External Hard Drive

I don't have any folders on the drive called "VIDEOS", I have folders with names like Project Videos. But nothing with just Videos.

My 2GB external which is formatted, OSX-J; for some reason decided to show up(And this drive has all my TimeMachine backups) now but the drive where I want to store my files isn't but its formatted in NTFS. So I don't think it has to do with TM.

Here's the video to prove it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIKICXumurw

My external drive did not showed in FCP-X and I didn't had a folder called "Videos". But I had one called "BDMV" on the root directory wich was an AVCD camera archive. Solution: I simply moved the entire camera archive folder and it's content to a sub folder on that same external drive. Now my external drive is visible in FCP-X. I think FCP-X doesn't like the folders that contain source clips (videos or camera archive or any other files usable by FCP-X) in the root directory... Move them to sub directories and it should solve your problems. I read somewhere that apple did not recommended to have you source clip on the same drive as the project but they didn't explained why. I think it's the reason for our problems.

Had some thing similar.... backed up my external drive and started to delete things... got to the point where the only 2 things left were a P2 card image and an Aperture library and Vault. The second that I deleted the P2 card image the drive showed up in FCPx.

EDIT: Now my Home Drive has disappeared and whenever I try and start a new project I get an error "can't allocate memory" World Class Software Apple!

Why can't Apple document this sort of thing? what ARE the rules?

Message was edited by: hvxuser

The question is not: what are the rules, the question is: WHY this silly rules?

I guess so but at least if we knew what we could and couldn't do then I wouldn't have spent the last few hours trying to work yet having achieved diddly squat. I'm so pee'd off at Apple as its just so amateurish 😟

I have a solution that definitely absolutely totally works 100%. I was having the same problem as all of you have been having. 2TB Firewire 800 drive, FCPX would sometimes recognize it, sometimes it wouldn't (most of the time it wouldn't). I could open project files from the Finder, but nothing would happen or it would endlessly search for the events on the external drive to no avail. My 1 TB USB 2.0 drive works perfectly and has TM on it (but not for this computer).

I DO have time machine on the 2 TB drive. I tried turning Time Machine off, un-mapping the drive as a designated TM drive, rebooted afterwards (and every combination of those steps). The problem is was that I want to continue using this drive as my TM drive (until I have one specifically and solely for that) as well as the drive to store my current video projects.

Here's what I did (this will probably only help those who's drive does or even DID have a time machine backup(s)). Oh, and pardon the verbosity, I'm trying to help the n00bs as well as the pros:

1. Un-designate your drive as a time machine drive by:
   1. Clicking the time machine drive icon thingy in the top Apple bar.
   2. Choose "Open Time Machine Preferences...".
   3. Press the "Select Disk" button.
   4. Choose "None"
   5. Click "Stop Backing Up"
2. Turn off Time Machine by:
   1. Clicking the time machine drive icon thingy in the top Apple bar.
   2. Choose "Open Time Machine Preferences...".
   3. Click the slider to OFF.
3. Rename the "Backups.backupdb" folder using the Terminal (you must do it this way and not from the GUI from what I can tell):
   1. Use spotlight (command+spacebar) and search for Terminal. Open app.
   2. In the command line type: cd /Volumes/
   3. Type: ls -al

      This will list all your connected drives. If your drive's name is "Donald Duck", for example, you would now type the command in step 4.

   4. Type: cd Donald\ Duck/

      NOTE: You must 'escape' spaces with a backslash. So, if your disk's name is "FCPX Will Be Great Someday", you would type: "FCPX\ Will\ Be\ Great\ Someday". Get it?

   5. Type: sudo mv Backups.backupdb Backups.backupdbb

      Type your administrative password when it prompts you

   6. Type: exit
   7. Quit the Terminal app.
4. Eject your drive
5. Reboot computer
6. Once rebooted, and you drive is on and mounted, open FCPX.
7. Voila! (hopefully)

To reverse what you did (clarification: you essentially 'removed' Time Machine from that drive, for all intents and purposes), you just pretty much have to reverse your steps:

1. Start at Step 3

   Work your way through this step, but once you get to step 3.5, use the following command:

   1. sudo mv Backups.backupdbb Backups.backupdb
2. Now, Step 2

   Work your way through this step, but once you get to 2.3, turn TM ON (not OFF)

3. Finally, back to Step 1

   Work your way through this step, but once you get to 3.4, choose your actual drive and press "Use for Backup"

Hope that helps someone. I really hope that Apple's next update will allow drives with TM backups on them to be used as Event/Project drives for FCPX.

I should probably write an AppleScript to do all these steps for me. If I do, I'll be happy to share it with y'all.

Kyle, you´re great! Thank you for this solution.

Hey Kyle,

Awesome! You get 5 stars from me for effort!

Unfortunately this solution doesn't help me and I suspect there's something more going on here than TimeMachine. Some folks seem to solve the problem by deleting folders etc that have "offending" content like video libs etc. In my case I just want to use my Drobo (that doesn't have a TimeMachine store) and I'm not about to experiment to find the offending folder in over 6TB of data.

The burden for providing the "real" solution to this problem is on Apple. My guess is that they will address this at some point but until they do I can't use FCPX. I don't have the storage on any of my local machines for my video libs and my expectations for a fix that make moving/importing things later are very low.

I hope your workaround helps others but for me I'm waiting for Apple to explain things better before I commit to FCPX.

Thanks for an awesome effort to help us!!!

Apple???

Steve

Mac-walter, you got it for me !

I had a folder called "VIDEO" in the root directory of the external drive, I renamed it "CINEMA" and instantly the drive got recognized by FCPX for importation.

Thanks for posting this easy-to-implement but hard-to-find solution.

Kyle great post, but like Steven said your method doesnt work, as I have demonstrated in my video that the TM is a bug and effects only a handful of users. I have TM on my 2TB external and FCPX sees the drive just fine.

My problem is why cant FCPX see NTFS drives? or more importantly, why did mine stop seeing it after the first day? When the first install of FCPX, it saw the NTFS drive and I started a project as a test to get used to all the features. Then the next day after a reboot, it stopped seeing it.

I haven't tried all the steps and I'm weary of doing all those steps for naught. When I first installed FCPX I could see my external go flex 2 TB hard drive. I use it for TM for my mac book and wifes macbook. After updating FCPX I could not longer see the drive.

As others have said there is nothing that is a sure thing. Deleting "video" files, stopping/umounting TM drives and files.

I'm very disappointed in apple and because they have made no statements about it, acknowledged it's a problem we have to wait to see if and when they will fix. I would like to return this crappy and poorly tested software.

Stigmon,

Don't worry too much about the steps--it looks like a lot of work/effort because of the way its written out. It honestly only takes, maybe, a minute to a minute and a half to complete, if that. It's definitely worth a shot... it might be weeks or months before Apple releases an update. It's completely reversible and I include those instructions.

It's certainly not a solution to the problem, but, it's at least workaround we (those that are using our time machine drive(s) as an events/project disk) can use until Apple fixes this thing for good. Heck, it might not even be fixed in the next version.

Maybe it's just me, but I never expected FCPX to work that well when it came out. I never planned on using it as my primary editing software because it is a x.0 release. No matter what software you use and how much you pay for it, they're always pretty terrible. It's a completely re-written application and these things take time to perfect.

I'm a developer on the side, and by hobby, and I know how much work they put into this software and also know how, essentially, impossible it is to test every single potential situation. From a consumer standpoint, I'm a little let down that it's not up to Apple's typical above-average quality out of the gate. As a reasonable person, I'm pretty pleased, overall, I think. I'm not calling you unreasonable, so please don't read it that way.

Think about it this way... if it was perfect in X.0, you wouldn't have anything else to look forward to :-).

I am extremely disappointed as well. I have been using my external WD 2TB drive in iMovie'11 without a single problem. After installing FCPX and importing three new folders of clips, external drive appeared in the event library but not for long. It disappeared the next day and whatever I tried I could not reconnect it. Yes, I use my external drive as a time machine and have no intention of buying an additional drive as a solution as per someone's suggestion here, nor to fuss with renaming my back-up files. There was no warning from Apple at the time of the purchase about that.

While I would not mind temporarily turning TM auto-back-up off, which I tried but it did not work. I also spent 30mins on the phone with Apple support. Was told to trash the soft and to reinstall it, also delete FCPX preference file in the Library. Tried two times, after emptying the trash and restarting my iMac i7 and still nothing...

I want my money back plus a progressive compensation for every day I am going to waste looking for a solution. If no solution is found quick, I am going to rate this product with one star.

So disappointed with Apple. A megaphone huge BOOOOOO at them.

try repairing the permissions on the drive, I've found this helps on my 2TB drive as it keeps appearing and disappearing randomly.