I Bought an external hard drive for my emac & FCE....help! at DVinfo.net

Dennis Parker · May 31st, 2005, 10:50 AM

I have the superdrive 80g emac and was running out of internal Hard drive space. I am down to 25g so I went out this weekend and bought a WD 160g external hard drive.

I have photoshop and final cut express on my emac and that was were the majority of my internal hard drive space was going to.

My question's are:

What do I need to do to my emac to specify that I want the new external hard drive to be the "home" for anymore video footage that I dump into it for Final Cut Express?

What do I need to do/create in the external hard drive so it will accept the video footage?

How can I move the video currently in my internal hard drive to the external harddrive to open up space?

Any suggestions or links to threads covering these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Boyd Ostroff · May 31st, 2005, 01:07 PM

Hi Dennis. The good news is you don't have to do anything to your Mac, just plug the drive in and it should mount. Use the Disk Utility program to reformat the drive, just in case it has been correctly setup for the Mac by the manufacturer; it only takes a few seconds. In FCP 4.5 you would go to the FCP menu > System Settings > Scratch Disks.... or in FCP 3 you would choose FCP menu > Preferences > Scratch Disks... it should be similar in FCE. Click the "Set..." button and choose your external drive. Click OK. Now you're all set and capture/render files will go on the external drive.

But be sure the drive is always up and running before starting FCE. I don't know how it behaves, but FCP 3 would automatically switch the scratch disk to your documents folder on the startup drive if it couldn't find the external, and it wouldn't even warn you. This can cause your files to be split between the two drives, which can be a problem. FCP 4.5 at least asks you to pick a disk if it can't find the last one you used.

As far as moving files, locate the existing folder hierarchies which will probably be in your documents folder unless you put them elsewhere. After you've setup the external drive as described above, drag all your old project files into the FCE Documents folder on your new external drive using the finder. Now the trick will be to make sure that FCP is using the new copies of these files. IIRC, you can force this to happen by dragging the old files to the trash (without emptying). This should cause FCE to say your files are offline, at which point you can browse to find the new copies on the external drive.

Again, I haven't used FCE, just FCP, so the specifics could be a little different. If possible, make another backup copy of your files somewhere before throwing anything away! FCP has a "media manager," not sure if FCE has that feature. I don't generally use it in FCP anyway because it confuses me and I'm afraid I mess something up. I prefer to do simple Finder copies of everything.

Dennis Parker · June 1st, 2005, 03:20 AM

Thanks Boyd for the how to!!!

:)

May 31st, 2005, 10:50 AM	#1
Dennis Parker Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Jacksonville, Florida Posts: 58	I Bought an external hard drive for my emac & FCE....help! I have the superdrive 80g emac and was running out of internal Hard drive space. I am down to 25g so I went out this weekend and bought a WD 160g external hard drive. I have photoshop and final cut express on my emac and that was were the majority of my internal hard drive space was going to. My question's are: What do I need to do to my emac to specify that I want the new external hard drive to be the "home" for anymore video footage that I dump into it for Final Cut Express? What do I need to do/create in the external hard drive so it will accept the video footage? How can I move the video currently in my internal hard drive to the external harddrive to open up space? Any suggestions or links to threads covering these issues would be greatly appreciated!

May 31st, 2005, 01:07 PM	#2
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,801	Hi Dennis. The good news is you don't have to do anything to your Mac, just plug the drive in and it should mount. Use the Disk Utility program to reformat the drive, just in case it has been correctly setup for the Mac by the manufacturer; it only takes a few seconds. In FCP 4.5 you would go to the FCP menu > System Settings > Scratch Disks.... or in FCP 3 you would choose FCP menu > Preferences > Scratch Disks... it should be similar in FCE. Click the "Set..." button and choose your external drive. Click OK. Now you're all set and capture/render files will go on the external drive. But be sure the drive is always up and running before starting FCE. I don't know how it behaves, but FCP 3 would automatically switch the scratch disk to your documents folder on the startup drive if it couldn't find the external, and it wouldn't even warn you. This can cause your files to be split between the two drives, which can be a problem. FCP 4.5 at least asks you to pick a disk if it can't find the last one you used. As far as moving files, locate the existing folder hierarchies which will probably be in your documents folder unless you put them elsewhere. After you've setup the external drive as described above, drag all your old project files into the FCE Documents folder on your new external drive using the finder. Now the trick will be to make sure that FCP is using the new copies of these files. IIRC, you can force this to happen by dragging the old files to the trash (without emptying). This should cause FCE to say your files are offline, at which point you can browse to find the new copies on the external drive. Again, I haven't used FCE, just FCP, so the specifics could be a little different. If possible, make another backup copy of your files somewhere before throwing anything away! FCP has a "media manager," not sure if FCE has that feature. I don't generally use it in FCP anyway because it confuses me and I'm afraid I mess something up. I prefer to do simple Finder copies of everything.

June 1st, 2005, 03:20 AM	#3
Dennis Parker Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Jacksonville, Florida Posts: 58	Thanks Boyd for the how to!!! :)