Scratch drive setup - Mac

CS4 AME with a MBP
Just wanted some advice on getting the fastest encode times for my PP sequence projects. I threw out a question out a few days ago here about reconfiguring preferences to enable quicker encodes in AME CS4. Since nobody had any comments, I have to assume that there is not really anything that can be done to configure the software or preferences.
Maybe I can set up my scratch drive configuration better?
Currently I have a MBP with esata and FW800. I have a fast 7200rpm external hd with plenty of headroom which is formatted OS Extended - non journaled. It is connected via esata. The raw video files that PP are using in a sequence are read from this drive and the encode is being written to the same drive.
Would it be better to have the sequence files on a seperate drive? What is the best encode scratch drive setup (raid0 is not a consideration in my setup)?
Thanks in advance

Here's what I consider a starting point for a good system.
C: System
D: Projects
E: Scratch
F: Media
G: Exports
All local, internal drives.
You can of course make CS6 work just fine with less, but as you descend from that, you start to introduce bottlenecks and slowdowns. As you add to it, you add speed and performance. That config is a good middle ground.

Similar Messages

What RAID Setup do you use for your Macbook Pro Scratch Drive?

Is there any benefit to using an Express-ESata Raid Enclosure vs a single esata drive as the scratch drive?
If so, is there any benefit to using a 4 drive Raid 0 vs a 2 drive raid 0?
What Raid setups are any of you all using with your MacBook Pro's? Is there a significant performance difference between using a E-Sata drive and a FW800 drive. Is RAID the right way to go?
Sorry I'm not making a lot of sense right now, but I've searched through 20 or so pages of the forum and didn't see that anyone had addressed this question yet.

OK, just to give you a frame of reference, I just performed the following tests -
I hooked up my Sony AVCHD camera to my Mac Book Pro 2.4 ghz with 4 GB ram - (pretty close configuration to yours) - and imported a 26 second clip into FCP 7 with the following drive configurations:
Capture to internal Mac Drive, no externals: 26 Second clip takes 44 seconds
Capture to external WD USB2 drive: 26 Second clip takes 44 Seconds
Capture to external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array, Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 42 seconds
OK, so now I move the camera over to my Mac Pro 8-Core, 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Xeon with 14 gigs of ram, and capture *to the same external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array,* Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 11 seconds
My conclusion would be the drives and drive throughput is not as consequential as the CPU horsepower in doing the conversion from AVCHD to Pro Res. However, there are many very knowledgeable people who look at these threads, and I would be interested to hear what they have to say.
Hope this helps.
Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to correct typo

I have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

i have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

Troubleshooting Home Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972

Formatting Hard Drive in Mac OS 9 Setup

I am in the middle of upgrading my Performa 6400/200 now what I want to do is upgrade my 2 GB HD to my 40 GB HD I have never ran the Mac OS 9 setup before so I just want to know if I can do this the 40 GB HD was pulled from a windows machine the eBay seller said. So the Mac would not recognise it so I just want to know if I can boot of my Mac OS 9 CD with no hard drive that is readable in the machine format it in setup and then install on it.

I just want to know if I can boot of my Mac OS 9 CD
with no hard drive that is readable in the machine,
format it in \[Drive] Setup and then install on it.
Mac OS 9 CDs are System/Install CDs. Your Mac can boot from the CD with no Hard Drive at all.
Once booted from the CD, look in the Utilities folder on the CD for Drive Setup.
If the drive is shown in the list of devices, you should be able to initialize it. Be sure to choose Mac HFS+ Extended format.
Once the drive is initialized, you can click on the Mac OS Install Icon on the CD to install onto the newly-initialized Hard Drive.

Best scratch disk setup on a Mac Pro (Late 2013)

Hello Adobe team,
We've a new Mac Pro in the studio and we're looking forward to know the best configuration for a 4k RED footage editing and color grading workflow.
We plan to add a Pegasus2 R4 on RAID 5 as a main WIP hard drive, but we still don't know if we'll need to add a extra hard drive just for scratch tasks...
Thanks in advance for your feedback,
Regards,
Luis.
Configuration:
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
OS X 10.10.1 (14B25)
3,5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC
AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB

No you do not need a scratch drive with the R4. Just put the cache files on that.
Eric
ADK

HT4407 Hey, I am unable to install windows 7 using 'bootcamp 5.0' . I have already partitioned the drive as (mac Os Extended Journaled) and yet it seems bootcamp won't acknowledge this?

Hey, I am unable to install windows 7 using 'bootcamp 5.0' . I have already partitioned the drive as (mac Os Extended Journaled) and yet it seems bootcamp won't acknowledge this?
My first thoughts were that 'bootcamp' was out of date...needed an upgrade to register windows 7. Since then I am once again met with the same problem... how can it not see the I have already have a paritioned drived ready to be used for installition, is there a way to fix this problem? I don't really want to pay out for 'i-parition' only to merge my 2 drives back into one and start again from scratch =/. Seems silly to do so...what are my options?
Regards Swishi...p.s If anyone can help me...it'll make my day :3.

ONE PARTITION.
You don't need to buy anything but you should have backups.
you can delete #2 you created. Then resize to full drive.
There are already
GPT
EFI
Mac
Recovery
and there needs to be Windows which cannot be higher ID
Reading the instructions first and just swallow whatever pride or inidignation. It is a "my way or highwar" setup and utility,.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.7.pdf
create a Windows support software (drivers) CD or USB storage media
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4407
The Boot Camp Assistant can burn Boot Camp software (drivers) to a DVD or copy it to a USB storage device, such as a flash drive or hard drive. These are the only media you can use to install Boot Camp software.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4569
Installation Guide Instructions for all features and settings.
Boot Camp 4.0 FAQ Get answers to commonly asked Boot Camp questions.
Windows 7 FAQ Answers to commonly asked Windows 7 questions.
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Fastest hard drive setup- for creative professional

So with RAM upgrades being out of the question for the next month waiting for competition to drive down prices I turn to my hard disk situation in my new stock mac pro.
I am a creative professional with little to no interest in gaming. I am mearly looking to get the best performance out of final cut and the CS2 family of programs. So let me ask you all this.
With my one 250 gig drive, would this be a good general storage drive for say the OS, program files, music, and documents
While maybe setting up another drive as a scratch drive for photoshop and final cut? I have never setup a scratch disk or had the luxury of doing this. How would this help and how would I do it?
Also, how would raid 0 help me in this situation
Or maybe 10,000 RPM raptor drives, 16meg cache? Or simply 7200 fast enough.
I apologize for the lack of focus with this question, I am simply looking for the fastest setup with internal hard disks I can!
-Nicholas

First let me say my Raptors have been a RAID 0 for a few years now and they are solid drives compared to my dead Seagate and LaCie external (uses WD IDE drives, but it could have been the LaCie SATA interface)
Once they are properly Zeroed first in Disk Utility (before the RAID set) so the driver software doesn't play guinea pig with my data, they are very good drives. Enterprise level for sure. 24/7, quiet (at first they make slight clucking sounds) and fast as all heck.
Now to answer the original posters question.
RAM is the key to better CS2 performance up to about 3.6GB I believe, then after that I think the memory spills over to the "scratch disk" or boot drive. Now if your boot/scratch drive is a lumbering 500GB, then of course your scratch is going to be slow. With a scratch your trying to mimic the speed of RAM, so it has to be really fast. Like a stripe pair of Raptors for instance.
So having enough RAM to cover all your open apps and files, a GB for Mac OS X and you should be set. If your working on really huge Photoshop/Ampeture/Video files, then a stripe set of Raptors as a scratch/working disk with daily auto backup to a 500GB stock file drive is ideal.
A 150GB Raptor as a boot/app/itunes/bare bones "home" drive with files on another drive is the ideal setup. Mac OS X swaps memory, caches, grabs a iTunes song, small reads and writes to the boot drive all the time. A small, slim filled boot drive, below 50% filled, with fast rotation and access speed, is ideal. Less de-optimization because changing fles are kept off of it.
People notice a immediate difference in Mac OS X with a Raptor as a boot drive.
Note: Striping like mine doesn't give much more performance benefit as one Raptor is enough to speed up Mac OS X if bulky files are placed on another drive. I had stripe my 2 74GB Raptors because I needed more room and the 150GB didn't exist.
(no comp)

External hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd

Why is my MacBook Pro reading my external hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd?
Thanks

Hi Christian,
Is this something that has happened from the start? If so, I would reformat the disk and setup TM from scratch again.
Prepare the external HD by connecting to the Mac, open Disk Utility, select the manufacturer’s name of the external HD, select Partition and choose GUID Partition Table, format to Apple OS Extended (Journaled); quit Disk Utility.
Open System Preferences.
Click on Time Machine.
Click on “Select Disk.”
Click just to the left of "On" to turn TM on if it's not already on.
Click on the disk or partition you want to use.
Click on “Use for backup.”
Leave external HD connected, and TM will automatically do its thing.

External USB Hard Drive Setup - My Experience

Short Summary: I reformatted my 300Gb external hard drive to Mac Extended format (not journaled) with 3 separate partitions: Photos, Music, and Backup Files. Plugged the HD into the AirPort base station and then ran the AirPort Disk Utility (HD accessed via base station password) and place the AP Disk Utility icon on the task bar. I clicked on the icon, entered my password, and the three partitions appeared on my desktop. I am now able to read/write to the HD with both Mac computers and my Windows computer (loaded with the windows version of AP Utility software) via my wireless network.
My Hardware: Cable Modem, AirPort (AP) Extreme 802.11n, SeaGate 300GB USB/Fire Wire External HD, iMac w/ core duo, PowerBook Pro w/ core duo, AP Express setup as a print server, and my Windows XP computer for gaming.
Initial Setup: I shut down all computers and replaced my old AP extreme with the new one. I plugged in the SeaGate HD to the AP base station, turned on the AP then turned on the HD. Turned on my PowerBook (PB) Pro, loaded the new AP software and was connected to the internet with no problem. Similar to other posting on this topic, my external HD was not visible despite running AP Disk Utility.
Follow on troubleshooting: The HD was formatted in Mac Extended (Journaled) and had 9 GB of data that was stored via USB wire directly from my PB Pro. I transfered the data to my PB Pro via USB and then, using the standard OS10 Disk Utility application, reformatted the HD in Mac Extended (Journaled) with 3 partitions. I reconnected the HD to the AP base station and ran AP disk utility again. Lo and behold, the 3 partitions showed up on the desktop of my PB Pro. I loaded the AP software onto my iMac and Windows Computer and they both recognized the HD. I successfully op tested file transfer via the wireless network (about 2.5 MB/sec data transfer rate).
The Kicker: I then ejected the HD from my computers, disconnected it from the AP base station, and then hooked it directly to my PB Pro to transfer 11 GB of music files. As expected the data transfer rate was much higher. I reconnected the HD to the AP base station but the HD got hung up and was no longer accessible via the wireless network. I connected another external HD (ACOM 160 GB, NTFS file format) and while it was accessible, not all files were visible. I disconnected the ACOM HD from the AP base station, hooked it directly to my PB Pro, transferred 1 GB of music files and reconnected it to the AP base station. It reappeared on my PB Pro after running the AP Disk Utility, however, the files I just transferred were not visible. Noticing a pattern, I have determined that for my hardware lineup, any files that are directly transferred to the HDs either cause the HD to hang up or are not visible. I can only speculate on why this occurs; maybe there is a causal link to the format standard of the disk (NTFS, Mac Extended (journaled) or the processing of pre-existing data on the HD.
The Final Fix: I connected the Seagate HD to my PB Pro with a USB cable and then cleared it of all data by erasing all partitions and contents using the normal Disk Utility application. I then re-formatted and re-partitioned to 3 partitions with the Mac Extended format (not journaled). I reconnected the HD to the AP base Station, went through the AP disk utility again and all 3 partitions were made available to both of my Mac computers and my Windows computer. Data transfer is now strictly limited to wireless transfers.
Conclusion: Though the wireless transfer takes longer, all data is present, visible and accessible by all three computers. Once the data is present, applications such as iPhoto and iTunes works just fine with minimal drop off in performance. While my experience with my Apple computers has been somewhat more satisfying than adding new hardware to my windows platform, this particular case demonstrates that data standards and PnP are still elusive goals in the computer industry.
Cheers and hope this helps someone,
HCW3
iMac and PowerBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Tom,
Welcome to the world of cross polination between OS X and Windows, glad to know I am not alone.
First off, you should load the APE software on all computers using your wireless network. This will enable you to access the USB HD from all computers.
Secondly, I am not certain if it is necessary to reformat your HD. I had the good fortune of having only a few files on my SeaGate 300GB so it was somewhat painless for me to reformat. This is what I do know from years of building windows computers and setting up my current network: starting with clean disks is always the best way to build a new system. With that said, try this: connect your second maxtor (the one with the itunes library) to the APE USB port and access it via your MacBook Pro. Go into Finder, select that drive and type .mp3 into the spotlight box. Does it find your music files on that drive? When your double click on a song it should play. If you go back into finder and select that USB drive again, do you see a folder for that artist? If you answer yes to the previous questions you are experiencing the same thing I did. Whenever I wrote files to the USB drive via the USB cable, they were not visible when I accessed the drive wirelessly. I have not figured out why this is so and I am sorry that this doesn't really help you out.
As far as the windows computer not seeing the USB drive via the ethernet connection, that is a tough one to troubleshoot since the APE would presumably allow hardwire connectivity. It seems to me that the APE should be acting similarly to a USB hub. It may have something to do with the modulation of the data stream between the USB line and the ethernet line, though this is probably a bad guess.
My best advice would be to transfer your itunes and video to DVD-ROM disks and then reformat the USB drive to Mac Extended and assign it a new volume name. Plug it in to the APE and verify you can access it via all your computers. If so, transfer the music back to the USB disk wirelessly. This will take a while so do it before you go to bed. I recognize that this is a very neanderthal work around, however, it will preserve your files and allow you to start from a clean slate. It will also take a while for itunes to repopulate the library list from the new location of the files, so start this before you leave the house for work.
Howard Warner
iMac and PowerBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

HT1338 DVD drive in mac will not ply DVD's

My DVD drive in mac will not play full size DVD's,It says system extension cannot be used,please help.Thank you

Go to your OS Help Menu. In the search field type dvd
Click on all the troubleshooting topics & Support Articles that pertain to your issue.
You can also do the same in Disk Utility. Open same up.
At the bottom left of the window, click on the purple button w/the "?" in the middle.
This will bring up the Help Menu.
Try a different brand.
CDs
FUJI
TDK
Verbatim
Taiyo Yuden
DVDs
Maxell
Taiyo Yuden
Make sure the DVDs are not dirty, smudged and/or scratched.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50448
Cures for an uncooperative CD/DVD drive
Your drive may need cleaning. Cleaning kits can be purchased from any store that sells CD/DVDs.

So I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal), I then could save on the hard drive. Not two days later Im back at square one, the program wont recognize the hard drive again.

So, hard to beleive, but I am having some trouble with Final Cut Pro X.
This last week I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal),
so that I could save on that hard drive.
Well it went great.
I saved my project on there and copied a few others over as to free up space on my Laptop.
Then, not two days later Im back at square one,
the program wont recognize the hard drive.
It wont even open the events up off my hard drive,
as to jog the program into reqcognizing the scratch disk (which worked twice before).
What happened?
How do I get the program to re-recongize my newly formatted hard drive?
Please help!

The name of the drive, or the name of some folders inside the drive, may fool FCP X into believing it is a camera.
Also, you should not use the drive for time machine backups.

Hard Drive Setup for Creative Professional

Hi. I own a Mac Pro 3Ghz tower, and I only have one 250Gb hard drive along with an Iomega external 250Gb hard drive. I really need to upgrade my hard drives and create proper backups. I'm just not sure about the best options for backing up all my data and what the best options are for setting up my harddrives. Can anyone offer advice to a graphic designer that needs to upgrade his hard drive setup? I'm not sure what Raid is, so I would need to better understand what that does as well. I guess I need a road plan for the best way to go about all this upgrading.
Thanks.

Hi There,
I know you posted this more than a month ago, but i thought i'd see what you found and...what you can offer me in the way of answers. I appreciate any help you can give me!! Thanks in advance. I might have a couple options for you too.
I have the same set up pretty much. 1 250gb internal, 1 250 gb external, plus a 175gb external that i keep off site. Files are everywhere, yes i have copies, but it's an organizational disaster and not fail safe. If i lost a clients job, i'd loose more than the cost of just setting up a good backup system.
I found a few things out.
You can set up a software raid on your macpro using disk utility(although I don't know how to do it yet). (for raid info, look up raid on wikipedia, it's just a variety of ways to create more than one copy of data on any # of drives. 2 drives is a mirror image, 3 can be striped(any one drive can fail), and more...there are speed advantages with these too. )
Anyway i have 3 bays open for drives in my 2.66ghz quad. So setting up a software raid is option 1 - but from reading forums it seems like this isn't easy and requires maintainance? If you add a drive or remove one it erases all drives(?).
There is a system my friend turned me on to called Drobo.
It seems like the easiest solution and one that is lasting, check out the website at drobo.com it's external, has 4 bays and you can add and remove drives on a whim and upgrade up to 4tb. seems the easy solution, but costs 500 and then you need to purchase drives. but you can use any drives and it seems maintanance free.
Any recommendations - is software raid easier than I imagine?
Anyone have any offsite storage ideas? (.mac would be ideal, but it costs so much for storage and it's slow).
Looking forward to hearing your solution, and any advice for me.
Thanks,
Josh

How do I put windows on a seperate internal drive in mac pro

how do I put windows on an internal drive in mac pro (not the OSX drive)

Take out all your other drives.
Boot Windows installer DVD like Windows 8 or 7 64-bit Pro.
Install.
Not so hard.
In fact installing on another drive w/o taking out others is much much more complicated and you have to jump through a hoop. And is not even documented! And there is a forum for Boot Camp aka Windows on Mac.
Mac 101: Using Windows on your Mac via Boot Camp
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1461
Boot Camp, Windows 8
General installation questions
What is Boot Camp 5?
Boot Camp 5 is not a release of OS X software. Rather, it is a release of the Windows Support Software (drivers). You will need to use this software on your Mac with Windows 8 or Windows 7. For more information on Boot Camp 5, see this article.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5639
Which Macs support Windows 8?
Mac Pro (Early 2009 or newer)
For more information, see this article.
What are the System Requirements for Windows 8?
Please see this article.
How can I install Windows 8 on an eligible computer?
Use the Boot Camp Assistant. The assistant will partition your internal hard drives and install Windows 8. For more information on Windows 8 installation, see the Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide.

How necessary is a separate scratch drive??

Greetings from cold, windy Humboldt,
I'm looking into buying a new 15" macbook pro w/ my student discount and using FCP 5.1 to edit a short film on it. I do not have any form of external drive and quite honestly I won't have any money left to buy one after I've paid for the laptop. My film professor was very adamant about the fact that we could NOT capture video onto the SAME drive that we were editing video on. Why is this, assuming that I have enough space on the single hard drive to capture and edit? I don't want to cause any explosions or hasten armageddon or anything, I'm just broke and I have a deadline that can't wait for me to buy another drive... Could I just edit the film in small pieces and back up the project to data DVDs as I go? And could anyone recommend to me how much video to edit at a time, or what would be the maximum of captured video (miniDV, not HD) that I could reasonably dump on a 160GB hard drive at once and then edit?
Does anyone out there do their editing and capturing entirely on one computer, esp. a laptop? It seems like the powerful new Intel macbook PROs should be capable? Am I missing something?
none yet Mac OS X (10.4.9) considering an Intel Macbook Pro 15"

The system drive has to run the operating system, and FCP as well as any other programs you may have open. If you add to that workload the task of capturing footage, you are pushing that one drive pretty hard.
That being said, many people successfully edit this way, but be aware that you risk dropping frames and other problems.
If you do work this way, do not fill your drive beyond aprox. 85% (general rule for any scratch drive) It will probably also help to close all other programs and open sequences during the capture process.
As for editing in "small pieces" that's not really the issue. But if you do want to conserve drive space then I'd recommend logging you footage before capturing so that you can avoid capturing things you do not need.
rh

Best external drive setup?

I guess I can't be called 'new' to Macs, I've had the mini since May of 2005, but I would like to know what you would recommend in terms of external drive setup.
As I began to fill the 80 gb internal, I added a FW 250gb external. It's not full (about 90gb free and 20 gb free internal), but I have virtually all my video and photographs on the external...and it makes me nervous.
So, I saw a Lacie 320gb for under $100 and decided to get it. Originally I thought, even though it is USB 2 only, that I could set it up as a bootable drive, like I could w/ the FW drive...but I don't think I can do that.
Now, I wonder if it is best to leave it as MS-DOS, or should I format this as Mac OS extended? what are the benefits?
Should I move everything from the FW to the USB? and then reformat the FW?
thanks
ultimately, my goal is to use one external as the location for my working files, and the other as a backup...is there a better way?

Thanks Gordon,
In terms of speed, I still feel the FW drive will be slightly faster than the USB 2 drive, so I plan to use that drive for the work drive and the 320 to backup to.
My internal is an 80gb...and I have only 19-21 free at any given time. Over 25 gb is in my photos and another 10 in Music. I think now that I have the 2 externals, I can use those for photos only and clear the internal.
The dilemna is my internal drive is silent...both externals are noticeable when spun up...so I let them sleep after when not in use.
I have SilverKeeper from LaCie for backup...so I'll use that for now.
thanks again.

Scratch drive setup - Mac

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