External hard drive for editing with my macbook pro

[Gary Huff]

I just bought one of the WD Passport Ultra drives and it seems pretty speedy. Read/Write is about 100MBps.

[Morten Slemdal]

Is that 7200 rpm?

[Eric Santiago]

G-Tech miniRAID 1TB rocks with R3D and FCPX.

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Have had no performance issues with GRaid mini 1TB, which is a 7200rpm RAID 0, via FW on 2012 iMac, or FW-to-Tbolt on MBPr 2013 — which means boot drive is SSD, media on the GRaid.

Of course I am not really pushing the system. Cutting either HDV (re wrapped with ClipWrap), up to four camera multi-clips … Or PR422. I have intercut native AVCHD from a Canon Rebel, but usually transcode all AVCHD etc from DSLRs, smartphones and the like, to ProRes.

I have half-dozen WD Passport USB3 drives, all set up for Time Machine or cloned boot drives. I guess I should try one as a media drive!

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I am curious about Library and Render locations on your setup.

With 10.0.9, I had numerous Event & Project folders on my iMac spinning internal (backed up to time Machine), and media on the GRaid.

But for some projects it is obviously advantageous to have Event&Project or Library on same drive as media, so you can plug an play anywhere, anytime. Does anybody work that way?

Doug D

[Morten Slemdal]

I`ve always stored my media on another drive than my os. I guess thats maybe just old fashion?

The G-tech looks good, but maybe too big for me at the moment. Does it have power supply?

I may have to go for 500 GB at the moment; price wise. The Lacie Rugged get some good reviews; tried it?

https://store.apple.com/us/product/H9376ZM/A/lacie-500gb-rugged-hard-drive-triple-usb-30-7200-rpm

How does WD play with Mac. I`ve seen mixed reviews

[Douglas K. dempsey]

[Morten Slemdal] “The G-tech looks good, but maybe too big for me at the moment. Does it have power supply? “

Graid MINI is a pretty small drive, similar footprint to pocket drives, but twice as thick (it has two platters). Yes, it comes with an AC power block, which is necessary for example when using with a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13″ Retina, with the FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapter. However, it will mount as a bus-powered disk to my older 17″ MBP, FW800 direct. And it will work with older iMacs, FW800 direct, with no AC.

[Morten Slemdal] “The Lacie Rugged get some good reviews; tried it? “

Have not used it.

[Morten Slemdal] “How does WD play with Mac. I`ve seen mixed reviews”

WD Passports seem to work well, like any comparable drive. The only issue I have heard is that the WD Utility software was not compatible with Mavericks and was causing data loss. But I don’t know that you need to use that software in any case. Simply format the drive with Mac Disk Utility.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

https://www.notebookreview.com/news/western-digital-my-passport-2tb-review/2/

Reviewer suggests software to test performance, and discusses the WD Passport USB3.0
drives mentioned elsewhere on the FCPX forums

Doug D

[Gary Huff]

[Morten Slemdal] “The Lacie Rugged get some good reviews; tried it?”

Yes, I replaced mine with the WD Passport Ultra because it was a faster drive. The LaCie Rugged was clocking in about 20-30MBps slower in read/write.

[Morten Slemdal]

Wow, Are you a Mac user, Gary? People are really eager on the 7200 rpm thing, and I thought tha the WD Ultra was 5400. I should def try a Ultra disc then.