External drive

[Freemanator3030]

Hi all, I haven't bought a Mac yet. I'm considering buying a 2020 M1 MacBook air and an external hard drive to boost storage space. I'd like to do some video editing using FCP and I'm not sure if the 250gb internal drive will be enough.

I was wondering... if I bought an external 2tb drive, could I partition it into 750gb and 1.5tb. Use the 750gb as additional storage and 1.5tb for time machine backups?

 

[skottichan]

Yup! It's pretty easy to do. I use an 8TB external for split as 2 2TB and 1 4TB, one of the 2TB containers is my TM backup.

 

[t0rqx]

1,5TB + 750GB = 2,25TB theoretically…not 2TB. But the way you want to partition and use the external HD. Yes, it is possible.

 

[Wando64]

Yes you can, but…
Keeping your data and backups on the same drive makes the backup only useful as a glorified Trash Can (I.e. useful only to recover accidentally deleted files)
Obviously it will not offer any protection against disk failure.

I would recommend buying two 1TB disks.

As an aside, I think you will find 250GB quite limiting even if you plan to store the data on an external disk.

 

[StudioMacs]

Yes you can, but…
Keeping your data and backups on the same drive makes the backup only useful as a glorified Trash Can (I.e. useful only to recover accidentally deleted files)
Obviously it will not offer any protection against disk failure.

I would recommend buying two 1TB disks.

As an aside, I think you will find 250GB quite limiting even if you plan to store the data on an external disk.

I agree with all of this.

If buying a laptop as the cheapest all-in-one solution that will always be at a desk, 256GB with external (slower) storage can work.

If buying a laptop because it will be mobile some of the time, 256GB will be limiting, especially when you start looking for files on the external drive that isn’t there.

Using the same external drive for backup and data provides zero redundancy. Using most of the external drive for backups means you’re wasting most of the space on it, since it’s useless in the event of a hardware failure, and not available for storage, so you’re setting aside most of the drive you will likely never use.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Yes you can, but…
Keeping your data and backups on the same drive makes the backup only useful as a glorified Trash Can (I.e. useful only to recover accidentally deleted files)
Obviously it will not offer any protection against disk failure.

I would recommend buying two 1TB disks.

He didn't say the Time Machine was backing up same data as on the other partition (which would be unwise as you say). I have an external which has TM and Data partitions on it. TM backs up the internal drive and the data volume is backed up separately to another external. I do this so that I only have a single external connected normally.

 

[StudioMacs]

He didn't say the Time Machine was backing up same data as on the other partition (which would be unwise as you say). I have an external which has TM and Data partitions on it. The data volume is backed up separately to another external. I do this so that I only have a single external connected normally.

that can work, but OP didn’t specify, so it’s important to caution them against it.

 

[Fishrrman]

" I'd like to do some video editing using FCP and I'm not sure if the 250gb internal drive will be enough."

My opinion only.
For this kind of app, you "need more" than a MacBook Air.

I'd be looking at the base model 2021 MacBook Pro 14".

 

[w5jck]

Hi all, I haven't bought a Mac yet. I'm considering buying a 2020 M1 MacBook air and an external hard drive to boost storage space. I'd like to do some video editing using FCP and I'm not sure if the 250gb internal drive will be enough.

I was wondering... if I bought an external 2tb drive, could I partition it into 750gb and 1.5tb. Use the 750gb as additional storage and 1.5tb for time machine backups?

I recently bought a MacBook Air M1 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. It works great for FCP. I wouldn't even consider getting only a 256GB SSD on a new Mac these days unless the Mac is for someone who only uses it to check email, watch video, and other light duty. 256GB just isn't enough these days. At bare minimum, I suggest 512GB SSD if you will be using FCP. 1TB is even better.

Here is my FCP workflow on my MacBook Air M1:

• I place all the video and other related files I will use on a project in a folder on a 2TB external SSD.
• I create a temporary working folder on the MacBook Air M1 internal SSD and do all the hard lifting work from there. It is much quicker than working directly from an external drive. You can incorporate the external files into the project (which is best), or just reference them on the external SSD (slower).
• Once the video is finished, I move the temporary working folder to the external SSD to archive it. Use the FCP mechanism for doing this so it knows where you moved it.
• I have a separate 4TB HDD (slower than SSD but not a big deal) which I use for TM. TM backs up MacBook Air M1 internal and the external 2TB SSD.

I also use this workflow for large Lightroom projects. That is, temporarily do the heavy lifting using the internal SSD then afterwards move the files over to the external SSD for archiving. The internal SSD has a read/write speed of about 3,000 MB/s, but the external Samsung T5 SSD (5 Gbps speed) has a read/write speed of only about 360 MB/s. Using a faster T7 SSD (or one with 10 Gbps speed) will only double read/write speed, so it is still going to be a fraction of the speed of the internal SSD. So you need enough internal SSD space to run your projects at the faster speeds.

For TM backups, I suggest getting a bigger HDD. Yes they are slower than SSDs, but with TM this isn't a big deal. Let it backup during off work times. You can get a good 4TB HDD for less than $100 USD these days.

 

[dwig]

Yes you can, but…
Keeping your data and backups on the same drive makes the backup only useful as a glorified Trash Can (I.e. useful only to recover accidentally deleted files)
...

that should be "accidentally deleted or overwritten". Time Machine beats the Trash in that it allows recovery of older versions of files that have been altered.

I really like Time Machine for this type of file "recovery", and though I use it for that I don't rely on it as a true backup service. I also do monthly backups of working files to drives keep off-site and periodic clones of my boot drive (~2-3month intervals).

 

[wonderings]

Personally I would not rely on Time Machine alone. I love Time Machine for simplicity and ease of use, but have an offsite cloud backup. I use BackBlaze. It is simple and has unlimited storage. I use it to backup my 5K iMac as well as my M1 Max. Both have Time Machine backups as well. With it being unlimited you can also back up external drives (won't back up a time machine drive) as well. It really is a set it and forget it back up solution that works well with Time Machine.

 

[Freemanator3030]

Ah, you've raised a very good point. I was simply of thinking about rstra storage and not particulatly thinking about redundancy.

 

[TheGenerous]

Ah, you've raised a very good point. I was simply of thinking about rstra storage and not particulatly thinking about redundancy.

(I know this is an old thread) Yes, whenever I buy an external hard drive I always purchase it in pairs (One will be the clone of the other). Hope you found your solution and you're enjoying your Mac