Final Cut Studio: Format new hard disks as Mac OS Extended for best performance

Hard disk drives are sometimes sold pre-formatted in in a disk format other than Mac OS Extended, and may not perform ideally with Final Cut Studio applications. Other disk formats, such as FAT32, Mac OS Standard (HFS), New Technology File System (NTFS) and UNIX File System (UFS) may not provide ideal results.

Hard disks installed in your computer, or connected externally via FireWire should be formatted using the Mac OS Extended disk format, also known as HFS Plus.

Formatting a hard disk is usually done when it's brand new. If you want to reformat a disk that already contains data, be sure to back up the data to another disk beforehand. Notice: Reformatting a hard disk will permanently erase all of the data on it.

Tip: You can check the format of a hard disk by clicking its icon in Finder and then choosing Get Info from the File menu. The format is displayed in General information in the Info window.

To format a hard disk as Mac OS Extended

1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder in Applications.
2. Select the name of your hard disk in the left column of the Disk Utility window so that it's highlighted.
3. Click Erase to show the formatting options pane.
4. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended. (For best performance, do not select the "Journaled" option on disks that will primarily be used for Final Cut Studio media input/output.)
5. Click Erase (in the lower-right corner).