MacBook Pro M1 Final Cut Pro

Anthony Stillittano wrote:

Need recommendations for an external SSD or HD to use with my M1 MacBook Pro running Final Cut Pro. Currently using a Seagate Barracuda 2TB external drive, data retrieval is slow.

Thanks

"external SSD or HD" You do not want HD in 2023

How is that Seagate Barracuda 2TB external drive formatted...?

Did you erase/reformat and initilze the drive when you got it new?

How do you have it connected to the Mac...Direct, through a hub/dock?

Is this a thunderbolt drive, USBC or older USB...?

I would trust this is a SSD and not mechanical HDD or some hybrid...?

All these details come into play when speculating and you say generally "data retrieval is slow."

Macbook Air 2023 M2 Does Not See External… - Apple Community

Seagate External HD - Apple Community

Assistance Needed for Data Recover… | Apple Developer Forums

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External Drives

<<. Currently using a Seagate Barracuda 2TB external drive, >>

One drive? Video editors on a budget learned long ago that reading and writing data was often the bottleneck, and that has only become MORE pronounced as processors have gotten much faster.

if you wanted faster editing, you put Source on one drive, Destinations on a different drive, Libraries (if needed) on another drive, and Scratch (if needed) on yet another drive, and NONE of those on the Boot/System drive, where Applications and Paging/Swap files were already keeping that drive very busy. The boot drive NEVER needed to be large, Just FAST.

You can use whatever drives you can afford, just MORE of them.

LeroyDouglas point about ERASE-ing your drives when new is critical. Installing the manufacturers software to access the drive instead is a Grave mistake.

What that software does is to "spare you the annoyance of having to re-initialize the drive" from its factory set Windows New Technology File System (NTFS, the W is silent because there are no other Operating Systems) or similar unusual (on a Mac) format. Instead, the software they provided would simulate a MacOS drive inside an NTFS file for your Mac. That process is S-L-O-W.