Suggestion For An External Scratch Disc needed

I have recently learned that I had my scratch disc set up incorrectly to the same internal SSD in the Mac Book Pro. I assume that to keep the maximum transfer speed I need and external HDD or SSD with FireWire 800 instead of USB. I have found a few of those but they are much larger than what I need in GB and physical size.
I need something portable and reliable since I do most of the work on the road.
Thanks for your suggestions.

Have you considered a G-Drive mobile or G-Drive mini SSD? Both are bus-powered.
If you're ok using AC power, look at the G-Drive mini.
These are very nice units - small, reliable, good reputation.
FireWire (or eSATA if you have a MBP with an ExpressCard slot) is the way to go. USB generally cannot keep up with the sustained throughput required for video.

Similar Messages

  • Suggestions for new external HD

    I have a G4 powerbook with 80 GB of HD which is pretty much maxed out. Looking for an external HD to transfer pics on to, and to do some backup with. (Currently i use my iDisk for backup of my Documents folder, so haven't really needed Backup). Any suggestions for a good ext HD though? LaCie? Toshiba?
    Also, I'm thinking I should upgrade my 512 of memory to full gig of memory. All this doesn't need me to lead me down the path of a new MacBook instead, does it?!

    GoBraves:
    Since you have a PowerPC Mac you should be sure to get a Firewire external HDD. This will enable you to make a bootable clone which will do double duty as a full backup and as an emergency boot drive.
    Be sure that the HDD that you get is larger enough. Since they drives are now quite affordable I would not suggest anything less than 250 GB. You can partition this clone your HDD to a partition approximately the size of your internal HDD.
    The element in a Firewire Drive that fails most often is the firewire bridge. You need to get a drive with the more reliable Oxford 911+ chipset like one of these external firewire HDDs at OWC.
    Good luck.
    cornelius

  • Suggestions for an external HD to use with my AirPort Extreme?

    I have a fairly new APE (6 months old or so), and I want to purchase an external HD for use as a backup/sharing device on my network.  I have a MBP running ML, a PC desktop (win XP), and a PC laptop (win 7).
    It will be a stand alone unit at part of the network, and plugged into the APE, but when configured, I'd like to be able to access the files stored there with any of the computers I have.
    I do not anticipate having to plug the ext HD directly into any of the computers, except in an extreme emergency.
    Would a HD like a WD MyBook do, formatted either for the PC or the Mac?  Does the HD need to be formatted one way or the other for maximun compatibility?
    I dont intend to buy a "portable" HD to do the job.  It will be connected full time to the network.
    I've never used Time Machine before as a backup tool, nor any other backup software.  Primarily, the backup will be of my photos, and a few documents.
    If I have a system  crash, I can and will reinstall the OS, whatever computer dies.
    I've not got much experience with network HD backup, but I figure it's about time.
    Sorry if my questions are a bit lame, or if this has been covered in some kind of tutorial somewhere else.  Please direct me to that link if it has.
    Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!!
    DJ

    Thank you for your reply.
    I have been looking at the WD MyBook Studio as an option in my system.  Not so much because it is Mac compatible out of the box, but more because I like the idea of the metal enclosure, for durability and heat dissapation.
    I have heard and seen reviews where many external drives can be noisy as well.  I'm not so concerned with noise during a backup or a file transfer, but I dont think I could tolerate constant noise.
    I have a APE, 802.11n, Model MD031LL/A that I intend to plug my external drive into.  I may or may not just do basic "copy and pastes" of files and such, at least until I find a backup plan that is somewhat automated and hands-free.
    For now, anyway, I have nothing of importance stored on my MBP, so using Time Machine might not be a factor as a backup solution for my MBP.
    An overwhelming majority of my files will be JPEG, RAW, along with Word and Excel files (from both my MBP and PC).  I do not have any Mac-exclusive formatted files on my MBP.
    I try to be careful when saving and storing files to allow for max compatibility on both platforms.  As an aside, if there is a good tutorial about this topic (file-saving and compatibility), I'd love a link if you can share.
    I would be willing to reformat the external drive if it meant better, cross platform compatibility and performance.  In the back of my head, I have this idea about getting the MyBook Studio, and reformatting as necessary.
    I know this idea sounds a bit fussy, but I just want to get a quiet, solid desktop external drive, that I can just sort of buy, configure and forget (in a manner of speaking)
    Plus, I dont want to waste $100-$150 bucks making a poor HD choice.
    Further suggestions?
    Thanks,
    DJ

  • Suggestions for formatting external drive with bad block?

    I have a OWC Mercury 300 GB external drive.  I wanted to erase it and use it as a backup for one of my laptops.  The drive had been working fine as a Time Machine back up for an old (intel) iMac. I told Disk Utility to erase and reformat.  It erased, but refused to reformat saying there was a bad block on the drive.  Now Disk Utility recognizes the external drive but won't do anything with it.  No Verify. No Repair.  All grayed out.  Any suggestions?

    I wasn't a hard error, that's why. Repartitioning and reformatting will often fix soft errors in the directory structure. Had there been a real, new, bad block on the drive it would not be repairable. A soft bad block error can be fixed by reformatting. The hard block error may be fixable by using Zero Data one pass that may spare out the bad block. But if none of that works then you need to replace the drive.
    You were fortunate that the error probably was spurious and resolved by repartitioning (may have been in the disk's RDB.)

  • Suggestions for an external harddrive...

    Hello
    I would like to purchase an external hard drive to back up my computer (emac OS 10.4.11) What is a reasonabley priced 1TB HD that comes formatted for the Mac? The ones i see on the Staples website seem to need to be reformatted. Thanks!

    WD drives themselves generally get good reviews, though I've heard mixed reports about their prepackaged MyBook units. There are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture the drives, so what most vendors are providing is the case. I've been quite happy with the drives from Other World Computing:
    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/
    but there are probably a number of brands that would work quite well for you.
    Regards.
    Disclaimer: any product suggestion and link given is strictly for reference and represents my opinion only. No warranties express or implied. I get no personal benefit from the sale of any product I may recommend in any of my posts in the Discussions. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. You must be this tall to ride. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Preservatives added to improve freshness. No animals were harmed in the making of this post.

  • Requirements for an external scratch disk

    Hi guys
    I am looking into buying an external hard drive to use as a scratch disk for editing. I was wondering what the requirements are for it to work as a scratch disk.
    Thanks

    Sorry Luke to correct, but Firewire is the way to go. USB2 does not guarantee sustained data transfer as video requires. Even though some posters claim they had no problem with USB2.
    Even though slightly more expensive I'd always buy firewire for video.
    Piero

  • Suggestions for an external hard drive?

    I'm in the process of shopping for a good external hard drive to work with FCPHD 4.5. I have a g5 dual 2.0 and I was checking out the "LaCie d2 Extreme Triple Interface, 160GB, 7200 RPM, External USB 2.0 / Firewire 400 / Firewire 800 Hard Drive" hard drive. I've been scouting the discussion board and saw alot of kernel issues. Has anyone had problems with this one, or know of any problems with Lacie? Or can you suggest a good hard drive that is compatable with FCP4.5.

    I have never heard anything bad about OWC or Weibtech. They all have great stuff. I own a Weibtech enclosure I put my own drive into. Right now I also work with (3) 500GB Lacie BigDisk drives. I work them very hard. One is a back up and constantly has stuff moving on it. One holds all my project files and footage, which I work on for at least 7 hours a day. So far everything is seemless.
    It is true that Lacie tends to change their hard drives they use quite often, however, I've never had a problem with their stuff.... except for that one time I bought a referbished model. In other words, if it's really important to you, don't get a referb. But they do have great prices on them.

  • Hardware suggestion for Indesign 6 or CC needed

    Hi,
    I need to buy a pc and I am unsure, which hardware to use, so Indesign will run smoothly. Where would be the emphasis (eg. RAM CPU harddisk or graphicscard)? Good graphic workstations from IBM and Lenovo seem to bee very powerfull, allthough I don't know, if there are not a little to overpowered.
    Regards, Sparmit

    A PC can never be overpowered, but overpriced regarding what you want to do with it.
    I use Indesign CS2 on Windows 7 on a Quad Core 2.7GHz with 4GB RAM and it runs smoothly. The graphics card is a normal desktop card. I don't know whether ID uses any graphics acceleration to speed up scrolling in high quality display mode.
    The general problems with ID - and there are a lot - can't be solved with high power hardware. This is Adobe's task.
    For example, it can hardly handle documents with >100 pages or complex PDFs placed as objects. The renderer is just too bad.

  • Need Mic suggestions for solo guitar video...

    I have a Sony TRV-38 mini DV and need suggestions for an external mic. I want to video a solo guitar player sitting in a chair. Would I need to mic the guitar from a mic stand in front of him or would some sort of shotgun mic do the trick? Would buying a Beachtek unit be the best way to go, or is there a simpler/cheaper mic alternative that gives very good results. This is primarily just for good sounding archival footage.
    Thanks for any help.
      Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

    there are a couple of approaches... you can close mic, but if you are experimenting with your equipment and techniques, it is quite possible that you could get a very colored tone and not accurately depict the performace from a sonic standpoint.
    something that is quick, easy, and relatively high performance at a budget is to use an M-S stereo shotgun mic. the left channel will be mono hypercardoid aimed right at the performer... with the mic mid range, not close mic'd. the right channel will be the "-S" component of the stereo signal, which is optional and can be decoded with an M-S stereo process in the edit process, or if for example, there was too much ambient noise, simply discard the track and just use the left / mono signal. (personally, i would probably just mount my audio technica M-S stereo mic on my rycote hotshoe adapter, and mic camera mounted... no stands or cables to deal with)
    yes, the beachtek or similiar direct interface is the way to go, bypassing the Sony's poor gain stages (disable auto gain control, if possible).
    IF sound quality is of the utmost importance, then the real correct way to do this would be to record with 2 mics in an X-Y stero mid field setup. expense, complexity, and possibility of getting something wrong are probably too high to do for something as critical as a 1 take live event if you don't have experience under your belt.

  • Need recommendation for bootable External HD for CCC

    Hi !  I recently came to the forums to get info on how to effectively back up my mid-2010 MBP 500 Gb because according to Disk Utility I need to reformat my HD  
    I am currently only using Time Capsule to back up with Time Machine.  I had initially decided to drag my iPhoto library, itunes, and movies (along with some other user files) to a new Seagate 500 gb GoFlex portable External HD that I had.  But since I've done that, I've also done more browsing on the boards here and learned that I probably should be making a bootable clone of my HD (using Carbon Copy Cloner).  That sounds like a logical idea, and Im embarassed  I didn't know about it sooner.  So I plan to purchase the CCC immediately and do this before it's too late.  On their website they specifically say NOT to use Western Digital drives because some of them are not bootable.  I also saw some comments that the Seagates "go to sleep" and probably should be avoided.  I'm not sure how up-to-date those forums are so I am coming here for some recommendations/suggestions. 
    Before seeing those comments I had seen a few in the local stores here I was considering (WD passport, SeaGate backup plus, Toshibo Canvio Connect)...but now I'm confused. 
    Any suggestions for an External HD that I can use?  (also, I was thinking 1 TB was a decent size to get)?
    Thanks so much for your help ! 
    Christine

    chrstene96
    probably should be making a bootable clone of my HD
    Bootable clone is very important to have, and MUCH more useful than time machine in general.
    Forget about CCC,  Superduper does the same thing for FREE.  Download the APP SuperDuper (most use it).
    Some advantages of a cloned HD:
    In case of an internal HD crash and failure, there is absolutely nothing quicker to getting back to 100% operation than having a HD clone handy to either boot from, or within 20 mins. installing and removing the bad HD. Nothing to install software-wise, and a speedy immediate return to your computer use and productivity.
    If you do an option key startup at boot you can directly boot to your cloned drive externally and operate from same like normal.
    Sandboxing: With the help of the Cloned Drive, you can perform sandboxing, or the testing of new software, their updates and applications before they are installed on your Mac system. Moreover, if there are issues with the system, you can troubleshoot them by booting off the Clone. Many people test new APPS or experiment with a secondary clone and never worry about a failure or serious issue since the internal HD is untouched and the secondary clone can be wiped afterwards if any major issue occurs in testing. This is an invaluable tool in many instances.
    If you sell you computer for purchase of a new one, you can take the clone you have on hand and install same or clone it to the new internal drive of your new Mac.
    As it turns out one of the huge positive benefits of a clone is that people were seeing faster HD speeds; with APPS booting up from the clone than they had seen with the internal HD. The cloning applications in cloning the drive defragments the data to the clone and remove the “holes” in the cloning process.
    With a small portable HD clone you can take your ‘computer’ anywhere to most any other current Mac and boot from your HD clone and have your entire system and its data immediately there for use. In case one is across the world and their macbook gets stolen, or damaged, with another Mac you can be up and 100% in the time it takes to boot to the new or borrowed Mac!
    You can clone from your external clone to the internal HD/SSD in case of corruption.
    The best thing that can be said, ideally, when your HD crashes with all its data is “so what, I’ve got a clone right here” and you can return to normal operation within seconds (by booting from the clone) or minutes (by swapping drives).
    In separating out your system hub (OS) and your data hub, and storing them separately, is if you make only periodic clones (every month or so), and have a HD crash, the worst case outcome is that what is lost on your clone are some bookmarks and preferences since your data hub containing your vital files is constantly archived separately as it should be.
    Disadvantages of a cloned HD:
    A HD clone takes a rather long time to update since it checks all files for changes.
    Ideally you would erase and create a new clone of your updated system every 2 weeks or month, which would therefore leave a gap in data integrity and OS files and system changes.
    Autonomous constant data hub archiving fills this downside “gap” of HD clones, wherein which the worst that would be lost is a 2 week or one month window of application updates, or system changes irrelevant to your vital data.
    best options for the price, and high quality HD:
    Quality 1TB drives are $50 per TB on 3.5" or  $65 per TB on 2.5"
    Perfect 1TB for $68
    http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B005J7YA3W/ref=sr_1_ 1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379452568&sr=8-1&keywords=1tb+toshiba
    Nice 500gig for $50. ultraslim and perfect
    http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B009F1CXI2/ref=s r_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377642728&sr=1-1&keywords=toshiba+slim+500gb
    2.5" USB portable High quality BEST FOR THE COST, Toshiba "tiny giant" 2TB drive (have several of them, LOT of storage in a SMALL package)    $117
    http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1379182740&sr=1-4&keywords=2tb+toshiba
    *This one is the BEST portable  external HD available that money can buy:
    HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive  
    $88
    http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Mobile-Portable-External-0S03559/dp/B009GE6JI8/ref=sr _1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383238934&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+Touro+Mobile+Pro+1TB+USB+3.0+72 00+RPM
    Most storage experts agree on the Hitachi 2.5"
    macjack My Swamp 
    It's usually not the WD drive
    If you're handy you can "roll your own" with a bare drive and an enclosure
    Its never the WD mechanical HD itself.      None of those posts on "data corrupted .....Mavericks...HD RAID arrays"  has any issue with the mechanical HD from WD
    (that being said WD quality is the worst and I refuse to buy them).
    Ill let you know when I find a HD enclosure that is worth more than 50 cents  and/or is reliable.
    (actually this one IS reliable:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Anker-2-5-Inch-USB-3-0-eSATA-to-SATA-Hard-Drive-Disk-HDD -External-Enclosure-/321085534744?pt=US_Drive_Enclosures_Docks&hash=item4ac23072 18  )

  • How to determine the scratch disc size?

    hello,
    once i was reading an adobe pdf "How to get better performance in photoshop cs5" - that was in 2009 or 2010, and may be outdated, but there was a calculation method
    to determine the size of a scratch disc. (similar calculation see below, if i can remember right)
    i am asking myself, how can i determine the correct size of an external SSD-scratch disc, only used by photoshop (completely empty):
    should i buy a 128GB or 256GB or 512GB SSD which is only reserved for photoshop?
    basic question 1 : i guess i should avoid to set the internal SSD as photoshop scratch disc, as it slows down everything?
    basic question 2 : in sense of maximum performance: better buy an external USB3.0 or thunderbolt SSD? will photoshop really use the extra thunderbolt speed when swapping data?
    secondary question:
    can i calculate the size regarding my daily working habits?
    i am mainly working like this:
    - with my imac 27" late 2013 with 32GB RAM and 256 GB internal pci-e SSD (800 MB/sec), which will stay always half empty for performance reasons.
    - OSX 10.8 mountain lion and 10.9 mavericks soon
    - photoshop cs5, cs6 and cc (always without extended)
    - 8bit and 16bit mode
    - only RGB
    - with latest phocus/Hasselblad and canon RAW Files which produce a basic .psb document at ...
    - 10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi
    - with average 10 - 40 main image layers and 20-50 adjustement layers (try to reduce that in 16bit)
    - .psb file is 2-20 GB big (file in finder)
    - 16bit file compression is off, when saving .psb files (faster handling)
    -  set photoshop to 70% ram usage (from 32GB RAM)
    i wonder how to calculate ?
    for example:
    10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi needs for one image layer at 16bit: 2GB RAM in photoshop cs6 or cc (just as a number), this may be wrong
    so lets take 2GB RAM and multiply with 10 image layers in my .psb file (16bit) = 20 GB RAM, and multiply with 20 adjustment layers (guess they need less ram, for one lets say 500MB) = 20GB + 10GB = this 16bit .psb layer file would need 30GB RAM, so when i have 32GB in my imac, i set cs6 or cc to 70% ram usage, it misses at least round 8-10GB RAM > can i guess that photoshop would swap these 8GB onto my scratch disc? or do i miss something important in my thinking?
    tricky thinking
    thanks for help

    station_two wrote:
    The rule of thumb I follow says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open.  I have seen the scratch file exceed 300 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
    As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS.  I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.
    Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.
    - i dont use HDD anymore only SSDs, both internal and external
    - i set history state to only 5 or 6, to improve performance
    - i set cache size to 4 and tiles to "big and flat" with 1028kb (there is no "big and much layers" option)
    - is this still the rule of thumb? i read it in 2009 , too, guess it was outdated, as cs6 and cc have improved codes in terms of performance?
    - if you say "50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open.":
    i will not open more than one document at same time to prevent performance lags, so lets calc like: dokument size in finder (you mean in finder or doc. size shown in photoshop?) = e.g. 5GB x 100 = 500GB, so my external scratch disc SSD, i would buy now, should be at least 500GB, USB 3.0 or thunderbolt ... maybe better thunderbolt, yes? with usb 3.0 i could gain 300MB/sec if thats enough for photoshop?
    thanks

  • Any suggestions for backing up a macbook?  I think it's a Mac OX X v10.6?

    Do you have any suggestions for backing up. I do not currently have a way to back up my laptop. I read many bad reviews for time machine. Is their a cheaper way to back up laptop (I assume it wouldn't be wireless like time machine)?

    Time Machine works. It's free (except for the external disk you need to store the backup on!).
    You may be confusing Time Machine (the backup program builtin to Leopard and Snow Leopard) with the Time Capsule, an Apple wifi router with a hard drive built in.
    Either way, remember that people only come here when they have problems - so you'll see people complaining about Time Machine not working, because they don't post when things just work.
    I use Time Machine for all my Macs. Works really, really well.
    Additionally, I also use Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware) to make occasional copies of my boot disks.

  • How in the world can I select my external hard drive as a scratch disc for video?  Please skip the obvious, like 'is it plugged in?'

    At wit's end trying to select my external hard drive to load video on.  Time Machine backed stuff up on it so the computer knows it's there but it won't show anywhere else, iMovie or FCE4.   

    Hi Eric and thanx for the fast response.  I've had very little time to piddle around with this iMac and fce4 since I got it a few years back but I DO remember seeing an option back then--when capturing video from the camera--to choose some other scratch disc.  Some time after buying and plugging in the ext. drive I clicked on Time Machine (not even knowing what it was--some window popped up and it looked good).  I wonder if turning on Time Mach has locked me out of the ext. drive.  It doesn't show up ANYWHERE ANYTIME now, not under system pref., user pref. in fce4 or iMovie or anything else EXCEPT when I click on Time Machine it does tell me I've 2.97 terrabytes of space (which has to be the ext. drive; the iMac has 500 gb).  I'm thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling fce4 and starting over.

  • Suggestions for external HD for scratch disk for PS6 on new 27" iMac

    Don't want to partition the internal 3TB Fusion drive I will have installed.  I will be installing 24GBs of RAM w/ the 3.$Ghz Core i7 chip.  Some PS files up to 3GBs. Need drives for backup and scratch, or just one larger drive that's partitioned?
    TIA

    Paul Elson wrote:
    Don't want to partition the internal 3TB Fusion drive I will have installed.  I will be installing 24GBs of RAM w/ the 3.$Ghz Core i7 chip.  Some PS files up to 3GBs. Need drives for backup and scratch, or just one larger drive that's partitioned?
    TIA
    The answer depends upon what you're looking for, speed, convenience, reliability, backups, etc.  I would suggest that you take a look at the article from Adobe on optimizing the performance of Photoshop and then make your decision as to just what configuration you will want.  That will drive your choice of storage.
    At the bottom of the article, under additional links, you will find a short concise blog entry from John Nack that is worth reading, too.

  • Can someone suggest an affordable external hard drive for use with FCPX and video editing on my Macbook Pro Retina

    I have a Macbook Pro Retina from 2012 and I only got the 250GB hard drive.  I'm getting ready to purchase a Panosonic HC-X920 to use with Final Cut Pro X already installed on my laptop.  Since I know the file sizes are going to be so big, can anyone suggest an affordable external drive fast enough to keep up with editing the video?  I'm not a pro and use it for family and personal projects. 
    I prefer some thunderbolt options since I haven't had a chance to use the inputs since I got my macbook pro. I just don't know what is necessarily too little or too big and too cheap and too expensive for my needs.  Thank you.  

    OWC is a Mac specialist and a very trustworthy vendor.  I have dealt with them and their technical stall on many occasions.  Hence you may look at what they offer and be assured that they will stand behind what they sell:
    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/
    I suspect that for your needs, a 1 TB drive is going to be the minimum.
    Ciao.

Maybe you are looking for