FCPX - Backing up (not archiving) process?

take2visualmedia

take2visualmedia

Well-known member
After much consideration we finally moved over to FCPX and are actually enjoying the transition more than I expected. One thing I'm trying to look for is a process for backing up projects on two drives, not archiving after it's done, but I always want a backup in case a drive fails. Right now project and media reside on a G-RAID Thunderbolt drive. I'm wanting to have a second, seperate drive, that is a mirror of the G-RAID. Does anyone have a workflow for this? My editor works on FCPX more than I do so I'm still trying to wrap my head around the file structure etc. Thanks.
 
My video course at macProVideo.com "Media Management In Final Cut Pro X" covers all of what you'd need to know. But in a nutshell, you can just copy the "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" folders from your media drive (don't put them on your system drive), to your backup drive. Carbon Copy Cloner can do selective backups of specific folders on a schedule. Really awesome app to have around.

If you want specific Events and Projects, go inside the two folders I mentioned and just copy the sub-folder (all contents in tact) to your backup drive.

That said, I'd highly recommend you do it from inside of FCP X instead. Right-click any Event or Project from inside either Library, Duplicate. Point to your backup drive, and don't include any render files.

The difference is IMPORTANT! If you manually copy (or use backup software) in the Finder, you'll get warnings that FCP X upon launch sees identical Events and Projects and can only open one of them. They are each a unique database with a unique ID number assigned to the database. When you manually copy, you end up with two databases with the same ID. If FCP X does it, it assigns new ID numbers to the duplications you made.
 
Anyone using Time Machine to automatically backup FCPX Events and Projects folders? Other than the "downside" of duplicate IDs, wouldn't this ease the backup process since it's automatic -- not one by one?

From the perspective of a pure backup (again, not archiving or sharing with others), wouldn't it be fine to have the same IDs? Theoretically, the backup is only needed if the original file/folder/HD is corrupted/lost/deleted/or-otherwise-screwed-up?
 
Time Machine is fine if you remember to turn it OFF while editing. It runs 24/7 ever few minutes and I've personally seen it bog down FCP systems. It really is amateur backup software. I still STRONGLY recommend Carbon Copy Cloner, and schedule your backups, and specify what to and not to back up, etc. Lots more control.

Backing up like that, nothing wrong with it, just take that backup drive offline when you go to edit. If its mounted when you launch FCP, you'll have conflicts and warnings. That's all.
 
I purchased Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) a couple of days ago and it is definitely cool. Between Event Manager X and CCC, I think I finally have a media management solution that is simple and powerful. I use Event Manager X to move events and projects on my primary editing HD to keep FCPX humming. Then I use CCC to backup all four FCPX folders ("Final Cut Events," "Final Cut Projects," "Final Cut Events Not In Use" and "Final Cut Projects Not In Use") to a separate HD on a nightly basis (2am when I better be asleep!). Within CCC, I use the mount (automatic) and unmount (checkbox) features to take the destination HD online for the backup and then offline for the rest of the day, thereby having an exact duplicate of my FCPX files while avoiding the duplicate ID error within FCPX. Now...if CCC could only power down/up my external HD, that would be really sweet!

Simple. I don't have to do a thing other than check a couple of boxes within Event Manager X when I want to see/hide events and projects within FCPX.
Powerful. I have full backups in case anything happens to my primary HD, files, etc.

Thoughts?
 
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