MBP getting slow and sliuggish.

Hello
I hope this is the right forum to post this but I'm new to MAC, having bought my first MBP. I also use Final Cut Express.
My external drive is a LaCie 500gb usb/Fw400/|FW800/eSata and contains all my video files as well as being the time machine backup (not a good idea! ).
Anyway I thought I heard we really don't need to "clean-out-the-trash" like we do on PC, ie; defragging deleting temp files and the like. However I am noticing that my MBP seems to be slowing down and getting a bit sluggish. Not the peppy thing it was when I bought it 3 months ago.
Mainly doing video editing and right now have a project with 11 hours of DV video on the timeline in FCE.
My question is should I be defragging the drives? What other utilities do I need to find and run regularly or does Leapord take care of these things automatically? if so when? A friend told me I had to leave my MBP on all night because Leapord runs it's maintainence at night.
I'm a bit confused here. Could someone straighten me out a bit?
Thanks
Allen

Hi
Thanks. What happened was when I booted with the recovery discs, my main screen came up and the boot disc was in a seperate window. I just did it again. PUt in my MAC OS-x Install disc 1. It's in it's own window and there's no menu bar at the top of the window. A the top ofthe screen is my Finder menu bar. The only choices to click on this window is "Install MAC OS-x and Bundled Software.app", or Install Bundled Sofftware only, Below those icons is 2 grey folders, opeional installs and instructions.
Again should I somehow have made an emergency boot disk?
I'm using Disc 1 of the 2 discs that came with the MBP.
Sorry if I'm not understanding something here.
Coming from PC's when you use a boot disc you don't get any part of your main window showing up. Maybe thats confusing me.
Allen

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