Re-format or partition portable/external hard drives

A Media student should invest in a sizeable USB hard drive; portable (no plug required) is better, and 1TB should be the absolute minimum ... but 4TB is much better if you can afford it. Amazon.de 4TB portable HDD search will give you sample prices; you can buy these in electrical stores.

TIP: Despite being USB3 models, portable drives all seem to come with a cheap USB2 cable - order a USB3 cable with your HDD or it will 10x slower than it should be - a real problem if copying large Final Cut libraries!!! (Also buy a protective case - the AmazonBasic range is fine for cables/cases)

You can back up work from Final Cut in a Library ... but not if you leave a hard drive formatted in FAT32, the default Windows file format, as this doesn't recognise files bigger than 4GB, and your Media work can easily exceed 1TB (250 times 4GB). The 'exFAT' file format allows you to use your portable drive for both Windows and Mac work.

A useful guide to the common file systems.

You can find a vodcast guide below the read more line, with a recording of re-formatting a new portable drive.