Internal Hard Drive vs External Hard Drive

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Level 1

34 points

Internal Hard Drive vs External Hard Drive

Hello,

I remember reading that it is always recommended to have the library in an external drive to avoid the OS and FCPX compete for resources.

I have an external Thunderbolt drive and an internal SSD. If the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is to be believed, my SSD is incomparably faster for both read and write than the Thunderbolt HDD.

Even then, is it still recommended to keep the library in the external hard drive?

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 12:52 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,816 points

Sep 21, 2016 12:56 PM in response to dj-anon

How big is the SSD? How much work do you have to do with how much media? I assume the SSD is the system drive and is running the system as well as other software. That's a lot of file swapping going on cluttering up that drive. For smaller projects, the SSD would be great.

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Answer 2

dj-anon Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 21, 2016 1:24 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Yes, the SSD is the system drive. I often work on small projects that would fit with no problem in the SSD. The large ones would obviously have to go to the Thunderbolt drive. Also, I usually focus on FCPX and avoid running other software.

My main worry is FCPX and the OS fighting too much for the resources of the SSD.

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,816 points

Sep 21, 2016 1:28 PM in response to dj-anon

Small projects that you clear out, you should be fine.

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Answer 4

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Sep 21, 2016 4:24 PM in response to dj-anon

The more RAM you have the less issue that becomes with the OS and the FCPX session caching to drive.

You could try to keep live projects on the SSD then once your done with them move them to long term storage

but the other question is while the SSD might be faster for R/W than a TB2 connected device it might not be anything you notice so a imperceptibly slower drive with far more storage might be the way to go.

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