Partitioning my MacBook Pro HD

J

jstein

New member
Under normal circumstances I use an external HD as a scratch disk FCP however the next few weeks I will not be able to use my normal setup. So I am wondering if I partition my 100GB 5400 RPM hard drive lets say 40GB for OS X, apps (FCP) and 60 GB partition as the scratch disk and media files.

Will this set up be sufficient enough for FCP?
 
This sound like an Apple question...

Sounds like a dubious proposition.

I'd find it hard to believe that a 5400rpm hard drive would be able to accomodate video editing and playback without frustrating the hell out of you... But then to partition and share with your applications in addtion? Hmmmmm.

Have you experimented using the internal as a scratch disk? You'd better experiment with the performance before trying this, but there's really no need to partition.

Hmmm, if I ever were fortunate enough to buy one of these new mac laptops, I'd try and get the 7,200 rpm drive option for just this reason. But... I wouldn't bother partioning...

Good luck in your project! :)

Erik
 
When FCP installs itself, it configures to match your hardware. You can easily edit small projects on your system drive on a laptop Mac. Larger projects will kill your system, though.

Partitioning your interenal system drive won't do any good. Because the reason you use a second drive to edit with is the limited bandwidth of the data pipe going from the hard drive to the CPU. FCP uses so much of this, there's not enough left over for the video data to stream fast enough. So you put it on a second drive, so that the video and audio data streams can eat up all that bandwidth, FCP can eat up the bandwidth of the system drive, and everyone has all the bandwidth they need.

Partitioning doesn't increase bandwidth, the bandwidth is physically set, can't be increased, so partitioning won't do you a lick of good. If anything, it'll degrade your system drive performance, as the system is not treating it like two seperate drives, with the same original bandwidth limit. Partitioning is an outdated practice, save for security reasons.

If you project is small enough, you can just use the laptop system drive. But the catch is, if it's a small enough project, and I mean, small.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top