Need help with media management and an external drive - What is best practice?

I am new to FCPX and I just purchased a 2 TB USB 3 external hard drive for managing my FCPX events/projects. Is it a good idea to keep all events and projects on the external drive and use it as my editing environment? Or should I edit on my internal drive and use the external drive for storing old projects/events? My internal drive is backed up using Time Machine to separate external drive. What do you suggest is the best workflow for my FCPX editing? Any input is welcome! Thanks!

Use the external for editing. Put your events and projects on it.

Thank you Tom for your quick reply!

I'd agree entirely with Tom, and add:

- Think carefully about your backup regime. How is your media/project drive duplicated?

- As you add more and more Events and Projects to the drive, it may become harder to find the projects you want. FCPX will also open progressively more slowly. You may wish to explore Event Manager X for archiving projects.

Personally, I manage my 'work-in-progress' projects using Event Manager X, mirror my working drives (using ChronoSync, though Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! are also good), and move end-of-life projects and events to archive storage (a slow network RAID, and standalone hard drives kept on the shelf).

As hard drives grow in capacity, it's arguably becoming more sensible to use sparse images to manage projects and events, and mount the project 'drives' (ie. images) you want when you want them.

(Agent Smith voice-on-),

Mr. Anderson,

Please elaborate on thissss...sparse imaging.

(Agent Smith voice-off-)

Ah crap...now I see it is Sanderson...

Great points about the backup JJ! I will give that a thought too. Thanks!

You're not the first to make that mistake. Nor that joke, based on that mistake.