I believe everyone uses a external hd.
buy a firewire 800 external.

yes, i do. no probs.

I use 500gb internal in my Macbook Pro. Lean gig only music and video. Rest is on the HD if needed.

I ask because I use a External Firewire 800 HD (400GB). BTW, I know tis should be in the HELP section and it has before. I just needed to know what other people were using. This is what is happening though. I have been having this on going issue of the files dropping out every once in awhile. It's always different files and sometimes it's an audio file with a visual, not just music videos. What happens is all the sudden the audio and video portion of the file disappears. The time is still there with the virtual platter spinning but I get a pinwheel (MAC). This only happens in VSL and only when I use the external drive. This is my 3rd. external HD. I replaced the others thinking this was the problem but it still persists. I wish I could put it all on my internal drive but there isn't enough room and even if I could it was be full shortly after with building a larger library. I've been having a private discussion with the Serato Team but they're baffled as well. It's almost as if it has a hard time processing once in awhile.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
BTW...
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz

You can upgrade the internal HD to 500gb for like $100...

I thought about that. Any trustworthy sites on where to pick a quality MAC HD drive at?

scratchlive.net

Check that thread out.

This is the one that I bought. It's $89 right now. ZERO probs and easy to install. I did like 5 now.

www.newegg.com

you know...come to think of it, i use to have something like that happening as well.
it happned only a handful of times.

i have no idea what i did to make it go away but i wil start a dicsussion with you here to try to narrow it down.
hopefully, i will remember or we can find something we have in common.
i will post my comp stats after work tonight.


what is your external hd formatted to?

That's great price but I hear it'll void your warranty. I'm looking into it with Apple right now but the iPhone is taking up all of the time with the genius bar. I think I'll trim the fat from my audio section and make just enough room for audio and video files in my notebooks HD. ThaNk God for Time Machine. ;)

Oh, BTW... The problem happened again last night while playing a music vid. Really frustrating!!!

It doesn't void your warranty if you get it installed by an Apple authorized service center. If you do it yourself and run into a problem with your computer then simply put the old one in before you take it into service.

Yeah...Just do it very careful...You can always put the orig back in.

it has something to do with the firewire on some macs. I had a mackbook white 13" inch and got the pinwheel of death a few times. Then one night every video crashed as I was starting the show. I switched the FW cable for a usb cable and ran flawless the rest of the night. I have a unibody macbook pro now, but that mac ran video perfect on usb with only 2 mg of ram!

Thanks for the advice. The drive is really cheap and it's only $95 to have it installed and certified. I'll probably just go that route so I'll never have to switch it back. But get this. I used the history log to track down the exact time of the pinwheel crash and cross referenced it to my Console Log. Here it what I found.

Notice the command line that changes to Refresh Rate:60

I'm assuming that's a refresh rate of 60 seconds and what is causing VSL to crash/refresh.
Any thoughts?
____________________________________________________________________

6/18/09 10:00:09 PM [0x0-0x11011].com.Serato.scratchvideo[221] changed to device 69673088 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:00:09 PM [0x0-0x11011].com.Serato.scratchvideo[221] changed to device 69673088 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:00:09 PM [0x0-0x11011].com.Serato.scratchvideo[221] changed to device -1823297353 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:00:09 PM [0x0-0x11011].com.Serato.scratchvideo[221] changed to device 1 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:04:55 PM [0x0-0x13013].com.Serato.scratchvideo[227] changed to device 69673088 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:04:55 PM [0x0-0x13013].com.Serato.scratchvideo[227] changed to device 69673088 with refresh 0. Using beamsync: 0
6/18/09 10:04:55 PM [0x0-0x13013].com.Serato.scratchvideo[227] changed to device 69681665 with refresh 60. Using beamsync: 1
6/19/09 12:06:37 AM com.apple.loginwindow[23] Shutdown NOW!
6/19/09 12:06:37 AM com.apple.loginwindow[23] System shutdown time has arrived