Partition for just Final Cut Pro (barebone Lion install, no Filevault)-best approach?

I would use a SSD

 

Honestly, I would not do that.

First of all, the times where the OS was running slower and slower with time are not completely over, but things have increased significantly. Most programs will not interfere with your editing program, especially on a Mac, since the programs are in standalone folders.

Second, there might be times where you wish you had one or the other program, font, or plugin installed on your editing system and you will hate having to reboot...

Third, and maybe most important: It is a pain to have to adjust the size of a seperate partition later. You never know what you might want in the future, maybe you buy another (really big) editing suite, or you install a ton of sound libraries for your scores, and you will need more space. Changing things then will be a lot more complicated on a seperate partition.

And last: You lose a lot of disk space if you install MacOS twice. And I don't see a big advantage.

For the second poster: While an SSD is really nice and fast, I would recommend it for internal use and maybe a system install, but for editing and importing footage, there is not enough space on them yet (in my opinion).

Just my two cents.

 

I agree that a separate partition isn't necessary. Depending on what version of Final Cut you're using, storing data on your main drive partition will not slow things down at all.