Myth or fact: I can turn off my external hard drive while running Avid.
What happens when you turn off your external hard drive while you are working in Avid? Well, it's a risk you do not want to take! When I first began my career as an Avid editor I had many things to learn, but this lesson was the most costly!!! I did not go through the correct procedure of shutting down one of my fire wire external hard drives and my OMFI MediaFiles became corrupt. Unfortunately no one in my local area could recover any of my files. I had to send this hard drive away to Disk Doctors for a full recovery. The information and media was priceless so the $3000.00 cost of recovering the data was well worth it but painful at the same time. I can only recommend one way to turn off or remove external hard drives from your system and that is to quit Avid, shut down windows and only then can you turn off the hard drive. I know you are thinking 'what about the Safely Remove Hardware icon in my task bar'. This is not a sure fire method and can give you a false message that it is now safe. Just remember this rule: Turn on all of your external hard drives before you start your computer and turn them off after your computer is shut down or even in more simple terms if the computer is on do not touch your external hard drives!!!!!!
