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External Hard Drive

Has anyone else been unable to access projects/create events on an external hard drive? I've been trying to do this all morning but FCP X seems unwilling to have the drives show up. For all the features that have been stripped away, one would think this would be easier. What am I missing?

Posted on Jun 21, 2011 10:06 AM

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76 replies

Aug 5, 2011 1:09 PM in response to punchbunny

was advised by apple tech support that i needed an additional external drive (not designated for time-machine back-ups) in order for the final cut pro x to recognise it.


pssttt... a trick for those who do not wish to purchase additional hard drive. I noticed at least twice, that after i had turned my time-machine off... final cut pro saw the drive the following day... weird, eh?


psst... one more trick for those who worked in imovie and had their project corrupted at some point. the result is when u cannot open one no more. well, surprise surprise... while imovie canot open it, final cut pro x can...

Aug 30, 2011 9:59 AM in response to mstriker

Hey guys! I just had the same problem with my external hard drive, a Lacie Rikiki Go, 1Tb, that I also use for my backups.

It normally appearead on FCP X, with the projects and events stored in the external hard drive, then all of a sudden they didn't show up. I repaired the disk, via DiskUtility, twice, but yet didn't work. When all of a sudden, just moments ago as I'm typing this, it worked! I don't think it's a compatibility problem with the hard drive, just how sometimes it is connected.

For example: I use to inserd the SD card in the slot and import the files, but when it comes to delete them from the card, sometimes I can, sometimes not. It depends only on whether I open Finder first, and then navigate aroudn the card, or FCP X or Aperture first, in this case I can't move anything from the card to the Trash.

About the slowing down, it's normal. I have 8GB of RAM and yet it crashes, especially if you work on a project while it's rendering.

So just try to eject and insert the external hard drive several times, even without asking permission first.

Nov 4, 2011 9:26 AM in response to punchbunny

add to the list the folder names that break FCPX:


DCIM

MOVIES

---------



Canonical List of Folder Names That will Break FCPX

Making your events and projects on an external drive

dissapear or go missing

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---

Videos

DCIM

MOVIES

BDMV


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----

Nov 8, 2011 10:04 AM in response to punchbunny

I just bought the Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive. I would like to use it for two purposes: 1) with TimeMachine to backup my Black MacBook's 500 GB internal drive (only 150 GB used), and 2) to serve as a handy USB-powered "flashdrive" at my job to retrieve image files from various computers including Windows-based (primitive) PCs. Should I format the drive in a special way first?

Sep 14, 2012 3:40 PM in response to punchbunny

I had the exact problem and finally solved it by removing the newly created AVCHD folder from the root of my HD. Sadly, before doing that I attempted to move and remove the current version files for an existing project that I thought might be the root of the problem. Now that project is gone. It is this kind of data base driven corruption that makes me prefer a simple file based program.

Mar 14, 2013 12:57 PM in response to punchbunny

For what it's worth, I was having the same issues with my external g-raid drive not showing up in FCP. After reading several comments in this thread, I copied everything in the root of my external drive to a new folder (I just called it "stuff"). I restarted FCP and the drive showed up immediately. I'm not sure which file/folder was causing the problem, but some of what was in the root folder on the g-raid included:


  • AVCHD
  • a .iMovieProject file
  • Todd's Movies
  • a folder created by iMovie with cache, media and project files in it (old stuff from 2004)


Now all of those folders/files are in a /Stuff folder and not in the root and the drive works great within FCP.

External Hard Drive

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