I'm working at a client site as an editor and one of the producers asked me today about archiving some of their completed projects to clear space from their Unity.  

One thing he also asked me was - what are the potential dangers of Un-Mirroring workspaces that contain projects that they are not ready to archive to FW backups, but they are not currently using or accessing?  

In other words, he wants to save the space taken up by the mirror, but is not ready to fully archive the media to a backup disc yet.  I couldn't think of any inherent dangers, but thought it would be best to pose the question here first before suggesting that it was okay.  

Thanks for any advice.

Buttom line: There is no danger until a drive in that allocation fails, when that happen i guess you can just say "ops... sorry".

If you guys dont have the option to increase space on your Unity, i would HIGHLY recommend backing it up to a FireWire Drive before un-mirroring/syncronizing the partition.

But again, thats my 2-cent on this matter. Good Luck

Old junk projects are the number one offender of High Folder counts on a Unity.

The danger here is losing these projects because they are too damn lazy right now to back them up.

Just bloody back up and remove the things.

JDS

PS,  how about NOW.

I like to answer the question this way. Unmirrored WSs should only be for files that you are prepared to loose at any time. It helps drive home the point.

S

I have been asked the same question several times by editors, project managers, financial managers, etc... I have told them that I will not un-mirror any media, never ever... the risk is just too big. It is the same as asking to put a bomb with a timer around your waste and setting the timer without knowing how long it will take. Taking into account todays prices on external hard drives makes it even more ridiculous.

Then un-mirroring itself is without risk. There is a chance though that the unity will tell you it was not able to un-mirror all files. I had that twice. In that case you have no choice but to move in windows or consolidate in avid all the media files from the workspace to another workspace or external drive anyway.

I have a render workspace and a graphics workspace un-mirrored. Of all the graphics we have copies. Renders can be re-done.

The mayor risk I see though is not technical. If you un-mirror and things keep working fine, trust me, they will ask you to un-mirror more. "Giving a finger will result in them taking your whole hand" and when things go wrong they will not be there to help you.