Some suggestions as far as External HD and FCP goes!

[tocyk]

I just got FCS from my teacher and I installed it. The program is much more of a beast than I expected it to be, and now I have 98 gigs left. I was wondering, can I run FCP off of an external HD? And what is the best external HD for my money? I'm hoping to buy the cheapest HD I can get with a respectable amount of memory. I doubt I will need 500gb. I am not going to be editing heavily, so I think 100-250 is the best area, but I am open to anything where I can get the best bang for my buck. Thanks a lot.

EDIT:

What is the best way to manage my memory? Right now the bulk of my memory taken is 50 gigs in FCS, and about 14 gigs in music.

 

[NRose8989]

I just got FCS from my teacher and I installed it. The program is much more of a beast than I expected it to be, and now I have 98 gigs left. I was wondering, can I run FCP off of an external HD? And what is the best external HD for my money? I'm hoping to buy the cheapest HD I can get with a respectable amount of memory. I doubt I will need 500gb. I am not going to be editing heavily, so I think 100-250 is the best area, but I am open to anything where I can get the best bang for my buck. Thanks a lot.

EDIT:

What is the best way to manage my memory? Right now the bulk of my memory taken is 50 gigs in FCS, and about 14 gigs in music.

FCP as a app doesn't have that big of a foot print on your HD. your media files are what killing you. you can run FCS off of a external drive, when you install it, just connect your external drive to you mac then select it as the installation destination when you install FCS. i personally wouldn't do this though because you won't be able to run the apps unless you have your external HD connect. what i would do (which is what i do) is in FCP, set your scratch disk to your external drive. that way you can run the apps without the drive, and all of your captured media and render files will be stored on the external drive, saving you a lot of space on your internal drive. then if you find yourself without your external drive, you can create a folder and set it as your temporary scratch disk.

external HDs come in many different flavors, some are better then others. if you want a really good drive, go to OWC and take a look at what they got. i ended up getting a 500GB WD MyBook Home from costco for $120 and it has USB, Firewire 400 and eSata on it. it's a ok drive, kinda noisy and it vibrates my desk a bit, but i really don't care that much as i only use it for Time Machine and my FCE scratch when I'm home.

 

[Stang68]

Ditto to everything NRose said. I, though, suggest you get a LaCie Rugged external drive. They have padding around them and are "shock" absorbant. Idk how well that works, but they are great little drives.

 

[rustyb99]

I second everything they said. Run the program off your internal drive and store all your media on an external. I would either go with a Western Digital My Book or the Lacie Rugged. Both are excellent drives.