Hello,
As Im completely new to this forum, so here's my 1st question:
I'm working with FCP 6.0.6, and I'm quite new to FCP. I understand that, ideally, source and destination folders should be on separate hard drives, connected with Firewire; I suppose that has to do with speed and speed control.
I have two external hard drives, both Firewire 800/400/USB2; but I only have 1 FW800 port on my mac , and several FW400 and USB2 ports (my mac is an 4x2,5GGHz PowerPC G5 with 1,5 Gb DDR SD2 Ram, running on MacOS X 10.4.11).
My question: What is the best solution in my case:
-keep source and destination file on 2 separate drives, connected both to 1 port FW800 (daisy chain connected, if possible- slower speed if both used together?)
-keep source and destination file on 2 separate drives, 1 connected to FW800 and 1 to FW400 (or USB?), in this case which one should I connect to the FW800: source or destination?
-Put source qad destination folder on 1 drive; connected with FW800?
Thanks for your time,
Geert

What exactly do you mean by "destination files"? No need to keep them on separate drives, just not on the system drive, that's all. All media should be on you're one scratch drive, which is not your system drive, nothing else. Stay away from USB for video. A Power PC is super old, eh? You should user the second internal drive for your scratch drive. Better performance than FW800. Be sure all drives are 7200rpm.

Maybe I'm not very clear, or I did not use the right terminology, so I will try to explain what I mean:
As I understand it, source files are the media that I import in FCP, stored on a harddisk (mov's);
Destination files are the project files, renders, exports etc...

So I can use 1 drive -not the system drive- for all these, right?

Yes, you can put all of that on one drive, long as it's not the system drive, correct.

Larry Jordan started teaching a media management system for legacy FCP using two drives, as he told me, to avoid his perceived possible confusion of newbies. Put files FCP ingests itself on one drive, all project, photo, audio, graphic, etc, files on another. The only reason was to avoid confusion.

I've found over and over it didn't avoid the confusion and lots of folks have twisted it into all sorts of wacky ideas.

So, you have ONE "media drive" that is NOT your system drive.
It should be either internal or FW800, either way should be 7200rpm.
Your media will be stored in two places:

1- Media FCP ingests via Log & Capture or Log & Transfer. That always lives in your Capture Scratch folder. Create a folder on your Media Drives called "Final Cut Pro Documents", point FCP's scratch disk settings (all of them) to that folder. That's a big folder and will be huge to back up due to the massive size of video files.

2- All other files related to a post-production project will go into what we all a "Project" folder. On the Media Drive, make a folder called "Projects". Inside that you will make a sub-folder for each project you have to work on, which will be the same name as your FCP project file. Make folders in there called Photos, Graphics, SFX, Music, whatever you need to stay logically organized. Your FCP project file and everything goes in there. This will be small and easy to back up to a DVD or something.

That's about it. Here's a link to my old monthly FCP column in Event DV where I talk about legacy FCP media management and workflow.
http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/Editorial/Tutorials/Cut-Lines-Editing-Workflow-in-Final-Cut-Pro-56036.htm

I kept all Project related files on one drive, as I work on different computers (not networked).

Don't think too much about having only one FireWire port. You can daisy chain your drives.

Each drive you daisy chain means more data sharing the same limited bandwidth, and performance may degrade.

Thanks for the answers, sorry to respond so late...
Concerning the daisy chain, I have another question:


I am trying to daisy chain 2 identical lacie 1T ext. hard drives with firewire 800 to 1 port on the mac, running with OSX. (1 is formatted FAT32 and 1 is formatted for mac, HFS+). I connected everything as it should be (first drive to the mac, 2nd drive to the first one, both have separate power supplies), but when I switch everything on (first drive bfirst, etc...), I can see on my desktop only the first drive (connected directly to my mac) but not the 2nd one. The blue light on the drive is burning normal, but it is flashing on the 2nd...

I never did this before, What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

Does it give off clicking sounds? Do you hear it spin erratically?

no clicking sounds ; no erratic moves.
The drive is running smoothly...
(PS when I attach it directly to the mac without daisy chaining, it works perfectly...)

What is the purpose of the FAT 32 drive?

Yes, that combo on one port can be flukey.

The FAT32 was used on a pc and/or linux computer, so I did not reformat it completely because I want to use the data on it.
Yhe HFS+ is a completely empty drive, ready for use...
Is that what is causing the problems, because in that case, I will backup and reformat to HFS+;
?

Macs read FAT 32 just fine. They can sometimes write to them, also. Final Cut Pro and some other apps simply can't write to them, even if the OS can. Daisy chaining them together is a flip of the coin. Back up, reformat, restore.

OK, I'll try that.
If it still does not work, you'll hear it...
If it is, thanks for the tip.
Thanks anyhow anyway,
Geert