CRU drive - can i format to full size

[robert.wild]

i think i know what you say when you say

it would be more practical to keep it to the necessary

you mean keep the DCP's just having the trailer of the movie or tv show etc instead of including test bars, countdowns etc, ie pointless crap other than the main thing

[Carsten]

Commercial DCP duplicators often limit the partition size so that just the DCP(s) meant to be copied to that drive fit into the available space.

But that scheme is not targeted towards the cinema servers or ingest process, but towards a specific duplicating process using drive imaging. These systems typically use a master drive holding the smallest possible partition, and the duplicating software will only copy the drive sectors that are occupied by the partition and actual DCP data. Copying and verifying is faster that way, since a sector copy and verify only needs to cover part of the drive size that is actually used. It has nothing to do with the cinema server ingest process. If a set of distribution drives are 1TB disks, and the specific DCP(s) only occupy 189 GByte, the copy and verification only takes 1/5th of the time.

Since you are not targeting mass duplication, you can safely create the largest possible partition, as long as the drive is not larger than 2TB, and you should make sure it uses an MBR partition table. Most systems in the field nowadays also support larger drives and GPT/GUID partition tables, but not all. Partition must use either ext2/3 or NTFS.

- Carsten

[robn]

Hi,

FYI: I use 16 TB CRU drives with 16 TB ext3 filesystems and GPT partitions on Doremi servers without problems.
(so there is no 2 TB limit on these servers)

rob

[IoannisSyrogiannis]

That is to say, those servers may read and ingest from GPT partition tables.
The limit lies with the MBR table.
Out of curiosity, what servers are those? DCP2000, ShowValt, IMS1000? Have you tried to export a DCP from the servers to the CRU as well?

[robn]

I use the CRU drives on Doremi ShowVault. Haven't tried other servers yet, but I expect DCP2000 and IMS3000 to work as well (maybe via USB).

[robn]

Haven't tried exporting to the CRU drives. If I remember correctly the UI export function only worked to USB devices, not to CRU drives BTW.