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Level 1

18 points

Moving Libraries to external, speed things up?

Hello Everybody,

I just realized all my libraries are on my iMac's internal drive. And researching on here I see arguments for both internal or external.

I'm so used to FCP and FCE old days.

My only complaint with FCX is I get A LOT Of dropped frame messages and beach balls and I'm trying to address that.

Could moving my libraries to an external drive help? From reading on here I can just drag them over and then delete from the internal.

Or doing everything Proxy?

Or is it all abut the graphics card?

Specs:

iMac- Late 2013 model

3.2 ghz

memory - 24gig 1600 DDR3

GeForce GT 755M 1024mb

Thanks,

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 6, 2016 6:12 AM

Best reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

64,394 points

Posted on May 6, 2016 6:50 AM

Are you using managed media? If so, and your libraries are in the internal, that would explain the slowness.

Unless you have an internal SSD, which is very fast, you should keep your libraries in the external - which should be connected via USB3 or Thunderbolt (USB2 is too slow). The internal drive is used by the OS all the time, and so it is not recommended to keep your libraries and media there.

You could, alternatively, keep the libraries in the internal, but use external media, keeping all the media in the external. The simplest solution, though, is to keep everything in the library, and have the library in the external drive.

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24 replies

May 10, 2016 7:06 AM in response to UCanCallMeAl

Just to add a very important thing: you cannot forget BACKUP - that is true for anything you care about, but extremely more so since you make a living out of it.

UCanCallMeAl Author

Level 1

18 points

May 10, 2016 7:20 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

What is a common back up strategy when using FCX?

I back up using Time Machine.

May 10, 2016 7:27 AM in response to UCanCallMeAl

UCanCallMeAl wrote:

....

I think I'm going to order a USB 3.0 drive today from B&H. See some for less than $100.00

some differ very much in speed, e.g. those with integrated hardware encryption = no use for a video working drive....

conc. quality of drives - afaik, there are only a handful of real manufacturers left in the business, most companies are just labelling; and the most profund statistics for HDDs under heavy duty are from the Petabyte Farmers, such as google, amazon, akamai etc... You find statistics online ... ok, not everybody uses his drives 24/356 in a climated datacenter, but ... anyhow 😉

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,992 points

May 10, 2016 7:32 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

TThink we're down to Hitachi, WD, and Seagate.

May 10, 2016 7:34 AM in response to UCanCallMeAl

UCanCallMeAl wrote:

What is a common back up strategy when using FCX?

I back up using Time Machine.

as long as you told TM to backup all drives in use with FCPX ....

plus, on a pro level, create more than a single BU; ... some prefer cloning of drives.

and store BU in a 'different' place - right on top of drive#1, a glas of water kills both, original and backup ...

UCanCallMeAl Author

Level 1

18 points

May 10, 2016 7:37 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Roger that.

Installing my climate control data center as we speak😀

May 10, 2016 7:38 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Tom Wolsky wrote:

TThink we're down to Hitachi, WD, and Seagate.

... less than a handful ... strange, that the huge China fabs don't serve the market ....

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 10, 2016 10:31 AM in response to UCanCallMeAl

Having redundant backups is not the worst idea in the world. Not to whine, but I've had 5 drives (two manufacturers) fail within 2015-16. Three of them were backup drives. 😀

Russ

UCanCallMeAl Author

Level 1

18 points

May 10, 2016 11:57 AM in response to Russ H

What brand Russ?

Moving Libraries to external, speed things up?