My new G5 system runs like a turtle!

Hi,

I'm still having an issue with my brand new system being extremely slow (even slower than a G4 running Final Cut 4.5). Here's what I have:

G5, OSX 10.4.2, Dual 1.8 GHz 2 GB SDRAM, running Tiger and Final Cut Pro 5.0.2, QT Pro, Motion 2, with one 250 gig Lacie drive, and another 500 gig Lacie drive, looped together using the fast firewire cable. The 250 gig is going directly into the G5 through firewire, the 500 gig drive is being looped into the 250 gig drive via USB 2 cable.

My system runs like a turtle. Each time I take a break from editing, even a 3 minute break, the drives take about 2 minutes to work...I get the beach ball every time I try to play on the timeline after taking a short break.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Katie

Kate, you can't use a USB cable to hook up FireWire drives for editing. USB is way, way too slow for digital editing.

> Each time I take a break from editing, even a 3 minute break, the drives
> take about 2 minutes to work

Go into your System Preferences - Energy Saver. Deselect any option which puts any part of your system to sleep. Computer siestas just don't work for our purposes.

Thanks Derek, I changed the energy saver setting. However, on the drives, I only get the one firewire port on each drive, and need to loop them together through usb. I did this on another system and it was fast. Maybe I should keep the drives completely separate and only edit with one drive from now on?
Is there a work around for this?

Thanks again for the helpful info.

I'd say make sure the 500GB drive is formatted properly and use that for now. You can get a FireWire hub, although most of those are tricky. Both your drives are Lacies -- how can they only have one port? Lacies should have at least two FireWire 400 ports and one FireWire 800 port apiece.

I messed up, I meant there are 2 ports that are slower, both firewire. Sorry about that. But still, they shouldn't run so slow, right? I didn't do anything to the 500 gb drive, just plugged it in and started working on it. Didn't think I had to format the drive, but should I go back & figure out how to do that?

Thanks very much for the input, I appreciate it!

yeah, i agree that "one FW port" thing is NUTS! ive never seen a decent FW drive that didnt have two ports...

> I messed up, I meant there are 2 ports that are slower, both firewire.

Yep. Don't bother with the FireWire 800, then -- if you don't have two FireWire 800 ports that you can chain, then just use FireWire 400. Use FireWire 800 to put the 500GB to the CPU, then a FireWire 400 cable to chain the 250GB to the 500GB. Don't mess with USB -- its data rate is not for pros.

Select your drives one by one and press APPLE-I to call up their formatting. Make sure both are formatted Mac OS Extended, not Journaled. Run DiskWarrior on them. See how well they function then. With the Sleep options off, you shouldn't encounter the "takes two minutes to come back up" problem anymore.

Your G5 has a firewire port on the front as well, You might be better off using it rather than Daisey chaining the drive.



------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

Oh I just thought of something. Has Spotlight finished indexing your drives? It still may be working on them which might slow them down.



------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

Thanks guys. I went to the privacy section on spotlight and added the 2 drives.
Right now I have everything checked under the Search Results Tab. The drives are formatted to OS Extended. Will switch the firewire cable on the 500 gig and see how it works tonight.

One question...what happens when I Rebuild one of the drives, wouldn't I lose everything before it would reformatt?

depends on what you mean by "rebuild"?

external firwire drives are cheap. buy a new one for each project, shelve it when done - build the price into the project - its like $300 to $500 per drive. if the project cant afford that paltry sum, you're most likely ill advised to accept the project in the first place...

i reccomend drives from promax.com

i'll shut up now

The rebuild is the option listed besides Graph on the disk warrier. When I click on the Lacie drive, the only option is to click on either Graph or Rebuild.

Wayne, by the way, the drives are fairly new, they are used for side projects and even though they are inexpensive relative to the high costs of video and photography, I can't afford to store them on the shelves, plus they have lots of music, backgrounds, etc. on them.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

as a rule, ANY project i take on includes an "archival fee" that will buy that project its own specific firewire drive. this guarantees that their files are in one place, and nothing goes missing. its cheap, and again, if they cant or wont afford such a relatively paltry sum, they aint worth working with...

another rule, keep your personal files seperate from work files. in my workflow, my personal music, email databases, photos, invoices etc, live on either the internal drive or a seperate external fw drive... if you want to use something from your personal files, make a copy and move it to th eclient drive.

YES im neurotic, but look me up, you wont see me suffereing from the myriad other standard FCP issues...

> if you want to use something from your personal files, make a copy and
> move it to th eclient drive.
> YES im neurotic, but look me up, you wont see me suffereing from the
> myriad other standard FCP issues...

Hell yeah, I do the exact same thing. An anal editor is a happy editor. And while other editors on a project get railed on by the executive producer for missing files and misorganization, I'm whistling my way to the next project. I've learned that the slow, detailed way turns into the fast way in the long run. If you know every single process, setting and item location, and you stick to the same methodology from project to project, you can't ever get burned too bad. It's been about three years since I lost any edit.

> One question...what happens when I Rebuild one of the drives, wouldn't I
> lose everything before it would reformatt?

Kate, Rebuild under DiskWarrior doesn't destroy data. It merely re-creates the directory of the drive -- think of it as being the table of contents for a book. And DiskWarrior does a comparison of the old directory and the new one it's about to create so that if there's a danger spot, it should warn you. Personally, I've never had DiskWarrior make any problem worse -- at worst, it doesn't get rid of the problem. But you are right to proceed cautiously if you haven't used it before -- feel free to ask if you have more queries.

If you use Disk Utilities to erase your drive, you *would* lose all data on a drive. So if you're already knee-deep in the project, you'll have to back up the entire drive before you do so. If the drive is already properly formatted, leave it alone. But if it isn't, it's worth the several hours to copy the files to a backup location, reformat, then copy the files back.

Alright, thanks for the schooling guys...

I am using one of the drives for backgrounds, etc. and think that's fine to do, that way I can transport it to other systems. Thanks for the info on the disk warrier!

WayneG,
Just wondering, when you back up each project that you have been working onto a firewire drive, is that the same drive you do the actual editing of the project with? Do you use internal drives, raids, etc. to do the editing, then just move all your media to the firewire drive for storage? Thanks.

hey bruce, YES - im working mostly on standard off the shelf external promax fw400 drives. at any given time i have a couple of them daisy-chained to my sony dsr deck off the rear fw port on my g5.

each drive is dedicated to a specific client and there is the everpresent "tools" FW drive where i keep all my personal stuff. when the project is done i just unplug the clients drive and stick it in the closet until the client needs updates.

keep in mind im working at DV res NOT HD - otherwise this would be a much more expensive method. i dont think that my clients would be willing to shell out the cash to shelve their own xraid for each project - ha ha

Thanks for the reply Wayne, All the best. Bruce

Derek writes-
[An anal editor is a happy editor.]

Hey! Way too much information. ;-)

[Lacies should have at least two FireWire 400 ports and one FireWire 800 port apiece.]

Be aware that many new LaCie's carry a triple interface: 400, 800, and USB 2.0. I haven't tried it yet but... I will, I will.

- Loren
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