partitioning external hard drive for storage

sharpshooter

sharpshooter

Member
does anyone have any experience with partitioning an external hardrive? my partner and i willl be shooting alot of footage in mexico over the course of six months. we purchased two terabyte hard drives to store our stock footage. i have never had to partition a hard drive so i was wondering if anyone who has could point me in the direction of some tips are tricks for organizing and dividing the hard drive.
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

and don't partition them... ( just my opinion) I have had some bad experience with partitioning drives. Even using raid 0 and other setups... while performance may be somewhat descreased as a bigger drive, what can go wrong with leaving it into one partition and having things in folders? Are you on Mac or PC?
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

I agree with video guy & Amahp - I would not partition and always use NTFS as format option.
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

Hello sharpshooter,

Welcome aboard.

FWIW:
my understanding (certainly not "all comprehensive"
and IMHO)

NTFS: New Technology File System was developed by Milcrosoft
to challenge Novell's "server based" system.
Although inferior in performance, the aggressiveness of MS's
marketing overtook Novell (in 1998 I tediously obtained a
Novell CNA - paper, not experience - got me nada)

NTFS is the "proprietary" format or "partitoning format" used by
the server based MS realm of OS's: XP, Windows 2000
(an "improperly named OS" which rightfully
would have named NT5)
NT4, yada yada...

Partioning: a different ball game...
with all due respect, if I am reiterating what you have
already read in your inbox:
FWIW, I have been using Partition Magic for 6, or so years
on every internal drive and the only external that I own
I am well experienced and an advocate,
ok, junkie, of partitioning...
.... and the Premiere 6.5 instuctor that I had at PCC
(who has over 20 years of film making)
is an advocate of partitioning

PM has far more utility than XP,s "Disk Management"
ie: Resizing, Moving, Reformatting, Converting, yada ayda

And, as most other quality proggies, advises backing up data
before executing changes....

PM has never failed me ... the "monkey at the keyboard"
has screwed up upon occasion, and at times,
intentionally, to "test the limits".

Aha, terabyte drives....
I ain't got but half that size....
have been in the practice of 20 and more recently 40gb parts
with consideration of MS drive letter assignments....
and Primary parts on another HD....extended parts...

I have grown too weary tonight to effectively - accurately
further respond.

Perhaps tomorrow...

Regards,

- BRM -
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

Umm Ok... (to the thread above... :)  )


In english sharpshooter NTFS on Windows XP is a good thing.  There is unlimited file capture size (which wasn't there before in FAT32,  the old windows file struture) and for the most part any drive you buy now adays, especially a terabyte drive, is going to be fast enough to pump your video in and out of your rig assuming the rest of your PC meets editing specs. (processor, ram, etc.)

The other thing is that premiere is not AVID.  Avid manages all the media internally.  Premiere doesn't.  In english... if you have a lot of different partitions on a drive and if you have footage in different drives.. you need to manually tell premiere to look to each drive if you are moving a project around of if you are bringing a project online.  I find it way easier to just set up a capture folder in one location on a big drive.  Even if your projects are different, leave all the media in one folder and name it something different.  It sure makes managing your media and your project a lot more simple in the long run.  Nothing wrong with partitioning but it was an old solution when big drives and PC's weren't fast enough.  I now have drives that are 200 gigs one complete drive.  If I had a terabyte, it would be one drive with different folders if need be.
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

sharpshooter:


FAT32= can't exceed files beyond 2gigs.
NTFS= Can exceed files sizes beyond 2gigs.


This is your brain, This is your brain on drugs, any questions?
 
Re: partitioning external hard drive for storage

sharpshooter: sorry about my rambling :-(

The_Video_Guy: Big thanks for your "plain English" comprehensive reply,
which assists me "getting up to date and up to speed" :D

BLUESPIDER: FAT32= can't exceed files beyond 2gigs.
NTFS= Can exceed files sizes beyond 2gigs.
Concise and succinct use of the keyboard.....
I wonder if I could learn to do that... ;D
 
hard drives

hard drives

JUst stumbled in here...

I have clients that use FCP alot, and I want to keep their drives accesisable to them.
I use FAT32 because MACS can read and write that too. I guess these days panther can read NTFS, but it doesn't want to write on it.

I've also been partitioning because if I lose a drive I don't lose the whole thing. It's happened to me more than once in the last couple of years.

I do mostly shorter content, so I haven't noticed the 2gig thing, but it seems like Iv'e had bigger files than that.... I know you can't partition for more than 30 gigs with XP,
but drives come commercially formatted Fat32 for both platforms.

I'd really like more info on this stuff. I feel like there must be someway around the 2 gig limit....but maybe I've just never hit it.

my 2 cents..

David
 
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