FCP 6 upgraded to 7 Question

Hi Champs,

I've just upgraded to FCP7, and have started getting, on occasion - the drive un-mounting it's self for no reason, the connections are secure and there is no movement between the laptop and the lacie rugged 500 drive, it just pops off then even re-mounts to it's own accord.

of course i just close the project down, don't save changes, then open up again so as not to lose render files.

any thoughts ideas or solutions as to whats up?

Many thanks,
Bluey

Lacie are very poor built drives. The actual internal harddrives are good but its the external enclosure that has problems.

They can not handle hardcore use especially with video.

I would get either a Western Digital or G-Raid. These are both workhorse drives.

But also remember any HD can fail at anytime, even right out of the box.

So you might want to look into a HD that can be set up as a RAID1. Both of the above drives can have this function built into them.

There two HD's with in some of the models workings as one big one and by reconfiguring as a RAID1 you lose half your storage but if one of the drives fail everything you do is automatically mirrored on both drives as you work so you simply take the bad drive out get a new one rebuild it to copy the files back over and continue working.

Hi Jake - the thing is portability is essential, i'm on trains and planes with this project.

i do back-up everything to my home studio at the weekends, but for 3 hours a day travel, and on longer trips i'm relying on this rugged 500g.

surely they should give warnings out with the drive if it's **** and will fail on you? there must be a reliable bus-drive out there. i'm cutting prores422 movs, rendering a bit of MB Looks on the go as well.

i guess this way of doing substantial editing work is relatively unusual. however you'd think in the year 2011 with tech development as it is someone would have come up with a truly portable and reliable drive . .


Many thanks anyway,
Bluey

Quote
Bluey
Hi Jake - the thing is portability is essential, i'm on trains and planes with this project.

i do back-up everything to my home studio at the weekends, but for 3 hours a day travel, and on longer trips i'm relying on this rugged 500g.

surely they should give warnings out with the drive if it's **** and will fail on you? there must be a reliable bus-drive out there. i'm cutting prores422 movs, rendering a bit of MB Looks on the go as well.

i guess this way of doing substantial editing work is relatively unusual. however you'd think in the year 2011 with tech development as it is someone would have come up with a truly portable and reliable drive . .

LaCie's rugged drives may not be the best portable drive. While the LaCie drives seem to have good shock protection (how good?), other brands may be better in terms of heat dissipation and component reliability. People tend to buy LaCie drives as they are well marketed and hence more "visible" to consumers. These drives may be okay for transporting data, but most are not meant to be used heavily as a main data drive, especially for activities like editing. LaCie has had numerous problems with enclosure parts quality and with flaky power supplies (which may have been limited to certain models). As Jake said, the drives inside are the same as any other pre-built setup.

If your drive is un-mounting and mounting on its own, there could be a heat problem, cable problem, drive chipset/controller problem, or the hard drive itself could be starting to fail. I would suggest you do some testing with that drive or replace it before you lose data.

Do yourself a favor and do some research or ask/hire a consultant who knows about hard drives and enclosures.

Editing on-the-go is not unusual.

WiebeTech makes portable drive enclosures with shock mounts (wiebetech.com). G-Technology also makes good portable drives (g-technology.com). Both may be better than LaCie gear.


-Dave

Western digital is a workhorse drive?! You mean their black caviar series, not their crappy mybook range.

One more thing to add to the fray...
[www.caldigit.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi Dave - the thing is it has to be a bus-drive, not a mains-powered portable . . . mmm

bluey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Dave - the thing is it has to be a bus-drive,
> not a mains-powered portable . . . mmm

G-Technology, WiebeTech, OWC (macsales.com), and CalDigit all sell portable drives that can be bus-powered or AC/DC-powered. I would choose any of these over a LaCie any day...


-Dave

P.S. - Thanks to Gerard (strypes) for mentioning CalDigit. Their stuff is terrific.

cheers dave - again - i almost feel like privately funding an ad campaign to warn editors to NOT use lacie portable drives, absurd - why bother making a product that skits out and/or fails after only a month's use? further more it's not like theres EVER a good time for problems though, bah never mind - i'll be buying a couple of the other drives immediately.

Thanks again,
Bluey

Those drives were never meant for daily editing. They're transport drives. Look at them -- no fans, and the Lacies have rubber bindings that, I imagine, further hurts its heat dissipation. (G-Minis have air holes -- I've never used one, but that probably helps with heat issues, despite other disadvantages with the design)

And if you're editing ProRes HD on them daily, for hours on end, I wouldn't count on them lasting very long. I've owned two Lacie Rugged drives. The first one got stolen, but the second one is on its third year and counting with no problems whatsoever. For years I've recommended against Lacie storage units of every flavour except this one, and I think at least one or two moderators do the same.


www.derekmok.com

bluey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cheers dave - again - i almost feel like privately
> funding an ad campaign to warn editors to NOT use
> lacie portable drives, absurd - why bother making
> a product that skits out and/or fails after only a
> month's use? further more it's not like theres
> EVER a good time for problems though, bah never
> mind - i'll be buying a couple of the other drives
> immediately.
>
> Thanks again,
> Bluey

Bluey,

To be fair, LaCie used to make excellent gear back in the 1990s. I still have one of their external 100 MB Tsunami SCSI drives that still works! Yes, that's 100 MB, not GB (and it cost $600, I believe, or more?).


So, I (we?) am not (aren't) saying that everything they make is necessarily bad, but I have 10 of their various sized external drives from 8 to 10 years ago that all had power supply failures (that caused the drives inside to either fail or have issues). Thankfully, for me and my clients, we didn't lose any data. The LaCie rugged drives may be good for inadvertent drops (because of the rubber sides and the internal shock mounts), but they may suffer from heat issues more than the other models, all of which are all-Aluminium (Aluminum for those of us in the U.S.), or other metal, cases.

But, yes, I would choose CalDigit, WiebeTech, G-Technology, or OWC drives/enclosures. These brands cover price ranges from high to low, and ready-to-use to do-it-yourself (enclosure and drive bought separately and you put it together, which is the cheapest option). I probably wouldn't buy or recommend a LaCie drive unless I had no other choice. That's only my opinion and it's likely worth what you paid me for it ($0)...


-Dave

Many of us hate Lacie drives here. I've seen lots of failures with my own eyes.