Ideal external hd / backup scenario for working with FCP on new macbook.

Hello All,

I just ordered the new retina macbook with 512 SSD and I'm curious what practical setups there are in regards to working with final cut projects and external hard drives; I haven't really messed with such solutions and am thus a newb in this regard.

I am thinking that it might be best to just keep the current work in progress on the SSD and move the other projects off to the external drive after they are complete, but I'm hearing that some people are just moving the entirety of their user folder onto the external drive as well (assuming the external is fast). I'd also like to have a legitimate backup of ALL projects (and other files on my computer) to store in another location, (the backing up can happen overnight) so maybe I need a time capsule in addition to the afore mentioned external.

Ideally I would like a solution that:
--Doesn't cause a significant slow down when working with FCP projects
--Provides a complete backup of all my stuff, this backup can occur somewhat infrequently if necessary
--Minimizes the use of hard drive space on the macbook (512 is not a lot and i'll need it for installed programs like FCP, Logic Studio, etc).

Thanks!

Never put Events and Projects on the OS drive, ever. It's not about drive speed, it's about limited bandwidth. 2 external drives. One is your working drive with all Projects and Events. The other is a backup. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to schedule automated backups, or trigger them manually.

Okay; I think I'll actually make my entire home folder exist on the primary external drive. Do you have any suggestions for good external drives (I'd be looking for at least 2 TB). And would it be that the secondary external drive mirrors the first one, or somehow it backs up the primary external and the computer's core drive as well (I ask this because carbon copy cloner is talking about bootable backups, which would imply its getting OS stuff). Thanks!

Leave your Home folder where it is. The OS expects it there. Only move the Final Cut Events and Final Cut Projects folders to the root level of your external drives. They ONLY go in the Home folder when it's your OS drive. All other drives they live on the root level.

Carbon Copy Cloner is able to "clone" an OS drive so that it will boot. You can not drag-and-drop an operating system to copy it to another dirve.

But CCC can also do regular old backups, that is a different thing form cloning a boot drive. That's what you want, plain old backups. Read the user manual for CCC.

Okay; and I guess I'll just do the same kind of thing for my logic studio projects and instruments folders.

Yep. Only 2 folders you need to worry about. "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects". Read up in the user manual about how it all works.
help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.5/#verb6acba30

I also cover a lot of media management stuff in my course.
www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/finalcutprox204-managing-media

Sounds good. I guess if I do this there is no reason to have Time Machine running, as I've never needed to go back to previous versions of a file; as long as I have the latest version of everything thats fine.

FCP X is not TimeMachine friendly. In fact, it's caused problems with some FCP X systems. If you run FCP X, be sure to turn off TM.

That settles that then!

I use Time Machine, but with custom settings set by a handy little program called "TimeMachineEditor". This makes Time Machine only do it's thing when you want it to.

In my case that's every night at 9.30. Been using it like this for years and it's never caused any issues with any of my editing programs.

So I sleep a lot better knowing all my projects are backed up every night.

I've been using Time Machine with FCPX for over a year, it runs every hour and has never caused any problems.

I'd be interested to here what these problems it has been known to cause are?

Well the main issue is speed. If you are backing up your project directory every hour while editing it's going to use a lot of resources as the files are changing very often. Especially if you are rendering. You will be backing up render files every hour. Not worth the hassle.

I suppose that makes sense if you have background rendering enabled, but it could easily be said that creating all those unnecessary render files isn't worth the hassle in the first place, never mind backing them.

I'm not running the fastest mac in the world, but it is the latest I suppose, and I don't get performance hits while Time Machine does it's thing.

True of you don't have background rendering on then you don't have to worry as much. but FCP X is doing a back up every 15 minutes anyway.

Try switching it off and see if there is any difference. If not then return to normal programming.

I've had it off before. A while back I wasn't happy with the way Time Machine dealt with the "Events/Events Not In Use" folders being swapped around, it meant duplicate backups for the events stuff. I tried Carbon Copy Cloner for a couple of weeks. I wasn't overly happy with that so I changed my workflow around a bit and went back to Time Machine, I tell it to ignore my "Transcoded Media" folders for any new Events I create and manually back up my source footage to a separate hard drive dedicated for the purpose.

While I was using CCC I never noticed any performance boost. Thinking back, maybe with the above workflow meaning Time Machine doing less work is making a difference. But even then, it would only have been the occasional backup dealing with the "Transcoded Media" backups shortly after creating new events that would have had any effect on performance.

If background rendering is turned off, and the transcoded media is taken care of, Time Machine is actually doing very little in the way of work on it's hourly basis.

BenB wrote: Never put Events and Projects on the OS drive, ever. It's not about drive speed, it's about limited bandwidth. 2 external drives. One is your working drive with all Projects and Events. The other is a backup. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to schedule automated backups, or trigger them manually.

Hey Ben, I just wanted to double check - your above statement still holds true even if the HD is SSD and with 16 gigs of ram?

I like the Western Digital 2TB portable passport drive, but thought it is USB 3.0 it only 5400 RPM; is this fast enough to work off of; or do I need one with 7200? Thanks.

Yes, true even with SSD drives.
7200RPM no matter what connector is has to your Mac.

Thanks; just a little unclear about the last statement. Are you saying that USB 2.0 at 7200 would be better than the USB 3.0 at 5400? (as in your saying that it must be 7200 or it will suck). Thanks.

5400 rpm can't do reads, seeks, writes fast enough for serious video work, period.

USB 2 doesn't have enough sustained bandwidth for serious video work.

Neither would I ever touch for a serious video project.

Okay so USB 3.0 (at least) and 7200; thanks!