Hi, I'm using a 2013 15" 2.3 Ghz Retina Macbook Pro and running FCP 7. I'm working on a very big project. So far I'm using an portable external USB Seagate Drive to hold all my scratch (and backing that up to another similar drive). So far everything works fine, but I am wondering it things (like rendering, for example?) wouldn't work faster using a Thunderbolt drive. Imparticular, I'm considering the LaCie Rugged RAID Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 Mobile Hard Drive 4TB (9000601). I’m not a big techie guy, so pardon any already obvious ignorance (for example, is the rendering speed actually determined by my Macbook’s internal drive, not the external one?). What would be the benefits of using the thunderbolt drive? The cons are essentially….the cost. $230. But it’d be worth it to speed up performance for this project that I’ll be working on for many months. Any input would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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On FCP 7 with 2013 Macbook Pro - Will Thunderbolt increase speed?

Posted on Nov 28, 2018 4:01 PM

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Studio X

Level 7

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Posted on Nov 30, 2018 1:54 PM

The value of faster drives is greater throughput, for example, when trying to flow multiple streams of video. The higher the base data rate of the material, the greater the demand (think ProRes LT at the low end vs Animation at the higher end).

Rendering is limited by CPU processing speed, not hard drive speed.

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