[videoblogging] External hard drive problems ?
I've been having problems with the external hard drives on my Mac. When my two 500 GB internal drives filled up, I bought a LaCie 1000 GB external drive. It started playing videos stop-and-go once I got up to 650 GBs used. I bought a second Lacie 1000 GB drive and found it wouldn't mount when my computer turned on. Then I bought a Lacie 2000 GB drive which turned out to be defective & which I got replaced. At the Apple store, the "genius" said that Lacie external drives were no longer "the best" since they had changed their internal drives. He suggested we buy a G-tech 1000 GB external drive which I did and now it has the same irregular playback problem I had in the others. So, I've spent $450 + $400 + $500 + $350, a total of $1700 in external drives only to find I will have to use most of them for storage and back-up and continually shift the video I want to edit and export to my camera and DVDs back to the two 500 GB internal drives in my G5 Mac. We thought it might be the ram so I added 4 ram to the 2 already there. That helped a little bit. Then I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger because someone suggested it was my operating system. I'm beginning to think the only way to have lots of GBs (4000) available for use is to spend some $6000 more on a new Power Mac. Does anyone have any suggestions? Have you had similar problems? Finally, at one time I was afraid I'd have to pay to have the data retrieved from one of my one-terabyte drives by Tech Serve & discovered they charged $1800 to do so. I managed to retrieve the data without that expense--which was a small relief & an advertisement against using any external drive larger than a one terabyte because it would cost $3600 to get the data off of a two terabyte drive. Yuk. Videoblogging can become a very expensive hobby.
Re: [videoblogging] External hard drive problems ?
Make sure the drives are formatted Mac HFS+. Video will not work reliably if they are formatted for both mac and windows, even if they mount. Make sure you have the computer set to never put hard drives to sleep in your preferences. (And avoid MyBooks, which ignore this setting). Make sure you never fill the drive up beyond 80%. Make sure every firewire cable is good. They can go bad. Make sure no cable is more than 14.5', Ideally much much shorter, especially if you are using multiple devices. Make sure every firewire device in the chain is on. Make sure every port is good - on the drives AND on the computer. Make sure your video is in a format your software likes. It's a lot of work, but that's the usual firewire troubleshooting list. It's rarely the drive unless you've been unplugging it or turning it off without dismounting it. ___ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: [videoblogging] External hard drive problems ?
Thanks for this list, Brook - that's really helpful. I've had problems with Lacie drives. And yet I've still bought more. My initial thought about your problem is that given that it repeats on all your drives, regardless of manufacturer, it's something to do with your computer - your ports or some software problem, or a cable, or a setting. On 16-Sep-08, at 12:31 PM, Brook Hinton wrote: Make sure the drives are formatted Mac HFS+. Video will not work reliably if they are formatted for both mac and windows, even if they mount. Make sure you have the computer set to never put hard drives to sleep in your preferences. (And avoid MyBooks, which ignore this setting). Make sure you never fill the drive up beyond 80%. Make sure every firewire cable is good. They can go bad. Make sure no cable is more than 14.5', Ideally much much shorter, especially if you are using multiple devices. Make sure every firewire device in the chain is on. Make sure every port is good - on the drives AND on the computer. Make sure your video is in a format your software likes. It's a lot of work, but that's the usual firewire troubleshooting list. It's rarely the drive unless you've been unplugging it or turning it off without dismounting it. ___ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: [videoblogging] External hard drive problems ?
Slightly besides the point, but I strongly advise to avoid Lacie (each one I¹ve owned has failed)... G-Tech is a much more solid option... //-- DAVID TERRANOVA d a v i d t e r r a n o v a . c o m From: Rupert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "videoblogging@yahoogroups.com" Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:59:44 -0700 To: "videoblogging@yahoogroups.com" Subject: Re: [videoblogging] External hard drive problems ? Thanks for this list, Brook - that's really helpful. I've had problems with Lacie drives. And yet I've still bought more. My initial thought about your problem is that given that it repeats on all your drives, regardless of manufacturer, it's something to do with your computer - your ports or some software problem, or a cable, or a setting. On 16-Sep-08, at 12:31 PM, Brook Hinton wrote: Make sure the drives are formatted Mac HFS+. Video will not work reliably if they are formatted for both mac and windows, even if they mount. Make sure you have the computer set to never put hard drives to sleep in your preferences. (And avoid MyBooks, which ignore this setting). Make sure you never fill the drive up beyond 80%. Make sure every firewire cable is good. They can go bad. Make sure no cable is more than 14.5', Ideally much much shorter, especially if you are using multiple devices. Make sure every firewire device in the chain is on. Make sure every port is good - on the drives AND on the computer. Make sure your video is in a format your software likes. It's a lot of work, but that's the usual firewire troubleshooting list. It's rarely the drive unless you've been unplugging it or turning it off without dismounting it. ___ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
