Why does Vegas Pro need to access all your hard drives?

bitman wrote on 7/6/2024, 2:17 PM

I have an issue that Vegas pro seems to need to access my sleeping hard drive (or both hard drives), before it will accept and execute UI commands or edits when minimizing to maximizing Vegas - going back to Vegas (or get out and out and back in to look something up, without closing Vegas; so basically Vegas hangs until they wake up...

The thing is, I have everything on SSD, C-drive and my separate work drive. I do have some older HD drives, but nothing on my project, nor source clips are on the HD drive.

I have my HD drives configured to power down to sleep after 2 minutes idle (as I do not need them most of the time, and to keep the power consumption down, and most important to silence them, but when I get back into Vegas, it is usually beyond the two minutes, and Vegas just hangs until the HD drives are powered up again, this is very annoying.

The only workaround is to set the HD idle timer to half an hour or so, and the chances are less likely they go into sleep, but this means I always hear my HD drivers while using Vegas.

Is there a reason Vegas needs the hard drives where nothing that I know off is installed or needs to be used by Vegas?

Does anyone have the same issue? And better still, anyone knows a explanation/solution/setting I may have overlooked?

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 7/6/2024, 2:41 PM

I have never noticed the problem.

I create a power profile to never let any hard drive spin down.
I power them off when I don't want them running. See link.

Robert Johnston wrote on 7/6/2024, 3:43 PM

@bitman

I just thought of this and haven't tried it. What if you close the Explorer tab in Vegas?

DMT3 wrote on 7/6/2024, 4:26 PM

I have noticed it, but the only drive I have that times out is an external one. It is irritating sometimes to have to wait for it to spin up, but it is not a showstopper in my case.

Gid wrote on 7/6/2024, 5:36 PM

@bitman I have a hard drive that goes to sleep, I've told windows not to turn it off but I think it has a built in 'something'

I used to have a lot of files on there that weren't in folders & some that were, when Vegas looked at that drive it had to look at all those loose files, I moved the loose files into a folder of their own & now although Vegas still wakes up that drive it's a lot faster than it was.

I think it's a bit like this, opening up this drive & seeing a bunch of files is no problem, but if I open one of the files it can take a long time to load the contents.

(The one on the vid is an M.2 drive, the one I'm talking about is 8 Tera which is an 8TB USB external drive, that takes quite a while to load some of the file's contents & I didn't open that because those are FMEO 😉)

PS. It's normally going to fxs that wakes that drive up, esp. the Boris ones.

Robert Johnston wrote on 7/6/2024, 6:06 PM

@bitman Besides closing the Explorer tab, you may also need to close the Project Media tab. I now know that if the Explorer tab is closed and the Project Media tab is closed, my external hard drives aren't awakened when giving focus back to Vegas. The hard drives sleep after 2 minutes. As soon as I turned on the Project Media tab -- even with no media in it -- my external hard drives turned on, although no files were read.

bitman wrote on 7/7/2024, 2:35 AM

Thanks all,

@john_dennis and elegant HW solution!

@Robert Johnston thanks, good thinking, have not thought about it, the Vegas explorer tab and project media tab, that may just work, however I kind of need the Vegas explorer tab to often anyway to really close it.

I have decided to go for a more drastic solution and disable both my HDD archive drives in the windows device manager.

It required a restart of windows, I can live with that.

I did had an unpleased surprise that after the restart upon opening my last project, my Boris Continuum said I was unlicensed, and I had to type in my license, go figure. It is all OK now, but why would Boris think I am unlicensed when disabling two hard drives, Boris is not even installed on them!

A Vegas feature request would be to add the possibility to exclude drives from access...

gorGaram wrote on 7/7/2024, 5:01 AM

I have never noticed the problem.

I create a power profile to never let any hard drive spin down.

I power them off when I don't want them running. See link.

IMHO
I agree. There is no need to demand from Vegas what it should not do. I do not recall in other video editors that there was such an opportunity somewhere. If the user decides to disconnect the disks (put him to sleep), he should be prepared for the fact that access to them will take longer.

Robert Johnston wrote on 7/7/2024, 11:03 AM

@bitman

You can always open up the Explorer and Project Media tabs with an Alt-1 and an Alt-5. Or have a window layout saved and use a shortcut for that. Of course, you'll need to wait for the hard drives to spin up, but that doesn't take too long.

BTW, setting 2 minute sleep for my drives has really cut down on the heat I get from the computer. In this 108 degree weather, I need all the cool there is.

Robert Johnston wrote on 7/7/2024, 11:22 AM

@bitman

I've been watching my drives while using Vegas. It may be that it is only the Explorer tab that causes the drives to spin up when focus returns. Also, the Windows O/S or other running background apps will occasionally poke a sleeping drive. I used to use the Safely Remove Hardware to eject a hard drive, and when the computer is restarted the next day, the drives will be back awake. Then I can eject them again if I want.

john_dennis wrote on 7/7/2024, 11:38 AM

@Robert Johnston

My 16 TB Ultrastar hard drive:

Power Draw

6.5 W (Active) (22.18 btu/hr)
5.6 W (Idle) (19.1 btu/hr)
0.35 W (Standby) (1.2 btu/hr)

The average human throws off about 330 btu/hr. So, don't invite your friends over when your air conditioner(s) is(are) struggling. My daughter and her large dog are house-sitting for a friend so she's not in our house this weekend. I can feel the difference already. She can, too. They have a pool.

I cleaned the condenser coils on my two air conditioners yesterday afternoon. I won two ways by doing that at the hottest time of the day.

I didn't pay peak rates while the units were powered down.
They are ever so slightly more efficient today.

bitman wrote on 7/8/2024, 2:50 AM

@Robert Johnston 108 degree, that is 42 Celsius, we had, and still have a terrible cold and wet spring in NW Europe, and summer is now also still to cold for Belgium this time of year, with 17 degrees Celsius (62 F) only.

To come back to the unwanted disk startup, I re-added the disabled disks, and it seems that Vegas does not start the sleeping disks anymore when giving focus back to Vegas. A new Vegas start up (e.g. starting a second Vegas) does wake the sleeping disks, which I can understand as it may need to populate the explorer once.

I just wonder if Boris FX had something to do with it (as I explained a bit higher up this post, after the disconnect via the device manager and restart, I had to give in my Boris license key). After enabling the disks again, I did not had to give in the Boris license again. Strange indeed.