External drives to improve performance?

I have a 17" macbook pro, 8gb RAM, Ati Radeon 6750, Intel i7 2,2ghz
I want to work with final cut pro X and motion 5, but i see that there´s no scratch disk preferences inside these applications.
Working with an external hard drive could improve performance? What if i only have usb 2.0 by the moment?
should be better to work on the macbook hard drive till I can get a usb 3.0 or thunderbolt in the future?
Thanks,
Pablo

Stick with FW800 external drives. No, there's no more Scratch Disk (thank goodness). Inside FCP X, you create Events on any hard drive attached. You create Projects on any hard drive attached. You can even use Disk Images, too. The user manual explains all of this very clearly.
I'd stay away from USB for video editing all together. Thunderbolt will help with really large projects, and work using very high end, very large HD and digital film files.

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I have a MAC Pro from 2011 currently running MAC OS 10.9.5. This weekend I cloned the MAC HD drive to a new SSD drive for improved performance. The clone was completed successfully with no errors. After the clone completed I successfull restarted my sy

I have a MAC Pro from 2011 currently running MAC OS 10.9.5. This weekend I cloned the MAC HD drive to a new SSD drive for improved performance. The clone was completed successfully with no errors. After the clone completed I successfully restarted my system using the SSD as the boot device. I then successfully tested all of my products, including Photoshop CS6 and all of its plug-ins. I successfully tested the key features that I frequently use. Today while attempting to launch Photoshop CS6 a message is being displayed indicating that a scratch disk cannot be found. All drives are available on the system via the Finder and Disk Utility. I can access all drives including the old MAC HD which is no longer the boot device. I've even attempted to launch Photoshop from the old device yet the same error persist. Is there a way to review/edit/change Photoshop preferences if Photoshop doesn't launch? I've even restarted my system several times to see if that would resolve the issues. Does anyone have any recommendations for this issue? Have you previously address this issue?
Thank you Gregg Williams

Boilerplate text:
Reset Preferences
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/375776
1) Close the program and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (not reversible)
or
2) Move the Folder. See:
http://www.bugge.com/Family-and-friends/Illy/illy.html
--OB

Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music?

...or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
(Secondary question: would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder)

Should I create a partition on external drive for iTunes music? or will it create it's own space outwith my backup stuff?
I see no good reason to create a separate partition unless you're backing up with Time Machine. TM prefers to have it's own volume, so in that case partitioning would probably be a good idea.
would moving my iTunes music from internal to external drive noticably improve performance of my Mac? I'm using about 135GB of a 250GB drive, 60GB of which is in iTunes Music folder.
No, probably not. As long as you're not getting the drive too full - opinions vary but about 20GB remaining should be plenty for most uses - you probably won't see any overall change in performance just from moving the iTunes content.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Run Windows from an external drive......

I want to boot Windows from an external drive. Why would Apple not allow this to be done. It makes no sence to me at all. You would still have to run Windows from the intel-Mac. To make you waste good MacOS space on the internal drive is a shame. I know... I can remove Windows and re-gain my "lost" space. However, my kid needs to run some school programs that are in the Windows format only. I hope that someday Apple will let BootCamp run from an external drive also.
Apple //GS

I run OS X from one drive, have my home account on a second drive and improves performance.
VMware image is on non OS X boot drive which I think helps so there isn't I/O contention.
OS X shouldn't really be doing much paging regardless of what you are running if you have enough memory. A lot of system and application paging 'maps' to VM, and you can't disable or want to with either Windows or OS X. The Windows \C: is going to be wherever the VM client is located.
Now, whether VMware or Parallels running as an application is paging and using OS X swap, that just depends on your system memory, and goes to OS X boot drive like any application.
OS X can run off external and you could install some windows programs to use an external drive (FAT or NTFS partition) to free up space also. Or use Parallels and put the VM there.

Questions about using an external drive as my main drive

This topic has been addressed in discussion threads before, but I'm in search of a few details.
I have a Mac mini 1.42 combo, 512 mb RAM, with an external 250 gb MiniStack FW drive. The external FW drive spins at 7200 rpm, while the internal drive in the mini is a 4200 rpm model. Because of the higher disk speed, I'm considering making my external FW drive my main drive, then reformatting my mini's internal drive to use for backup purposes only. My backups to the mini's internal drive would be bootable, so I wouldn't have to have Tiger installed on the mini's internal drive.
Additionally, I've got my iTunes library on another partition on the same external FW drive. I'm really happy with the result of that move so far.
I've experimented a bit already. I've used SuperDuper to clone my mini's drive to a different partition on the external FW drive, and confirmed that I can boot from it using the external FW drive as my startup disk, so that's not an issue.
I'm planning to move over to the external FW drive and use that as my startup disk and main drive, but keep the mini's external drive as is for a while before I reformat it and use it strictly for backups. I've got some questions before I commit to this, though. (shudder!)
*Updates for applications and Tiger-If I continue to use Apple's Software Update to conduct my software upgrades, will it automatically update the applications on my external FW drive? I'm assuming that Software Update identifies the boot drive and the app's location before performing the update. I'm concerned that Software Update will become confused once it can't identify my mini's internal drive as the 'main' disk, and will lose the functionality to handle my updates.
*Default drives for other applications-For those of you that have already moved to an external disk as your main drive, did you have to change preferences in other apps (like the MS Office Suite) to tell them where to look for files and save new docs/save updated docs? I use Office a lot for a part-time job, and it would be a pain to have to manually update all that info.
*iTunes-As I've already stated, I've moved my iTunes music library over to a partition on my external FW drive and it's worked well so far. What concerns me is the funky way that Apple requires the iTunes management files and folders be on your main drive in your Home folder, but allows the music files to reside on a different disk. When iTunes needs to update itself, or manage the music library, is it going to be happy working from the home folder on the external disk, or will I have problems? In other words, as long as the iTunes management files are on my boot drive, am I OK?
Thanks for wading through this wordy post. If I decide to make the plunge, I'll report back to the list. I'm sure a bunch of mini owners are considering the move to external drives to boost performance. I love the machine, but I can always use more speed!
Mac Mini 1.42 Mac OS X (10.4.3) MiniStack 250 GB + Hub

No problem what so ever. I am not certain you will gain anything by it, though.

How does time capsule compare to a different external drive

how does time capsule cpmpare to other external drives used to perform backups with time machine?

Hi space needle,
Thank you for posting on the Adobe forums, please help us with the information listed below for further assistance on this.
1) which Application are you trying to install?
2) Operating System you are working on
3) Method of installation (customized or the standard installation)
Thanks,
Vikrantt Singh

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

Poor performance with External Drive

I am using FCE with a 1TB external drive (FW 800) as the scratch and file disk. I have been having some erratic transfer rates to/from the drive during editing sessions, playback within FCE, as well as play back of QT movies generated by FCE.
I have searched through the forum and really didn't find any thoughts on specific firewire problems of this nature. The drive seems to do fine during some standardized tests and can get up to 50 MB/sec. However, during editing and playback in FCE, sometimes it's that high for bursts, and sometime no transfer for a minute or so. Plays havoc with workflow!
Do the brilliant minds here have any thoughts/suggestions?! (I've contacted OWC and their recommendation was a new cable; tried and no better performance)
TIA.

The problem is you are using the same drive for Time Machine and active storage.
You should be using a dedicated drive for Time Machine and a separate drive for active uses such as editing with FCE. Even then, you should turn Time Machine OFF while you are working in FCE or iDVD.
In addition, your system HD is at the point where you need to free up space. According to you it's a 160GB drive and you have about 40GB left. That's about as full as you want to let it get. As it fills up even more your overall system performance will degrade further, esp. if you are doing video.

Performance slowing down when ripping cd's..external drive won't work

2 problems I need help with. Itunes was ripping my cd's to wav format anywhere from 20-40x from my internal cd/dvd player/burner. Now it's only doing it around 12x. I cleaned up space and defraged the hard drive, but that didn't help. I also upgraded to the latest version of itunes (which took me 2 days to fix..that's another discussion completely). Still didn't help. I then tried using the external player cd/dvd player/burner. The cd is recognized by itunes, but will not rip the file. It goes through the files very quickly and leaves filenames on my hard drive, but the files are empty.
So what's killing the speed on my internal drive and how come I can't rip from the external drive?
Thanks to anyone who can help.

You'd have to rule out the possibilities. By connecting the drive to another Mac using the same cable, it seems like you have ruled out the drive itself and the cable.
The two remaining possibilities I can think of are the iMac's FireWire 400 port being faulty and a software-related cause.
To rule out the software cause, you can try starting up from your Mac OS X installation disc; insert disc and restart with the C key held down. When you get to Installer's first screen, go up to the menu bar. Under Utilities, select to run Disk Utility. Connect the external drive. Does it appear in the Disk Utility sidebar properly, as a drive with a volume indented below? If it does, there may be some problem with your currently installed system that is causing this problem. If it does not, then it becomes more likely that there is some hardware-related problem with the iMac's FireWire port.
Note: When you did the "unplugging everything for half an hour," you should use the reset SMC procedure instead. Try following this procedure precisely.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
When you do this, you should disconnect ALL cables. If you have been using a power strip, connect the power cord directly to a wall power outlet for this test. Power it up with nothing connected, except for the power cord. Then, add only your keyboard/mouse. Connect the external drive. Is there any difference?
Also consider how the external drive is connected to power. Is it connected to power differently when it works on the MacBook? Were you using a crowded power strip that also has the iMac's power cord? As with the iMac itself, if you have been using a power strip, try connecting the hard drive's power cord directly to a wall power outlet for this test.

Performance lag - external drive

I'm getting beachballs sometimes when I open an app (along with a delay). And I hear my external firewire spin to life when this happens. When I eject the external, the problem seems to go away. Is this possibly an indexing thing with Spotlight? Or something else?
Also, I'm debating the purchase of a NAS drive to handle Time Machine duties for several Macs in our house. Will that likely cause less "lagginess" or more than an external drive hooked directly to a machine. (I understand that the backups will probably be slower.)

TM does not backup to any NAS except a Time Capsule. Although some NAS drives will work with TM it requires hacks to do so. That's fine unless the hacks become incompatible with a system upgrade. See the following:
Requirements to use Time Machine
Time Machine is only available with Leopard (10.5.x) and Snow Leopard (10.6.x)
1. External FireWire or USB 2.0 drive
2. Time Capsule
3. Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 or later using File Sharing
4. Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 Server
5. SAN volume managed by Apple's Xsan file system
A TM drive must be partitioned with either APM (PPC) or GUID (Intel) and formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
If you buy a third-party NAS be sure the manufacturer can assure it works with the Mac.
As for drive life manufacturers claim the drives last a lot longer than you will likely keep it - on average.
Message was edited by: Kappy

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. How do I add an external drive so that it functions just like the internal drive on the iMac?

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. I have already worked to free as much space on the HD as possible. How do I add an external HD and have the iMac read it as though it was part of the internal HD. I know about external HD for additional storage and I do have an external HD, but, it is so much easier to search the drive when it is internal than having to perform a search on the internal drive and then a search on the external drives. And, it is easier to save files to an internal drive so that I don't have to decide which external drive to use to save files. In other words, I want to add an external HD and have it function as though I had purchased a larger internal HD.

That is simply not possible. Every drive is a separate device. It cannot be used to extend an internal drive as though you had a seamlessly larger drive.
What you can do is to create a striped RAID array using the internal drive and an external drive. However, doing this will erase the internal drive and you will lose everything on the internal drive. Furthermore, installing Lion or Mountain Lion becomes a bit of a problem because you cannot create a Recovery HD on a RAID and this tends to make the installer choke. However, you can clone an existing Lion or Mountain Lion system to the RAID and designate the RAID as a startup volume.
I would not recommend the RAID solution, personally, but there are many who do. I prefer the basic solution of spending the money on a larger internal hard drive instead of an external hard drive.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons. Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Need advice: how to work from an external drive

I understand from my research that I can save my Logic document (and its inclusive audio files) to an external hard drive and it will take some of the load off of the computer's internal drive, etc. I don't use loops much, but I also read that the loops can be put on an external drive as well. What isn't clear to me is the use of effects (plug-ins). Can they be put on the external drive too?
In any case, will just having my Logic document (and its inclusive audio files) on an external hard drive make a significant improvement in performance while recording and mixing?

My new external hard drive does have eSATA, but my MacBook Pro does not.
You need an ExpressCard 34 which your eSATA drive will connect to, like this one (there are several available which are not expensive)
http://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html
This also frees up your firewire port for your audio interface and/or any other firewire devices you may add.

How to work from an external drive?

I understand from my research that I can save my Logic document (and its inclusive audio files) to an external hard drive and it will take some of the load off of the computer's internal drive, etc. I don't use loops much, but I also read that the loops can be put on an external drive as well. What isn't clear to me is the use of effects (plug-ins). Can they be put on the external drive too?
In any case, will just having my Logic document (and its inclusive audio files) on an external hard drive make a significant improvement in performance while recording and mixing?

In your case the drive could be internal........
The advantage to use several disks stands in the fact that the program and the OS will access at the first disk, the loops and samples will be read from the second and the audio data flow will have the third disk completely dedicated to that job.
But this arguments are right only if you work with lots of tracks, sampled sounds and loops, otherwise it's pretty useless to have all those HDs.
The effects must stay where they are (/Library/Audio/Plugins/Components)!
cheers
rob

Scratch Disc Questions using Firewire External Drive & Imac

Hello. I've read through the existing questions regarding scratch disc and Photoshop, yet can't seem to find an answer to my questions. I would greatly appreciate any tips/advice. Here is my setup and situation:
I am running an iMac with a 2.16 intel core 2 duo processor, 3 GB memory, and running OS X version 10.6.4. I am currently using versions cs3 and cs4 of Photoshop, but plan to upgrade to cs5 soon.
The problem I am having is when running Photoshop, my computer becomes very slow. After reading about possible reasons, I came across a couple of sources (including Adobe themeselves) mentioning that the scratch disc should be a designated drive seperate from the drive containing the operating system. Since I am using an iMac that only allows for one internal drive, my only apparent option seems to be an external drive.
Many people say don't use an external drive, but if you are going to; use an eSATA or firewire. The imac does have firewire 800 capabilities. Should I consider this?
Now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to purchase a macbook for my next computer (what I wanted to do) because it will also only have one drive, not allowing for a seperate drive for the scratch disc. Any thoughts? I've read around the net but haven't found any definitive answers.

Designer,
Photoshop benefits greatly from having a scratch disk on a separate physical drive, not on the boot disk or on another partition of the boot disk. It's almost not worth connecting via Firewire 400 because the transfer limitations don't allow much performance improvement. But using a Firewire 800 connection gives excellent performance.
Running Photoshop on a one-drive machine is a little frustrating due to the performance hit without the separate scratch drive.
Rich

Copying from external drives repeatedly fails

Hello!
I have repeatedly had the same problem with my computer and external drives. I have 2 hard drives (150 gig Western Digital in an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and a 160 gig Maxtor in an external Firewire and USB 2.0 enclosure) from which I often cannot copy. I've never had problems writing to the drives, but sometimes copying from them freezes.
I am a professional photographer and at any given time I'm working with far too many photos to fit on my laptop, yet I often need a particular project on my laptop so I can edit on the road. So I'm frequently moving projects to and from these drives.
This problem is not only with photos, however. When I recently reformatted my hard drive (too many old programs installed and it was faster to just start over from scratch to clean up the drive), I first made a backup onto each of these external drives. But when I went to copy my iTunes library back onto the laptop the copying would freeze. I'd relaunch Finder and start it again and it would freeze on the exact same file. I did all the disk utility first aid operations on my laptop drive and the external drives and it still happened.
If I connect the drive to my XP computer and transfer the files over my LAN then there's no problem. Makes me think the files are fine, as is the drive's integrity. Oh, and no problem copying these exact same files from one drive to the other, or from an external drive to the internal drive with the XP computer.
When this problem is happening it doesn't matter which drive I use or by which interface, it always freezes on the exact same files. But if I open that file from the external drive in the appropriate application it reads it just fine. It's only when I'm copying the file. And it doesn't matter if I copy 10 gigs at once or one file at a time, the same files freeze up. If this was just one file every 6 months I could probably deal with it, maybe even just delete it and move on (as I've done with MP3s, since I own all the CDs and can re-rip the song). But when in a set of 10 gigs even if I delete one photo it freezes up again another couple hundred megabytes later.
I'm baffled. I don't know what to do. The fact that it happens with multiple drives and multiple interfaces makes me think that it isn't a problem with the external enclosures or those drives. The only things in common are the exact files I'm transferring and the PowerBook.
I'm really frustrated because I've found a situation where my XP box performs better than my Mac, and I'm a little shaken up about it.
Any ideas?
- Jon
12 PowerBook G4 1.3GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.25 gigs, combo drive, all updates installed except Tiger.

Yes, it's from a camera.
Again, the file is not corrupt. It can be read by my Windows XP computer, opened in Photoshop, and all the data is present. And if I remove the file that isn't copying and start over it freezes on another one later. And then another. And another.
I was forced to edit this wedding on my Windows box (with an older version of Photoshop - much slower than using CS2 on my Mac) because I have been unable to copy them to my PowerBook. This is incredibly frustrating. I've run all the disk utilities on my Mac and on the external drive. Nothing has improved the situation.
This question has not been answered. Please help!

External drives to improve performance?

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