You can not add internal hard drives and the iMac has only one FireWire 800 port. It is a pretty powerful desktop, there is lot to like, but it does have one major shortcoming. Rather than go with a new MacPro, I decided to go with a new Thunderbolt iMac 27", with 2 gigs of ram on the monitor card, a i7 processor and 16 gigs of ram. One of my NLE MacPro computers was over 6 years old and it was time to replace it. The days of running our video from single hard drives, either internal or external FireWire drives is passing.
The demands for video storage space and the need for much faster throughput from our hard drives has skyrocketed. But all this high quality HD video comes at a cost. The newest format is 4k, which is even more demanding of storage and drive speed. A number of these new formats also carry additional color information and at greater bit depth, yielding significantly higher quality video output. Instead of 720 x 480 SD video we now work with 1280 x 7 x 1080 formats (and larger). In the beginning we worked with Standard Definition 4:3 video, but now 16:9 HD video is the standard. However, over the past 11 years, the video codecs and formats have changed dramatically. In the early years many of us were working with DV, NTSC and PAL, which is heavily compressed to have a very low data rate of 3.5 MB/s (25 Mbit/s), and does run well from Internal and Firewire drives. You should see my work stations I have hard drives all over the place.
#PEGASUS2 R6 DRIVE NOT MOUNTING ARCHIVE#
Because internal and FireWire hard drives can and will fail at some point, more drives were needed to back up and archive all of my primary hard drives. To supplement my internal hard drives I have purchased a large number of external FireWire hard drives, first FW 400 and then FW 800. As you know, video not only takes up a lot of space but the amount of footage accumulates over the years, consuming more and more hard drives. I have always filled my Macs with as many hard drives as they can hold. Starting with the G3 and finishing up 11 years later with MacPros.
#PEGASUS2 R6 DRIVE NOT MOUNTING MAC#
Since FCP first shipped, I have been running it on Mac Desktops. Warranty: Two years with a one-year limited warranty on fan and power adapter.