Lacie D2 2 TB Drive problems / USB or FW / corrupt files

MBP 2.33, FCP 6.0.3

A few weeks ago I began digitizing 170 hours of footage on my MBP. Since there is only 1 FW 400 port I used that to capture and I used the USB port for the external drive to save the media to.

I have seen many posts here that say don't work with USB in FCP. I really had no other option to digitize with. My hope was that I would digitize like this and then change the external drive from a USB to a FW cable and then all would work smooth. Yeah right.

The Lacie D2 extreme drive I am using has all three connection options. When I finished digitizing all my footage I immediately saved the project file, quit, swapped out the USB for FW 800 (and also 400) and restarted the computer.

Switching cables on this drive was a bad idea. The project file becomes corrupt when i save the project file using either FW 400 or 800. When I switch back to USB everything seems to save fine and there are no problems.

I also tried creating a new project file with FW 400 and 800 connected. I imported the media, saved the new file and quit. When I go to open the project file it says "This version of FCP is to New." What the?

My questions are:

Do I keep working with this project via a USB cable?

If the media I captured was all written with a USB cable, will this come back to bite me later on?

Thanks in advance for your help.

You actually did it backwards. At the capture stage is when data transfer speeds matter -- when USB becomes unreliable. Once the footage is captured, at the editing stage, you actually can conceivably use a USB drive, even though it's still not recommended. The reason is that during editing, slower data speeds will just mean your session will stall at points. Whereas a bad drive or cabling at the capture and tape-output stages will mean that the data rate will fall behind the real-time playback of the tapes and you'll get permanent, unfixable glitches on your captured clips.

Usually changing cables for a drive should not affect the integrity of the files. Is your drive formatted properly?

I wouldn't even advise continuing work with the USB cable. I'd advise dumping the drive and replacing it with a better one. Lacies have one of the worst reputations among drives for editing. Some people say theirs work fine, but just as many (if not more) detest them. See the poll below -- nearly 30 per cent will never use another Lacie, and overall 45 per cent are unhappy with the performance of Lacies. That's a hefty, hefty chunk of dissatisfied customers.

[www.lafcpug.org]


www.derekmok.com

Hey Derek!

Thanks for your response. What is my work around on a MBP if I am capturing using the FW 400 port? I am using a HV30 which means that my capture presets must be Firewire basic HDV 1080i. When I select that I remember there was an issue with using the FW800 port. That leaves me stuck with USB. Have you heard of something like this?

Quote

I also tried creating a new project file with FW 400 and 800 connected.

I'm pretty sure you don't mean that you had both the 400 and 800 ports connected at the same time. But if you did, I wouldn't expect it to work at all, and may fry something.

Scott