometimes the the hard drive won't work.... it happons to me all the time


no prof by facts on paper ... just me saying it
 
rfinch3 said:
if you have your camera and your firewire hard drive hooked up at the same time ... sometimes the the hard drive won't work.... it happons to me all the time


no prof by facts on paper ... just me saying it
Click to expand...

Bit of a bummer for video editing:(

I think I have figured out part of the problem... it was actually due to some files on an internal drive. I still don't know why the external decides to go to sleep whilst being used.

Thanks for the tips guys!
 
mmm I used Lacies at my old work THEY STINK we had 3, COUNT EM 3 lacies go down on us in just under 2 months. I use G RAIDS now rock godamn solid never fail to mount make the move mmm you'll thank me.:thumbsup:
 
nicholasraeburn said:
mmm I used Lacies at my old work THEY STINK we had 3, COUNT EM 3 lacies go down on us in just under 2 months. I use G RAIDS now rock godamn solid never fail to mount make the move mmm you'll thank me.:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Oh...sounds bad:undecided

I'm planning on a storage overhaul when I get a G5. I might get a Quad, I'm toying with the idea. I've got to work out my tax off setting first.

Cheers, I'll check out G Raids!
 
Stick with an external drive that uses any of the Oxford chipsets (922/911), either FW-400, FW-800 or USB2.

Otherwise you'll have problems.
 
I've used several Lacies starting with the 160's and then the 320 and the 250. Lacies had a problem with the Firewire cords, something simple , but not written much about. Like another posted message I was about to write off Lacies, but found out the cords were bad (1 of 3). I decided to try the pocket drives at 60 Gb and these little things have worked great. I have all the Lacies working great at this time (knock on wood) and it's a real advantage to be ableto carry my project in my jacket pocket. These are true plug and play and all I've done is follow directions, log on for latest downloads, etc.
 
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