Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB - STDA4000100 - Compatibility

I was about to purchase this drive, which seams to have great Price x Performance x space cost, from Amazon. When reading the review at the Amazon website I found a couple of people who seamed to have problems loading this driver on FCPx. I don't know if it was for the lack of knowledge from them or if indeed the driver doesn't work well on Mac OS.

Seagate claims this drive can be used in both systems (Mac and Windows), but I was wondering if any of you had experience with this drive or heard about it.

Thanks,
VA

I only found one FCP users who complained, and he had it formatted NTSF, can't do that with FCP. FCP requires you edit with a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted drive.

One guy partitioned it into 2 partitions, one OS X, one Windows, and didn't understand that this will cause the performance to degrade. Then complained about the degraded performance.

Good comments out weigh the bad comments by quite a lot. Very impressive that Seagate is addressing every single bad comment there right away. Sounds like they had some defective drives go out on the market. But that is an risk purchasing any hard drive.

But I have two concerns about this drive.
1- No clue what speed the drive is; 7200rpm as needed?
2- They publish heavily this NTSF driver you need to install on OS X to make it work. Sorry, but why not tell Mac users they can format it natively? I'd look for a drive that claims it can be native Mac formatted, not force you to install Windows drivers on your Mac.

V.A.
This is a portable drive that is formatted with NTFS, Macs natively use HFS format. You need to download and install NTFS software to read/write NTFS. I think it is included on the drive, or you can reformat the drive to HFS only if you only plan to use it on Macs. NTFS is used on Windows and Linux.
If you do not need the extra portability of this drive, Seagate offers a desktop version, requires power brick, for a lot less money. $159.00
No experience with this particular drive, but have some other Seagate's including the Backup Plus USB3, 1TB available often for around $60.00.
Hope this helps, Greg

Sure it would be good to be able to switch between windows and Mac. But right now my main focus is to be able to have a fast, large and portable drive that I can put my projects in and edit out of the drive. At the moment I am doing this on a 1TB WD my passport USB 3, which gives me around 80mb - 100mb speed. It isn't too bad but I do feel th lag when editing ad specially when opening FCPx... It takes forever:(.
If I decide to buy this drive and reformat it to HFS, will the performance be the same?


Thanks,
VA

There seems to be some voodoo to this drive that I don't understand. Is there a small RAID in it to achieve these speeds? A 7200RPM drive connected via thunderbolt will usually yield only around 140Mb/sec read and writes on average. Maybe that is what the software is used for? So in that case, I have a few questions about how they are achieving those speeds.

I use the regular seagate backup plus with the thunderbolt dock as a backup and archival drive (it is fast enough for me to work from if I need to make a quick change on a project) - those drives sell for $150 for 4tb and are a GREAT deal.

Personally, I would look into thunderbolt solutions. I find USB3 not the best for editing as it has trouble maintaining a consistent speed. FCPX is very very taxing on hard drives and I've noticed a huge increase in performance when stepping up to a solid thunderbolt RAID solution. If it's a drive you plan to work a lot from, I'd spend a little extra cash to get something really solid and fast. Then utilize other slower drives for backup. Just my 2 cents.

@fcpguru, this drive is in fact two 2.5inch drive in raid 0. That is how they were able to bring the performance.
Also it is only bus powered, which is pretty impressive considering the power is being shared with both drives.

I just bought a MBP retina 15in with 500gb PCI-e drive. Since it was my first mac I though I would be able to edit my projects inside its ultra-fast drive, but soon I learned FCPx loves eating all the GB it finds on its way. So I moved all my media to this WD 1TB USB3 drive, but running at an AVG of 85mb/s just isn't enough.

I've been in love with some of those LaCie drives this one to be specific: ( www.amazon.com/LaCie-Thunderbolt-Externa...drive+external+LaCie )

This drive is almost twice the price but is a very fast drive as well. The down side is that it isn't as portable... I am really not sure what to do...

I am still thinking what workflow will work best for me when using FCP. At the moment I am putting all my libraries inside the external drive and keeping the Original media inside my mac. I am getting the original media in a folder and cutting them on compressor before converting everything to ProRes. After I choose the pieces on Compressor I render the portions to the internal drive on my MBP which provides read speeds of over 650mb/s and writes at around 580mb/s. When importing the media to FCP I leave the media where is. So, in my library on the external drive I only have the links inside the original media folder.

I am not sure this is a good option, but I decided to go this way just to finish the project I am working on at the moment.

I have a Synology 1511+ which holds all my BKPs as well as Time Machine for the MBP. I was looking for a solution to hold the projects while I am working on them and I though this seagate drive would be a good option. If formatting the drive to HFS works and keeps the speed... maybe a good option.

What do you guys think?

Thanks,

- V.A.

Ah that makes more sense now. Wasn't sure if Seagate was doing some voodoo like G-Tech does with their G-Drive ev+ system (which I'm still curious to hear how that works for people?)

Figuring out the workflow to manage all the data is the most frustrating part of everything. And there are a dozen equally great ways to do it. If money were no object, I'd personally do the following:

1. Download footage in the field to 2 hard drives (usually cheap USB3.0 drives)
2. Import footage into a FCPX Library on a RAID for editing (Pegasus Promise RAID is my choice)
3. Once done with the project, size down the library by deleting generated files (Proxy/Optimized, etc) and stick the library on an Archive drive (like your Synology - do you like it?)
4. Archive the library to LTO-6 tape for long term storage (if its worth it)


I never recommend putting any media on your internal drive and generally I advise keeping all media contained in the library unless you are working in a shared space that requires media to be stored elsewhere. For one man shops (like me) having all the media in side the library on my main edit HD is so much simpler. I used to have a media drive with all the QT files on it and separate stuff out, but it just got confusing and I kept losing stuff.

When you get your new drive, I recommend keeping everything contained on it and having a backup copy of your media somewhere too.

I can't say money isn't a issue and I agree that I should keep everything in the library. I did this because of space. So all the proxy files and other files for the project are on the external USB3 drive and the ProRes media is on the MBP.

Just replaying to your question, I do like the Synology. It is a nice little server. I am also looking into changing some of the drives I have in it to expand my storage space. I actually have the synology as the house to all my files for all my computers and it backs itself up on a external 3TB usb drive just to keep a little redundancy.

I am trying to figure out why it has been really slow lately. I use to be able to move files to and from it at about 110mb/s over gigabit ethernet and now it is going for 10 to 20% of that speed.

I have to find out what is going on...