A couple of hard taught FCP tips

[dhart]

Using single 800 firewire drives on my MacBook Pro has caused my no end of grief. Daisy changing more than two was asking for trouble as all drives did not show up on my desktop consistently. I even had a new logic board installed (luckily under Apple extended warranty) but no luck.

Decided to use a powered firewire hub and all my problems disappeared. I use the Nitro AV hub cause it's extra heavy duty. 7 inputs so I can have 6 drives up at one time. Been running for over 6 weeks and all drives show up on the desktop every morning and more importantly stay there. Appears to be bullet proof.

As we all know have a big project up on a single drive is just asking for trouble. I use a program called SuperDuper! to mirror the drive I'm working to a backup. End of the day start the program to do its thing. Incremental backup so you don't have to re-back everything up every day. Much easier than dragging and dropping because you don't to keep answering "this file already exists..."

Put the backup in my media vault every night. You all have one of those don't you? Fireproof and waterproof.

 

[AKinDC]

Good to know...thanks for posting.

 

[sixtycyclehum]

I'll definitely be investing in on of those hubs now...thanks!

 

[BlueWing]

Interesting. I also use Superduper with a Macbook Pro and 2 Firewire 800 drives and I have never had any problems. I have daisy chained as many as 4 drives on FW800 without any issues, but I always have 2 drives running for the reasons that you state.

I'll keep the Nitro hub in mind if I start having issues. BTW, Love superduper.

 

[zac love]

I've run into the daisy chain problem as well, I just have had to make sure I turn them on in order.

Though I don't have the extra cash right now, something I heard about last night was Drobo
http://www.drobo.com/

My understanding is that it is a multi-hard drive storage system that has error correction built in & it takes care of everything by itself. You can go out & purchase whatever drive you wish, plug it in & it will figure out how to manage you data by itself.

Unless you need a drive that you can easily lug around with you, this seems like a great solution, and what I plan on upgrading to when I need more space (or just have the spare cash).

 

[Canonman]

Drobo rocks! There's some promo codes you can use to get a discount on it if you do decide to purchase.

cm