FireWire Drives Can Slow Your System Down

Posted on by Larry

[This article was first published in the September, 2010, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe.]

 

David Darrow asks:

I have a Mac G5, non-Intel, using FCP 5.0.4 and I have 6 FireWire drives all daisy-chained to/through each other to one FireWire port on the tower.

 

Until two days ago, I have not had issues, but suddenly I am running into a recurring problem where outputting or rendering, it just stops and goes ‘beach ball” on me. I then have to crash FCP to get out of it.

 

I have never had issues with rendering with this system, other than slowness as compared to newer systems.

 

The only new situation is have added a dual enclosure that has FireWire 800 added to the chain… But even when I tun that drive off, isolating older drives in the chain which I have used for rendering doesn’t help.

Larry replies: David, thanks for writing.

Adding too many FireWire devices can cause problems. Here are some things to think about:

 


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