So..here I am. After years of editing on the PC I have taken the plunge and decided to get myself a MBP 2.4GHz 17" all singing-all dancing-notebook along with FCS 2. However, I won't of course get the same kind of performance from it as I would the desktops and so I am looking to enhance that wherever I can. One of the things I'd like to do is add an external drive which I would use for render and captures. Here's my question though... How do I go about adding an external HDD? Sounds easy but I am trying to understand whether that would mean I'd only be able to to have the HDD connected to my FW800 port and nothing else at the same time? After all I need to connect my camera as well as my drive when capturing video. Would I perhaps be better off just using the drive for my renders, therefore capturing without it attached from my camera, unplugging the camera and then connecting the HDD for when I am working with my footage? Or can the captured footage be moved to the external HDD manually (this isn't easily achievable in Avid Liquid for example which I've been using up to now). Finally - any recommendations on which drives are worth considering (personal experiences welcome). Apologies for all the questions but I know zip about Macbooks, or Macs in general for that matter.

We always use La Cie drives, but I don't think it makes any difference ... I've used maxtor in the past with good results too. As far as working with externals ... just plug them and and you're good to go. no real advice ... it's pretty simple. Yes you can daisy chain them, but i personally wouldn't capture through a daisy chained camera ... not for any other reason than superstition, as I'm sure it works fine. However, it IS a lot of data passing back and forth. You might want to plug the drive into the FW800 port, and the camera into the FW400 port ... all the cameras i've seen only have FS400 ports anyway ...

Thanks Martin. I read somewhere (at least I think I did) that the two ports were in some way shared on the MBP and that you could only utilise one or the other at the same time? Maybe I've got my wires crossed on that one.

Opted for an external Freecom 500GB HDD over eSATA (just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else in the future is looking to do the same)

Cool! Thanks for keeping us posted!