Best external drive for final cut??

Hi there.
First time here!
I have recently purchased a macbook pro 15" 2.5ghz with the 160Gb 7200rpm hardrive and final cut studio 2.
I have been told that I should not use the macs HD for capturing video etc and should purchase an external drive for this purpose.
The trouble is I don't know which one??
If anyone has any advice on which external hardrive will perform this task the best?
anyone had a drive that has performed this task flawlessly?
any drive attributes I should avoid?
A good FAST external hardrive is what I need your advice on!!
your comments would be greatly appreciated.Thankyou very much for your time.
buer.

Just pick one that has a 7200RPM HD inside and get one with the fastest connection your MBP has? I don't own a MBP so I don't know if it supports FW800 or just FW400.
LaCie is what most people choose. They make really nice externals at a great price.
Good luck
Bryan

I think FW400 is sufficient. You could probably get by with USB as well, but Firewire is generally preferred, especially if you have any other USB devices in use. For that matter, your internal hard drive would be fine, as long as you only plan on editing short video. Uncompressed DV requires 14 gigs per hour of video, and conventional wisdom states that three times that much space is required for editing.

western digital do a 500gb external hdd with both firewire 400 and 800 the MBP supports both so i would go for the 800 £120 for the 500gb model.


http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/prod...AFEED->PRODUCTS&cm_ite=1 PRODUCT&cm_keycode=4

not sure wher you live im guessing usa. but i have one of those and its great. doesnt come with an apple sticker tho.

I have that in the 250GB version. It seems to work slower than my previous external that I built myself.
I wouldn't listen to the advise above and get a USB drive. Stick with one that supports FW800. You're going to transferring back and forth large files all the time and USB 2.0 doesn't cut it.
Bryan

Thankyou for your advice..
I am now looking at the LaCie 500GB Quadra hard drive with quadruple interface. see the apple store at:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=9469E1C2&nplm=TM178
the MBP has a FW800 connection so I assume that this will do the job for me just fine?
thankyou for your speedy replies.
I would like to know if you feel this choice would be a good one!!

I have two external hard drives (both USB) one works brilliantly with Final Cut the other just cant hack it, even though both are 7,200rpm drives and both are connected directly to the USB2 port.

buer said:

Thankyou for your advice..
I am now looking at the LaCie 500GB Quadra hard drive with quadruple interface. see the apple store at:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=9469E1C2&nplm=TM178
the MBP has a FW800 connection so I assume that this will do the job for me just fine?
thankyou for your speedy replies.
I would like to know if you feel this choice would be a good one!!

Click to expand...

That LaCie will work fine. Like said above, FW800 is the way to go for working with large videos. Sometimes in my work videos before conversion get to 20GB! Firewire really helps in transfer to the external. FW800 is really fast. Since your MBP has it, put it to use.

If you would like to do some reading - here is a thread I made a couple of months ago when doing my own search for a new external drive. I do a lot of research prior to puchasing any electronics and this may save you some time or not. The 2nd post begins the review of the different drives available. I also take into account multiple sites doing actual speed tests of the various drives. Also, have a few timed tests done with the various connections with the drive I ended up getting.

buer said:

Thankyou for your advice..
I am now looking at the LaCie 500GB Quadra hard drive with quadruple interface. see the apple store at:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=9469E1C2&nplm=TM178
the MBP has a FW800 connection so I assume that this will do the job for me just fine?
thankyou for your speedy replies.
I would like to know if you feel this choice would be a good one!!

Click to expand...

I have actually used the lacies, and have always had problems. Maybe just em though. I switched over to G-tech drives. Work amazing.

buer said:

Thankyou for your advice..
I am now looking at the LaCie 500GB Quadra hard drive with quadruple interface. see the apple store at:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=9469E1C2&nplm=TM178
the MBP has a FW800 connection so I assume that this will do the job for me just fine?
thankyou for your speedy replies.
I would like to know if you feel this choice would be a good one!!

Click to expand...

I have that same External HD but only the 160 GB version. I love it and use it on my MacBook Pro for the same reasons that you want to. It has always worked great for me. I would suggest this one.