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Best portable external Harddrive for FCP

Im looking for a portable hard-drive to use with my Macbook and FCP so I can do some editing away from my main system.

I understand Firewire is the way to go here. Also 7200 RPM is the best. However - it seems like Bus powered FW 7200 rpm external hard-drives are very hard to come by,,,,?

Would 5400rpm be ok?

Any advice?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Sep 15, 2008 6:14 AM

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6 replies

Sep 15, 2008 7:03 AM in response to SWAN909808

Is this is a MacBook or MacBook Pro? If a MacBook Pro you can get a card to hook up eSATA drives.

How portable is portable? Do you mean a real small drive or is something bigger okay? Sometimes I carry larger drives in enclosure, such as the one bay Wiebetech Silver SATA, http://www.wiebetech.com/products/silversata.php other times I use the smaller [physically] drives.

Anyway I have edited DV and HDV on small drives, even 5,400 RPM drives, but faster is usually better. For a couple of streams things like those offered by OWC work fine. And most of the OWCs work fine on bus power. I had one or two large ones that I think required adapters (may have been just the old eSATA one). But I know without even looking that all the 80 - 160 Gigs worked without a hitch. Think the 250s also

Then there are things like this

www.g-technology.com/products/G-RAID-mini.cfm

Which is a small portable RAID (they also have small single drive set-ups.)

Sep 15, 2008 7:03 AM in response to SWAN909808

I've been using an OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro drive (120GB) and it's been flawless.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

They have capacities up to 320GB at 7200 RPM (which I'd stick with for editing) and they're reasonably priced. I've dropped mine a couple of times with no issues - it's built quite well. Highly recommended. Best to you and happy editing!

Sep 15, 2008 7:39 AM in response to SWAN909808

SWAN909808 wrote:


The OWC drives look perfect - but alas I dont think they are available in the UK. If they are please let me know!


They are only available via OWCs website (macsales.com) AFAIK though I could be wrong. Drop them an email or use the Live Chat and see if they ship to the U.K. (though that may get pricey) but worth a shot.

Best portable external Harddrive for FCP

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