What causes an external disk to not be available in Final Cut Pro X?

April 10, 2015 7:09 PM

One external HDD does not appear listed in Final Cut Pro X's Event Library and Project Library, but a second external HDD does. What other factors prevent a disk from appearing in Final Cut Pro X?

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.9. Macbook Air. OS X 10.9.5.
A 4TB Seagate external HDD does not appear listed in the Event Library and Project Library, but a 2TB Western Digital external HDD does. Any idea why?
The Seagate drive is also a Time Machine backup drive.
Does Final Cut Pro X allow Time Machine disks to be used?
Does it allow 4TB disks?
Does it allow Seagate disks?
What other factors would prevent a disk from appearing in Final Cut Pro X?

posted by kidbritish to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Historically, seagate drives are well known for having stupid compatibility issues and not following standards 100%. Weird firmware? who knows. They have a reputation for being obstinate hunks of junk though.

I don't own any, and i would never buy one.

That said, i think it's probably the time machine thing. Once you mark a drive as a time machine drive and the system "brands" it that way, OSX gets really odd about it. It's not like it just changes the icon and writes some files to it, it blesses it in some weird way.

Even without getting in to other factors, i could see it easily being one of those two(dumb, IMO) things.

I also just generally wouldn't use a backup drive for anything else but backups. Best practices and whatnot.
posted by emptythought at 7:49 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think when a volume is marked as a Time Machine the operating system will not let other software have raw access to it.
posted by nickggully at 9:05 PM on April 10, 2015

Just a guess - but maybe it's formatted as NTFS or something and it needs to be HFS or whatever? You can check in Disk Utility - select the disk and choose 'Get info' from the file menu. You could even compare that side by side with the disk that does work.
posted by derbs at 2:39 AM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: generally wouldn't use a backup drive for anything else but backups.

This. A thousand times, this.
posted by flabdablet at 8:56 AM on April 11, 2015

Response by poster: Never did get it to work but a different drive from the same manufacturer did.

It was probably Time Machine.
posted by kidbritish at 5:53 PM on May 11, 2015