Formatting External Drive

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dmchord

Active member
Hey guys,

So my first P2 arrived today, a 64GB E-Series. I put the card in the camera, shot some footage, and Woohoo! HD, Baby! I love those thumbnails!

The thing is, I can't figure out how to get it on my external drive! I had a previous post concerning what I was going to do about offloading to MBP in the field, but for now I'm just going from the camera to the drive, and then I'll plug that into the iMac.

Now, I've copied everything from this WD 500GB external drive to another, so I'm ready to format it with the camera.

Plug in the drive, plug in the firewire, turn on the camera, set it to 1394 Host. Hit the MCR button, hit the button again for 2 seconds and the correct menu comes up:

COPY TO HDD
FORMAT (HDD)
PROPERTY
SETUP

Then an error box comes up telling me to turn off the camera because there are too many targets! (Before I can make any sort of selection.)

That, my friends, is where I currently reside. Once we figure that out, we can work on getting these super-hot clips of my room and my front yard from the drive into FCP!

Thanks in advance...

Incidentally, I've just learned that "Too many targets" signifies too many 1394 destinations. The drive is neither piggy backed on another nor connected to the computer. One firewire cable from the camera to the drive. (There are two ports on the drive, but only on connected.)
 
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Sounds like you're doing everything right. Can you try another HD just in case your WD is the issue? I am doing everything you are, only using a Seagate drive. Maybe try another cable too. Short of that, I wonder if your camera has a problem.
 
Does the drive work when linked to a computer, that would eliminate the drive.

Is there a USB port on the drive? If so, can you load that way. This isn't the preferential way, but it may help prove the hardware.

Grant
 
Definitely try another hard disk. Some hard drives have been reported to deliver the "too many targets" message; I don't know exactly what it means, but it only happens on some drives and not all.
 
Keeping my fingers crossed that that's the problem! I'm thinking I'll try a Maxtor.

Incidentally, Barry, I was just reading a similar post on Creative Cow and someone said they bought a drive, formatted it with the camera, and the drive didn't show up as a disk on the computer when they plugged it in. That is what's supposed to happen, right?

Copy the files to the drive, plug the drive into the computer, then point FCP at those files?
 
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Your WD sounds like a consumer drive.

I'd strongly suggest buying a quality external from wiebetech, owc, gtech, or caldigit or make your own with a granite digital case and a solid seagate or hitachi mechanism.
 
Thanks for the advice, I'm definitely going to go top shelf on this one.

One other thing I'm thinking about: I read in the HVX Book that the camera is going to create 64GB partitions on the HDD with every upload. I wasn't really thinking about that when I opted for the 64 rather than something smaller. There are going to be plenty of times when I'm going to have a lot less than 2 1/2 hours of footage to copy. Rather than wasting all that space, can I plug the camera into the iMac, plug a drive into the iMac as well, and create a scratch disk and capture just the files I want through FCP?
 
A Temporary Solution

A Temporary Solution

OK! I might be on to something!

I'm still going to get another drive to try out the 1394 Host option, but in the meantime, at least I can get stuff into FCP!

I switched the HVX to 1394 Device. Plugged it and the HDD into the computer and simply dragged the Contents and lastclip.txt from the HVX image to the HDD image.

I disconnected the HVC, opened FCP and did a log and transfer and that seems to do the trick.

Now, I know there's some verification stuff that only happens when the camera controls an HDD, but is that the only reason I wouldn't want to use this workflow?

One more thing, each P2 card is going to have ONE Contents folder and ONE .txt file, right? So if I go shoot some more, I'll have to format the card, otherwise I'll just re-import that first footage all over again, right?
 
One more thing, each P2 card is going to have ONE Contents folder and ONE .txt file, right? So if I go shoot some more, I'll have to format the card, otherwise I'll just re-import that first footage all over again, right?
Click to expand...

YES. once you transfer a card to your computer (and verify that it was successful). my workflow is to reformat the card in camera. and each time you transfer a card to the computer create a new folder for it. CARD_01, CARD_02, etc, etc...
 
David S. said:
Your WD sounds like a consumer drive.

I'd strongly suggest buying a quality external from wiebetech, owc, gtech, or caldigit or make your own with a granite digital case and a solid seagate or hitachi mechanism.
Click to expand...
+1 on the HD suggestions
 
Is it possible to verify using the drag and drop method that I've described above?

Again, I've got the HVX connected to the computer through one Firewire port, and the HDD through another. I simply dragged the CONTENTS and lastclip.txt from the HVX disk to the HDD disk.
 
i manually verify by opening a few clips with p2cms, p2 logpro or simply in quicktime player
 
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