It's that time of year -- firewire drive dies in middle of project!

Help me guys. I am in the process of recapturing footage for a drive that died tonight...

What is the biggest, baddest, most ass-kicking drive I can get for video editing? I want something fast, dependable and exterior.

Last year on another project with a big deadline, I had a firewire die on me, and I spent most of the weekend recapturing and synching everything up. It's happened again with a 750 gig drive.

So now I need to get serious and have some sort of raid set up with a lot of space so that I don't have this annual Spring ritual anymore.

Got a Creative Cow plug for CalDigit. Any recommendations? Thanks.

The firewire seems to be completely dead, can't even reach it at this point...

First stop for a non-responsive external drive is always DiskWarrior. Tried it yet?


www.derekmok.com

I have a Caldigit HD One on my system. The four terabyte model, which I don't think they're selling any more. It's neither the biggest nor the baddest, but for me, it was the most cost-effective balance of big, bad and fast. You can get them in various sizes from about two-and-a-half up to 12 TB, and it requires an open PCI Express slot in your Mac Pro.

At the absolute minimum, you need a RAID-1 system, the kind with two drives that are mirrored. I don't actually own a Caldigit VR, but they're highly recommended. You'll want an ESATA card for that, though it's also got Firewire 800 on it if you're in a bind.

I have 2 CalDigit Firewire VR RAIDs and one Caldigit VR RAID. Love them all. Since you are looking (Sorry for the shameless plug), I happen to be SELLING the 2 Firewire VRs as a package (640 GB each unit = approx. 1.28 TB total). I bought them for a freelance gig that never materialized so they are very slightly used...and fast (and they don't lose performance when daisy chaining like G-RAIDs - handled my ProRes & DVCProHD projects like butter). Selling both as a package - listening to all offers.

Here's the posting in the "Market" forum:

[www.lafcpug.org]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Derek -- thanks, am running Disk Warrior right now, as the drive came back online. ??

Can't check out "hardware" for that drive, it doesn't come up as an option. But It did let me rebuild he directories and the files checked out okay. So I am in the midst of moving about 120 gigs from there over to another drive, and will move more stuff if that's successful.

Could the thing have enough life left in it that I can get the footage off it and not have to recapture?? Weird.

Jeff -- thanks for the testimonial on the CalDigit.

Joey -- I may be interested in your 2 VRs. Going to take a closer look in the morning.

Thanks, guys.

People often assume their drive is unrecoverable when only the directory needs fixing. One of DiskWarrior's great virtues is that it can "see" drives that OS can't. Which is why you always head that way before you declare a drive DOA.

Does it mean the drive is all okay now? Not necessariliy. Backing up now would be the smart thing. And also, don't try to copy all the files at once. Do it a chunk at a time; it minimizes chances of a botched copy, which can fry the drive or its directory again.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks, Derek. I think you're right. It's letting me copy it, and I'm doing it in chunks. So far so good. At first the drive wasn't showing up at all, so I figured it was toast. But for the moment it's back. Ain't going to bed until I move, or attempt to move, the important stuff from it.

I did get an error with one of the files and it stopped copying. I can't kill the "copy" window, though there's obviously nothing being copied (since the amount copied never changes and the estimate of time is the same). But I'm copying other parts and that is working. Kind of slow though, saying it'll take 35 minutes to copy 76 gigs.

The stop-and-go issue suggests to me that there's damage to certain parts of the drive. Could be hardware, could be software, but not likely to be just a directory issue. After your successful backup (to a reliable drive, of course), you should consider completely re-formatting that problematic one before re-copying the files onto it.


www.derekmok.com

Good idea. Will see how far I get. I was going to just deep-six the problem drive, but will see what reformatting it does.

Thanks again.

A quick one, as I'm fairly busy.

1. An old saying goes "you never have data until you have data twice". Very important, especially if you are working tapeless, and you'll need one more if the archive drives aren't very trustworthy.

2. Use redundant storage if possible. (Eg. RAID-1, RAID-5, etc)

3. Get Disk Warrior. Doesn't repair hardware damage, but it's incredible at rebuilding bad directories, which can happen just as easily as when you accidentally hard power down a drive while writing to it.

>I can't kill the "copy" window, though there's obviously nothing being copied (since the
>amount copied never changes and the estimate of time is the same).

Try relaunching the finder. Go to "force quit", and relaunch the finder. It could be a corrupted file, or a bad sector.

Slow drives? Are you on FW400? 35 mins for 76 gigs doesn't sound too slow for solitary FW400 drives.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi Gerald:

Yes, running Disk Warrior seems to have helped. I'm using FW800 on that drive.

Thanks again to all.

I have the Caldigit HD One...couldn't be happier. But I have also used the MaxxDigital EVO HD and can only rave. Both are workhorses and will do you good.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I don't recommend MaxxDigital. Long story...failing RAIDs...20 drives - units dropping dead daily. The unit was packed with Seagate 1.5 TB drives probably from that bad batch. Had to replace 30 TB of drives with Hitachi 1 TB and lost 10 TB of space (Hitachi drives currently only go to 1 TB).

I won't buy or use anything but Hitachi these days.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Anyone with experience using Pro Soft's Drive Genius 2? I just received it for review but wanted to know others experiences with it before I dove in.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

I think that's a topic for another thread, Steve. That's pretty much a defragging software...which in the Mac OS is not needed anymore. If Disk Warrior can't rebuild the directory and get you back online, you're pretty much hosed.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.