IMac right choice for FCP ?

[Sugref]

Hi everyone in need of some considered technical advice here ! I recently enough bought an 8gb 2021 24inch M1 iMac for the purpose of creating videos on FCP. The videos are a mixture of recorded footage spliced with animated pictures and sound effects, kids story videos basically. At first everything went well but the memory quickly filled up and so I bought a WD 5TB external hard drive to store the FCP files and again problem solved. As I have made more videos I have noticed FCP struggling more and more with the editing, lagging, crashing and glitching. Nothing catastrophic but noticeable and becoming more frequent. To try and help I moved the entire FCP program onto the external hd and noticed an improvement but not a complete solution.
I am wondering if perhaps I made the wrong decision on the model I went for. Im not a professional editor, its all hobby stuff, but perhaps the machine is not powerful enough to comfortably handle what is being asked of it as time goes by and if so Im wondering what options I might have.
Should I have maybe opted for a second hand iMac Pro and if so would anyone recommend doing that or continue with what I have ?
I suppose Im curious what people think as to how to best improve the situation. I love this computer but if it needs to be changed I would rather do it sooner rather than later so as to get the best re-sale price for it.
Would be very grateful for any advice as Im a bit lost here as to what to do !

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

• What size is the internal storage on the iMac?
• How much free space is left on the internal storage of the iMac?
• Is the 5TB WD external drive a mechanical drive or an SSD?
• What connection does the WD drive use?

The Apple Silicon Macs are very well suited for Final Cut Pro work. Yes, the internal storage can be a limiting factor, but a fast external drive will help. I don't recommend moving the Final Cut Pro application to the external drive, as it needs to reside in the Applications folder to work and be updated properly.

C

 

[Sugref]

Hi Cory,
Thanks for the reply here are the answers to your questions :
1) 8 gb
2) At the moment there is 419 gb left of 494gb
3) It's a HDD
4) It has a USB connection which I had to buy a thunderbolt adapter for.

Thanks for the advice I moved it back over but switched the libraries where the previous videos Ive worked on are kept to the external, my idea is to keep the Internal hd as empty as possible. Is there anything else you could think of ?