Always Unmount FireWire Drives Before Shutdown

 

I've been seeing a lot complaints on the list that FireWire drives are malfunctioning and people are losing their media. You should know that Apple is very cautionary about recommending them. Here's what they say in the FCP 5 manual:

 

"While not recommended for all systems, FireWire disk drives can be effectively used to capture and edit projects using low data rate video clips, such as those captured using the DV codec.

 

However, most FireWire disk drives lack the performance of internal Ultra ATA disk drives, or of internal or external SCSI disk drives. For example, a FireWire disk drive may not be able to support real-time playback with as many simultaneous audio

and video tracks as an internal Ultra ATA disk drive can. This can also affect the number of simultaneous real-time effects that can be played back."

 

Apple appears to be cautionary about using FireWire drives these days. Which is a bit more positive in the days when they were not recommended at all. Here are some bullet points about FireWire drives from the manual as well.

 

Important Information About FireWire Drives

• FireWire disk drives are not recommended for capturing high data rate material such as uncompressed standard definition or high definition video. (KM Note: Certain FireWire 800 drives are capable of playing back certain flavors of SD and HD, such as 8 bit uncompressed and DVCPro HD files.)

• Certain DV camcorders cannot be connected to a computer while a FireWire disk drive is connected simultaneously. In many cases, you can improve performance by installing a separate FireWire PCI card to connect your FireWire drive. (KM Note: the cheaper the camcorder, the more likely this will occur. Some of them are operating at slower speeds, dragging down drive performance. See below.)

• You may be able to improve performance by reducing the real-time video playback data rate and the number of real-time audio tracks in the General tab of the User Preferences window.

• You should never disconnect a FireWire disk drive prior to unmounting it from the desktop.

 

Techs Agree on Unmounting HDs Prior to Shut Down

How many editors actually unmount prior to shut down? I would wager a very small number of us are mindful of drive care and maintenance at all. Cutters, we are not only artists, we are also technicians. You have to wear both hats on this job. If you don't....you'll someday be very sorry.

 

As Alberto Palacios (our resident Mac expert and owner of "The Tao of Mac") has repeatedly said, "ALWAYS Unmount FireWire drives before shutting down". This is one of the root causes for cutters losing their media on external FireWire drives (Probably THE #1 cause). This is also tech tip I learned in Avid Bootcamp's "Troubleshooting" class some years ago, so I whole-heartedly agree with Alberto (Avid has a superior training program for NLE techs: highly recommended). Sure, they were 4GB "sleds", but the same principles still apply in my book. Alsoft is making a killing on Disk Warrior because we are not diligent enough to unmount. If you don't unmount, it's possible to completely fry the internal directory of the drive.

 

How To Unmount your Drives Safely

It's easy to unmount your drives prior to shutting down. There are a few ways:

 

•Click and drag your drive(s) into the Trash (yes, really!)

•Open Disk Utility, select the drive, then click the Eject Button

•Control + click on the drive and choose Eject "Name of Disk" from the pop up menu

•Select the drive and in the Finder go to File>Eject "Name of Disk"

 

The Case For Unmounting Prior to Shutdown

Many have found the Disk Warrior can help you survive a corrupt directory. True, DW will usually fix the problems caused by not unmounting, but not always! So you cannot always count on DW.

 

It's hard to thrash internal drives, so that's why we recommend that you avoid external drives if at all possible (recall that you do have an extra SATA bay inside your G5). If you MUST use external FireWire drives, be fastidious in your care of them. Recall that external FireWire drives are not officially supported by Final Cut Pro, so that is warning enough to be careful with these babies.

 

The bottom line? You must take great care when working with FireWire drives, no matter the brand or if they are FW400 or FW800. My rules are to avoid daisy-chaining (a DV Cam might only be FW200! Slowing down your entire chain), run Disk Warrior frequently, erase the drives and reformat them as often as you can (between major projects), don't move them around too much and put them in a cool, well-ventilated and dry area. The only time I lost a drive was when I transported it in an airplane's overhead bin cross-country.

 

And ALWAYS, ALWAYS ALWAYS Unmount those drives EVERY time prior to shut down. I've NEVER lost a drive do to B-Tree corruption which is the main thing that happens if you do not unmount. Sure, you can be humming along for months at a time and not be thinking about a failure with your "precious" drives - and that's just when it will bite you. YES, it takes 5 extra seconds to unmount your drives. Don't be lazy. Just do it.