Let's say you film HD at 16:9, 1280 x 720, 921,600pixels, say the images are uncompressed 8 bits/pixel, that'll be 921.6 KB per image you take.  That's about 291,271 frames you can store on a 256 GB HD.  Taking into account OS, audio, video editors, sound, stock footage and the finished uncompressed video, let's divide it by 2 = 145,635 frames, about 101 minutes of brickfilms @ 24 fps.  Assuming you'll delete your raw images but keep your final product and your finished product average less than 2.5 min, you can get about 80 brickfilms out before you need to clean your harddrive.

Don't think you'll need a 1 TB external harddrive.  But that's based on my assumptions here.

Last edited by Lechnology (July 6, 2012 (11:05pm))

I would also suggest that you get a separate drive for storage of your videos, because using an SSD simply for video storage is not giving you the best "bang for your buck." As you have probably found out, SSDs are rather expensive (although some can be $1/gigabyte), and, unless you are a serious brickfilmer, you may want to buy an SSD for other purposes. Believe me, the space will run out fast --- depending on what media you work with. I would use the SSD to launch your OS and store programs that you want to launch faster. If I may make a suggestion, you might also want to buy an SSD with smaller space (128-gig per say), and use the remaining money to buy a cheap 1TB drive for your video storage. Your choice. Also, I'm no Mac expert, but if your Mac has integrated USB 3.0 outlets, then you can get a USB 3.0-compatible hard drive, with speeds almost as fast as SSDs.

Lechnology's advice is most helpful; do what you feel better suits your needs.

Alright, glad to help; as I said before I'm no expert on Macs so I'm glad you've enlightened me.

Like Gopher said, if you do get an SSD drive, I would recommend using that for your Operating System, etc. and maybe a backup of your project files.

I would personally like to create a network some day, but don't want to invest the money in that right now. I have a tower and currently have 4x internal harddrives. These are all backed up to external (internal) harddrives that I mount with a 2x HardDrive dock and store in anti-static cases.

When I archive files from my internal harddrives, these go to 2x harddrives, etc.

Check out these Amazon prices:

Seagate 1 TB

Seagate 2 TB

EDIT: Nevermind, didn't notice the OP was from July.

So Carousel, how's the 16GB's of RAM? I'm on a MacBook Pro (Not Retina ) and have 4 gigs, which suits me, but may upgrade to 8 or 16 to do more at once, as I am unable to have Chrome, Blender, After Effects, DragonFrame, and iMovie open all at once (once again, ) So, how is the added RAM?

Sounds like a powerful laptop. SSDs are great. I have a 2 tb hard drive and a 128 gb SSD. Generally with smaller SSDs you pretty much just want to reserve them for running apps/games, the speed advantage isn't too significant for other purposes anyway. You definitely want as much space as you can get for doing video work. I am constantly having to delete old files on my 2 TB hard drive to make room.

I purchased 16 GB G-Skill Ripjaws RAM for $35 over 6 months ago...I have absolutely no experience with Macs, so I do not know if they require a different/specified type of RAM, but I would recommend looking elsewhere for 16GB DDR3 1600 RAM if you are paying $100! Just trying to help out

@Smeagol, it is a very powerful, and the SSD does make quite a difference. I am glad that I bought the 1TB external hardrive, as I'm sure ill need it in the future.

@Gopher, As most things are with Apple, RAM is far more expensive on a Mac. I'd go for the $100 16GB RAM, purely because its nearly $100 cheaper than what I had to fork out to upgrade mine (although I did get an eduction discount).

@Caveman Incorporated, I too really like the almost flawless design of the MBP. To date, I haven't found a single laptop that's design, screen or trackpad is on par with the Retina MacBook Pro. On the note of the screen, many people judge 'Retina' as a mere marketing gimmick, but I feel that such views are huge misconceptions. It's really great, and there's no going back once you've used it for a while.

So definitely get the $100 16GB of RAM, it will be a worthwhile decision, of which there will be many rewards! Solid State Drives are far longer lasting when compared to HDDs, due to the fact that they have no moving parts. So, it that respect, they're superior, as well as with speed - but they're still very expensive.