How important is the speed of the hard drive on my laptop?
 

Hi all. . .

This is my last question about a new laptop! The 17" MBPros come with a standard 5400RPM (160 gig) drive, but has an optional 7200RPM (100 gig) drive. The 15" MBPros do not have the 100 gig 7200RPM drive available at all. I'd like the additional capacity, but if the drive speed is crucial for optimal performance, I'll go that way.

Bottom line: Does the speed of the drive make much difference in running FCP if I am not using the internal drive for capture or scratch?

Thanks much!

Stephen

hard drive
 

if you look at speed test and understand how they perform then you will understand why apple went with the standard 160 drive it out perfoms the 100 because as the drives fill up they slow down. So say you put an project that is 60 gigs on the 100 gig hd and put the same on the 160 hd the larger hd will out perform the smaller higher rpm hd. I had the same concerns and I chose to take the risk and get the 160, best thing I ever did. I have not had any issues at all with speed. And i love having that extra space.
Brandon

Stephen,
If you don't capture any media on your internal drive (which you shouldn't) you'll be fine with 5400. I've got two mac laptops both of which run FCP with no problems. Get as much RAM as you can afford though.

as the world moves towards tapeless workflows the media on the internal boot drive debate becomes less and less valid.

one would certainly not want to "capture" to the boot disk, as the potential for dropped frames would hamper the workflow. similarly, one would not want to playout from the boot disk for the exact same reason. but when one is dealing with file transfer only then dropped frames becomes pretty much a non-issue.

dropped frames whilst editing is a minor annoyance, but one far outweighed by the advantage of not needing to carry an extra media drive.

to the OP I would say get the larger hard drive ... even if you are not yet using a tapeless system, you will be still be extremely glad of the extra space.

Interesting opinions about the drives. I have been editing daily on a laptop for the past three years capturing to the internal hard drive, which is a 5400 rpm drive. Never have dropped frames or playback problems. This is SD video, obviously. So you certainly don't need to worry about it if you're not using it for video.

Hi Jeff,

I'm not saying you can't do it, just that it's not a great idea. External drives are so cheap these days that you really shouldn't chance frying your harddrive. Also, FCP uses additional drive space for renders and back-ups so you really need the extra gigs.

Just my 10p