My Passport 500 Giga is good for Video Rendering?

Hi,

I am going to buy an Macbook Pro 17inch. They gave me two options for the internal HD: 750Giga 5400rpm, or 500Giga 7200rpm (best for video rendering).

Assuming that:

The 7200rpm Internal HD (optional) for the Mac Pro 17Inch I am going to order is not available in the country I live and I can’t wait;

I am doing Videos to be edited and export/rendered with Premiere Pro Cs5;

I use firewire 800;

I own a WD My Passport 500Giga (which should be 7200rpm)… (plus other 11 external WD Hard disks from 1 to 4 Teras…)

Question: will the external HD WD My Passport 500Giga with 7.200rpm speed, do the same job of an internal High Speed HD, allowing me to make video rendering smoothly and safely?

From this answer depends my choice of buyng the Mac Pro 17inch (that is pretty expensive) with the 750Giga/5400rpm (slower) speed and using the WD 500Giga 7200 rpm as external video rendering disk.

Please, if anyone can help me I wil appreciate it very much.

Thank you,

Claudio

It depends what bitrates you need to and from the drive.

Your internal drives probably read/write at 80MB/sec or above.

With a USB2 drive, you’re unlikely to see read/write speeds above about 20MB/sec.

If 20MB/sec is acceptable, then you can use the external… if you need higher rates, then an external isn’t really the best choice.