Is my external HD making FCP slow?

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Level 1

8 points

Is my external HD making FCP slow?

I've started out on Final Cut Pro recently and I spent a fair amount of money yesterday on an external hard drive so I can store editing files for Final Cut Pro. It's a 2TB USB 3.1 Type-c, brought from Amazon. However, since I started using it FCP has been incredibly slow to the point where I cannot do anything because it is constantly freezing.

I'm not happy about this as I spent a lot of money for the drive and I'm worried it's faulty or corrupt or something. It loads up on the mac fine and I can access files fine on it, it's just very slow on final cut (i set my settings on FCP so everything is stored on the drive not my laptop disk).

Anyone know any solutions? I've tried first aiding the drive- came back fine. Restarting both the computer and FCP, nothing has helped.

Would be grateful for any feedback as I spent a lot on the drive and cannot really afford another one seeing as I'm a student.

Thank you.

Specs are as follows:

MacBook Pro, 13-inch, Early 2015, version 10.15.4. catalina

2.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5

8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 23, 2020 11:48 AM

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Answer 1

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sophie_491 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 23, 2020 12:20 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Apologies for the hassle, just found out I got scammed by the seller. Faulty drive with no proper company name, very irritated by this.

Again, sorry for wasting your time but thank you for the offer of help anyway!

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Answer 2

Apr 23, 2020 12:21 PM in response to sophie_491

In addition to the perceptive questions you were already asked: how is the drive formatted?

It should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), of APFS. If you used as it came, it probably isn't, unless it was a drive marketed specifically for the mac.

The drive itself may be too slow, as suggested.

If budget allows, you'd probably be better served with a smallish SSD for editing, and a larger, slower, cheaper hard drive for archiving.

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Answer 3

Apr 23, 2020 8:48 PM in response to sophie_491

What is the RPM spec on the hard drive? My experience is that a 5400 RPM drive will struggle to keep up with THE FCP data feed requirements whereas a 7200 RPM drive does just fine.

Another possible issue is the 8 GB of memory in your machine and the number applications you have open while running FCP. Try closing all other applications when using FCP.

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