Why don't my Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format FW drives appear in FCP?!

Question

Level 2

371 points

Why don't my Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format FW drives appear in FCP?!

When I connect my camera via FW and try to import large files, I can't get FCP to display my FW 3TB drive. It's Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted with just the one partition. My internal drive is partitioned into three and they are all shown as drives I can create events on. The 3TB ext is also one of my TimeMachine drives.

I have another FW 2TB drive that is not a TimeMachine drive and also is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and it wont mount/display in FCP X either. They all mount and work fine in Finder.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Wacom tablet, Dell 27" U2713HM,

Posted on Nov 14, 2013 1:56 AM

Reply

Answer 1

wideEyedPupil Author

Level 2

371 points

Nov 14, 2013 2:17 AM in response to wideEyedPupil

I have a 2.5" USB/eSATA 6G HD connected with USB and it presents itself in FCP X so why not my main 3.5" External Drives?!

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 14, 2013 2:17 AM in response to wideEyedPupil

1) It is not a good idea to use the same drive that holds Time Machine backups with FCP X.

2) Usually, when a drive does not appear in FCP X as a possible destination for events and projects, it is because FCP X is treating the drive as a camera drive. This happens if the drive has at the root level some folders with names that typically appear in camera drives: Private, DCIM, Video, etc. If you have that content at the root of your drive, put it inside a folder and it should now work.

If you need more assistance, please post a screenshot showing the entire contents at the root of the drive.

Reply

Answer 3

wideEyedPupil Author

Level 2

371 points

Nov 20, 2013 2:39 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Okay I got back another drive which is exFAT format and FCP doesn't see it either. It doesn't have any of those kinds of folder names. All unquie names not generic.

Doesn't it see it, like it didn't even formated as HFS+

Directory Contents:

862155	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	5 May 2013	$RECYCLE.BIN/
851970	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	5 May 2013	Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save/
2208800	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	10 Aug 14:51	BP Launch MELB/
3538946	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	15 Jul 13:22	BZE_BuildingsPlan/
3111732	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	17 Aug 17:41	FOUND.000/
44	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	24 Apr 2013	Final Cut Events/
2506231	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	20 Apr 2013	Final Cut Projects/
27	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	24 Feb 2013	Media Express Captures/
42	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	21 May 2013	e_Downloads/
43	drwxrwxrwx	1	aleith1	staff	131072	21 May 2013	iMovie Events.localized/
935777	-rwxrwxrwx@	1	aleith1	staff	2065077806	24 Mar 2012	thrive.mp4

Reply

Answer 4

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,004 points

Nov 20, 2013 5:11 AM in response to wideEyedPupil

Not following this. If it's ExFAT it's not Mac OS extended.

Reply

Answer 5

Nov 20, 2013 8:08 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Yeah, not sure what the point is either. However, he said above that he has a couple of external FW drives that ARE formatted HFS+ extended but they don't show up in FCPX.

Reply

Answer 6

kohanmike

Level 2

203 points

Nov 20, 2013 11:19 PM in response to Alan Cook2

I thought FCPX does not allow a drive that is used with Time Machine. Personally, I would never use a backup drive as a working drive, to me they are mutually exclusive.

I don't use Time Machine, but I have a backup drive for my internal drive that is the exact same capacity, I also have backup drives the exact same capacity for each of my external drives. I keep all my backup drives offline and stored away safely until I do my daily backups.

As I think about it, I could keep an additional drive hooked up and use Time Machine as another layer of backup.

Reply

Answer 7

wideEyedPupil Author

Level 2

371 points

Nov 21, 2013 8:50 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

This is a list of another drive which is not Time Machine drive. I have 4 external drives, 2 are TM drives one FW and the other a 2.5" USB drive for second weekly/monthly backups.

As far as comments about TM and FCP X, don't assume everyone works the same way! My main internal drive has three partitions and only two of them get backedup by TM. The third parition is for large media I don't care to backup, iTunes etc etc.

The two TM drives are obviously HSF+ while the other two drives are exFAT for cross platform file sharing ease.

The only drive which FCP cares to see is the 2.5" USB HSF+ secondary TM drive (yeah the least appropriate of all four ext drives!)

Sometimes I ingest footage with FCP X to use in other applications or just to compress and send elsewhere so a) don care if it's on my TM drive for a week before I remove it and b) don't wish to back it up.

Shall I provide dir listings for all drives, does it help any?

This is not an issue of FCP X thinking my drives are cameras, I think. They certainly don't appear as camera's in the Camera import window ;-)

Reply