Storage/time machine query

From v competent PC user to newbie idiot!

Ive switched to a MBP with a 320BG HD predominantly for mucking about with the family videos. Not precious to anyone else but seriously precious to me.
Currently have around 400GB of raw vid on an internal 500GB HD in old PC. How would you old hands arrange to keep my vids safe and add to?
Should i have got a much bigger HD just for plain ole storage or can i keep vid on an external HD and just fetch it onto the MBP to work and create and then store elsewhere and still have it work with time machine ??
Dazed and confused here

I'm not 100% sure I understand your question, so my answer might not apply at all. Sorry in advance

I'm pretty sure this article will answer your question.

You'll need a pretty massive drive (probably 1TB at the very least) for that many files, but it looks possible. Time Machine is great for archiving old copies of your files in case you FUBAR one or want to go spelunking in older versions. It keeps your files from the most recent backup, as well as past backups as long as there is space on the drive. The rule of thumb is that your Time Machine drive should be about double the size of your drive, so like I said above, you'll need a pretty flippin' big one for that heap of data.

If this isn't clear or doesn't answer your question, let me know and I'll try to be a bit clearer.

In addition to what Corbab suggested....

Irreplaceable things like family photos, videos, and so forth should never be trusted to one form of media or at least one HDD. Hard drives fail and when they do, things like family photos and videos may be lost forever. There are services that can extract data from "dead" hard drives but they are very expensive. Extracting data from a 500 GB dead hard drive may cost more than $1000.00.

What I suggest is that you have several backups of your family videos and photos. You can do that with hard drives, an on line backup service, and if they come down in price, a Blue Ray burner with high capacity BR disks.

Something to think about.

Regards.

As cheap as hard drives are these days, I'd get a couple of them: a 1TB and a 2TB.

I'm make the 1TB a "media drive" and put your video files on that. iMovie (et al) will be able to see them just fine).

I'd partition the 2TB into two 1TB partitions: one for Time Machine for your boot drive, and the second to be a "clone (using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner) for your media drive.

I also second chscag's suggestion regarding precious files: you can never have enough backups. In addition to the schema I outlined above, some form of off-site or online backup as insurance is also a good idea. And of course you should keep the original tapes or SD cards (if these movies were made with tapes or SD cards).