314 Chapter 12 NONLINEAR VIDEO ASSISTANTS Be sure you can recognize the difference between drive types and speeds so that you do not slow down the perfor- mance of all the drives on the SCSI chain by adding a slow drive in the wrong place. Have the right SCSI terminators, cables, and adapters. All drives should have unique names and physical labels so they can be moved to any system and still be identified. Understanding drives also means knowing how to resuscitate an ailing one and knowing when to call it quits and get another. The number of drives returned to Avid with nothing wrong is astounding. If you can get a drive back to full health in an hour or two, how does that impact the production schedule compared to waiting for the morning rush delivery? Know the replacement policies of your non-Avid drives. Learn how to use all the Avid drive utilities and make sure you have the latest versions. Don't always load the newest firmware until you know all the ramifications for your configuration. Read the Release Notes if in doubt. Know how to mount, repartition, and, as a last resort, per- form a destructive read/write test. Dealing with very large media files still requires different rules for maintenance. Don't assume you can run any drive utility on a media drive. Media Management All the media on all the drives is under your jurisdiction so knowing what to keep and what to discard is both incredibly important and commonplace. Know how to lock and unlock media files and delete precomputes. Know how long it takes to copy media from one drive to another. Delete media through the Media Tool, Media Manager, or drag entire projects to the trash in their media folders after using MediaMover. Have a regular plan to delete precomputes. Understand the network and how it helps you to move media efficiently. Learn MediaMover and the Unity Administration tools if your facility has them. Become the network expert if you can and research the possibilities. Figure out how to improve network throughput. Reduce the number of drives that must be moved.