The 2 TB drive or full SSD is a much better setup for quicker performance as the 2 TB desktop standard, 7200 RPM hard drive is paired to a 128 GB SSD, instead, giving a lot more performance room for this iMac to more regularly operate from the SSD as a temporary data holder/ scratch disc area longer (as long as you don't fill up the SSD with a large amount of third party applications and store actual saved files to the regular hard drive rather than the SSD). That is because the 24 GB SSD, paired to the 1 TB desktop standard, 7200 RPM hard drive, will almost fill up with the OS and installed applications (and any third party applications you need to install) NOT leaving enough free data storage space, for the OS to have some extra operating room to process data on the SSD, first, before having to access the slower, mechanically spinning hard drive. There will be a noticeable difference/drop in performance if you get a 27 inch screen iMac with the 1 TB Fusion drive. (I keep the source media clips & FCE project files (with them you can reconstruct your project any time).The employee at Best Buy didn't know what they are talkiing about. This Western Digital hard drive is engineered for maximum durability for long-term use. Integrated 256-bit AES encryption keeps sensitive information safe from unauthorized users, and its compatibility with Apple Time Machine lets you effortlessly back up your data. You can get rid of some or all of that stuff when your project is finished depending on what you want to keep. Add storage space to your Mac with this 1TB Western Digital hard drive. In a typical FCE project with 1 hour of source video clips, some render files & output files and an iDVD project, the total disk space needed will be somewhere between 65-110GB by the time the project is complete. (Time Machine is a great backup utility, just not for video and definitely not on the same drive as your working storage so if you are interested in using TM, that would be yet another external drive.)Īs for disk space requirements, assuming use of iMovie or Final Cut Express, you should estimate about 45GB per hour of video. (Lacie d2 Quadra 1TB drives are going for ~$150 / OWC Mercury Elite 1TB for ~$170.)Īlso keep in mind that you should have a separate drive for offline backups, so two external drives would be a good idea - one for working storage, the other for backups. Use the external drive for media storage (video & photos) and working space, not your internal drive. Keep the internal drive to less than 50% utilization.

Get the 1TB internal drive and use the $150 saved to get yourself a good external 1TB FW800 drive. Ok, I do a lot of video editing on Macs, so here are my suggestions.

1 tb external storage for imac