How to properly set up and use a external G Drive.

[bfleming76]

I am currently operating FCP 7 and using my Lacie rugged 500 gig 7200 rpm as scratch disk. My drive is getting full and I got a new 2 terabyte G drive. What is the proper way to set it up? Should I use Raid? I want to be able to back up as well as be efficient to edit. Any help will be appreciated.

Macbook Pro
4 gigs of ram
Lacie Rugged
G Drive 2 terabyte external
FCP 7
CS5 suite

[rumplestiltskin]

Are you suggesting combining the 500GB and 2TB drives in some manner? If so, forget it.

[Cornucopia]

If you have only 1 new G drive, you CAN'T use RAID (requires 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc), so forget about that.

Similarly, it's kind of half-assed to backup to the SAME drive. If you lose data on the drive, it's a good chance the WHOLE drive is messed up - you want to backup to another medium (and hopefully keep it in another location). Similarly you wouldn't archive old projects to the same drive.

The idea behind backing up is in case of emergencies - can you get back all your data reasonably quickly? For that, you need:
1. Good habits
2. Backup media that are at least as LARGE as the original media (this can include disk-spanning, however)
3. SEPARATE media (see above)
4. An appropriate Backup application/routine/script for your needs (this varies greatly)

Is there no way to get 2 G drives?

Scott

[aedipuss]

if you wanted raid you needed to purchase the g-raid, not g-drive.

[bfleming76]

No, not combining the drives. The lacie is what I am using now. It works great to edit off the drive. So maybe my best bet is to archive to the G and keep my current projects on The Lacie. Thanks for the responses. Glad this site is here to help me get info. I am still green in the video world, but I always 2-3 projects going at this point. Learning on the fly thanks to y'all.