Need help with storage
 

I am new to the HDD world and have a camera with a couple of hours of video from a recent trip.
I have an iMac and a MBP and I will fill up the hard drives very quickly with my new Sony SR11. I am looking for recommendations for storage of files. Right now I plan to do basic editing and not use FCP or the like. I am not sure of the work flow but I envision storing the files on an external hard drive andthen import needed clips using iMovie and the computer hard drive for editing, or is there a better way?
Thanks in advance for any tips to help out a rookie.

Yep, that's pretty much it. You will find that you need a lot of hard drive space, as standard definition video is 13 GB per hour, and HD is even more. I just ordered a second 1TB drive. I would suggest you start with at least a 250GB drive, and be prepared to buy more if you really get into video editing. Another thing is that because your camera doesn't use tapes, you don't have a backup of your video, so you will end up storing it all on your computer (another reason I like tapes.)

What to look for in a hard drive?
 

Are there any particular attributes to look for in a hard drive other than capacity?
My iMac and the MBP both have firewire ports. And what about wireless. Would a Time Machine back up system work?

No wireless. It is way too slow. USB is even too slow. I have always used FireWire 400 for my hard drives and I have never had a problem with dropping frames. If you're feeling adventurous you can build your own hard drive by buying an internal SATA or IDE drive and putting it in your own enclosure. Otherwise I would recommend the Western Digital MyBook. They have capacities up to 1TB, and they look really cool. Make sure you get it with at least FireWire 400.

I would look into something like a MacGurus Burly Bay. This allows you to have multiple drives hooked to the computer and when one fills up, just pop in a new one. Cheaper in the long run than continually buying external hard drives.

Mike

Tom,

If you use the search feature here on the forum you'll find literally dozens of posts about HDD's, everything from the different recommended brands, enclosures and connectivity types.

It's a lot of reading but well worth it, especially since it can save you from spending money in the wrong places.

4GB Max file size in My Book
 

When I picked up our new Mac Book Pro they had 500 GB My Books on the shelf. I picked one up and brought it home. My plan is to down load my footage to the mac HD for editing (iMovie) and to store the finished projects on the My Book. In reading the instruction book I see that the individual file size has a max limit of 4GB. If a single layer DVD is 4.7GB and a double layer double that, I may have a problem with my plan for larger files in the finished projects.
Any input to my plan or work arounds would be appreciated.
Another question I have is if I want to save my movies for a future Blue Ray burner, my understanding is that a share to Quicktime would be a good option. Do I need to have Quicktime Pro to do this?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Found solution
 

I found out that if I re-format as a HFSX partition I can get around the 4 GB max file size.

Yeah that's just an issue with it being formatted as fat32 by default so as to be cross compatible with Windows and Mac - if you format it to use the Mac HFS or HFS+ etc that'll get round that.