Formatting and partitoning an external hard drive.

[Zane Barker]

[Luke Ogden] “there is a chance I might use the drive to transfer files to and from a pc, so should i format it in a way that would allow this or given how rare this is not bother and go with OS extended? “

Go with OSX Extended if you format it Fat32 so that a windows machine can read it also then the drive will have a 4GB file limit and that will just cause lots of headaches for video work.

[Luke Ogden] “As I’m sure most will know, FCS2 comes with loads of files/templates/plugins/etc for soundtrack,motion,livetype… which are currently on my internal drive taking up a lot of room. I’d quite like to have these on my external too but also have fcs2 function if I don’t have my hard drive on me. soooooo

would you advice partitioning the drive too one part as my capture scratch and the other part for all this stuff? “

No need to partition at all. Simply create a folder for all the FCP extras and when installing FCS choose that folder as the destination for all the loads of extras that get installed. Also create another folder where you keep your FCP projects organized.

FCS2 will function when that drive is not plugged in you just will not have any access to all the motion add-ons, DVDSP templates, livetype fonts, and soundtrack loops.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Luke Ogden]

thanks for the advice zane; I’ve formatted the drive as os extended but made a very small partition MS-DOS (FAT 32) so that if ever need to transfer files between platforms i can (although files van be no larger than 4GB). The additional content is now on my external and appears to be working fine. This is a really good way of running FCS2 on a macbook pro with limited internal hard drive space.