Do you *have* to use an external scratch drive when editing on a Macbook Pro?

G

GregJ

Active member
I'm sure this answer is right under my nose -- somewhere -- but I've searched and I can't find it.

If you want to edit FCP on a Macbook Pro 2011 (or any MBP, I suppose) do you HAVE to use an external drive for the scratch media drive?

Just to complicate matters, I'm also thinking of replacing the hard drive in the MBP with a 240GB SSD, but I can't find anyone saying it's okay to put both FCP and the project's media on the same drive. My previous experience has all been with the Mac Pro tower, and I've always separated boot and scratch drives... which is not possible on a single-drive system, of course.

So when you all edit on a MBP, do you always lug around an external drive?
 
The throughput should be sufficient on an SSD to run both at the same time, I'd guess. I edit DSLR without an external drive some of the time on my MBP and my internal is a 7200 rpm hard drive.
 
Hi Greg,

I have just set up a new 17" 2.3ghz MBP as a field editor / up-loader, I installed a 120gig SSD OS drive, and a 500gig hybrid drive in the optical bay with the adapter cradle, (a very easy install of about 15mins)...
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-au/products/laptops/laptop-hdd?print=1
http://www.macfixit.com.au/shop/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=1691
works very well indeed, I'm running my FCP6 in 64bit (waiting for a new version of FCP).
Prior to install of the 500gig, I did some jobs with just the SSD as OS and storage, worked well, no issues. But these new SSD drives are still very expensive and small capacity,
no doubt they will drop in Price in time, but 120gig for an OS is OK for snow leopard.

ram has dropped too, so wack in 8gig.

Cheers
Tom 4
 
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Thanks for the input, guys. I think I'll go with the 240GB SSD as a single drive for now -- very curious to see how that works -- and maybe later try replacing the optical drive with the original 500GB 7200 RPM drive and use that for the scratch disk. Or maybe an SSD drive when the prices come down.

Tom, way ahead of you on the 8GB RAM. It will be arriving with the SSD! ;-)


--Greg
 
I have no doubt at all that all the major Mac manufacturers of hard drives and video gear will take advantage of Thunderbolt. Looking forward to seeing what they all have on demo at NAB. Hopefully as a standard it will someday be in all Mac gear- including MBAs. That would be truly welcome.

Noah
 
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