can't start FCP because took away external HD.

This is the third time this has happened to me and it's killin me! I get an external hard drive. I edit the project and give it back. I make sure I drag and drop the hard drive to trash/eject. Then I drag and drop the hard drive on the computer I'm networked with that I actually have the hard drive wired to. So it should be off both computers when I physically unplug the hard drive.

So here is the problem. Next time I try to open FCP it says it can't find the last hard drive I just dragged and dropped to the trash? And FCP won't open. What am I doing wrong? The last two times this happened (when I finally got hard drive back) I re-connected the hard drive and dragged and dropped it to the trash/eject on both computers. And then all was well. But I already did this the first time! What am I doing wrong?

If you have set the external drive as your Scratch Drive and you remove this drive, you won't be able to start FCP unless you set another drive as your Scratch Drive first.

If you have removed a drive that was set as Scratch Drive you should get a warning when starting FCP, telling you that it can't find the Scratch Drive. Just set another drive as the Scratch Drive and FCP will open.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Ok. Thank you so much. That must be what I'm doing wrong. I finished editing the project and of course having used that drive "with project on" as the scratch drive but then didn't change the scratch drive back to my internal drive before ejecting... is the problem?

Now, when trying to open up FCP am not allowed. I did get that message saying I had to reset scratch drives and I did to my internal HD but apparently it didn't take.

So now I'm screwed until I get the external drive back? Because now when I try to open up FCP it just says it can't locate the previous drive. It doesn't give me a choice to change scratch drives now.

Please advise.

There can only be one explanation for this: you have chosen to always open the latest project when launching FCP. And as your latest project is on your external drive, FCP is looking for that drive and can't find it.

But the good new is: the choice of opening your latest project when launching FCP is set in your User Preferences. So if you close FCP, trash your FCP prefs and relaunch FCP this could solve your problem.

If you are not familiar with trashing the FCP prefs, this is what you do:

1. Quit FCP.
2. Open your System Drive.
3. Set to Column View.
4. Follow the path: Users > Name > Library > Preferences.
5. In the Preferences Pane look for "com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist". Drag the FCP plist to the Trash.
6. In the same Preference Pane, look for the Final Cut Pro User Data Folder.
7. From inside the Data Folder, drag 'Final Cut Pro (v) Prefs', 'Final Cut Pro Obj Cache' and 'Final Cut Pro Prof Cache', to the Trash.
8. Do NOT empty the Trash.
9. Launch FCP and check all your settings. All FCP settings will have reverted to default. Don't forget to reset your Scratch Disk settings.
10. Once FCP is up and running, empty the Trash.

If this works and you regularly work with external drives that you have to give back, change your User Preferences to NOT opening the latest project when launching FCP.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Ronny you rule! You just made my life so much easier! Thank you so much! peace. ian