I could use some advice...

[nfn]

I am in the process of putting together a video from footage shot this summer. In all, I have just over 4 hours of footage. The problem is my laptop has run out of hard drive with only 2 hours of footage captured. I have a few thoughts as to what to do but I would appreciate any advice you have. Here are my thoughts...

1. Trim the dead video on each clip to create more space on the hard drive. The negative is that would be very time consuming. I'm not even sure if it would create enough space to make a difference. Plus, I have already taken the time to watch each clip captured from the first 2 hours of video. I ranked each clip on a scale of 1 to 5 and deleted clips that I'm not going to use.

2. Buy an internal hard drive with more space. I haven't done much research on this yet so I'm not even sure if my laptop is capable. The negative I see is that my laptop is going to be 3 years old in December and I already want/need (can't afford) a new one. Would it be worth it to spend money on a new hard drive for it?

3. Buy an external hard drive with more space. I like this option for a couple of reasons. I would be able to use it the future with a new laptop and they seem to be relatively affordable. My concern is with the editing program I use, Sony Vegas.

When I use a video clip file in the video project I have started, Vegas makes a copy of that video file in a different format. I'm not sure, but I believe if I deleted that copy it would mess up the clip I put in the video project. Is that right?

So here is my question with the external hard drive. Say I have "clip A" stored on my laptop and "clip B" stored on my external hard drive. If I put "clip A" in the video project, can I move the "clip A" video file (and or the copy made by Vegas) to the external hard drive to make room for "clip B"? Will that mess up the "clip A" in my video project?

What do you think? Is there another option I am missing? Again any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
-KG-

[scott a]

Your laptop probably isn't capable of holding another hard drive, so I'd go with an external. They're cheap, so if you're gonna be shooting video, I'd get at least a 500gb drive or maybe even 1tb. I know 1tb sounds like a lot, but it'll give you more than enough room to store all your video, and then you'll have space left over to backup your laptop's hard drive...