Using OS hard drive for captured footage??

Years back the rule was never to use your main hard drive, with both operating system and FCP, to store and access captured footage. Yesterday an instructor at a school that uses FCP was telling me they no longer follow that rule and use their IMAC's hard drive to capture footage, with no problems resulting. He claims that the systems are now so fast it's no longer a problem. Is this correct or is it still advised to capture all footage to separate drives?
Thanks.
John

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to answer my question. I think I've heard what I expected to hear.
I suppose the real reason I was interested in an answer to this question was because I expected it would help me decide whether to buy a new IMAC or MAC Pro for FCP use. I've decided my criteria for purchase should be which is the better computer for a five-year span of FCP use. Who knows what new things will be out then, and what new demands video technology and FCPwill be making on computers. This teaching friend was arguing in favour of an IMAC, saying with the cheaper investment I can just buy a new IMAC, with whatever the needed new specs are, when the time comes. The other argument suggests the MAC Pro has enough capacity to grow. Yet I remember my old G4; it could only max out with 1.5 GB Ram and then FCP went to Intel and made it obsolete. None of these changes were visible in the distance - to me at least - when I bought that machine. If I was to choose the IMAC route the main problem would be hard drive space. With only one Fire Wire 800 one would have to rely on a lot of daisy chaining. Hence my curiosity about possible use of the internal drive - as one can order up to 3 TB.
Thanks again.
John

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Using OS hard drive for captured footage??

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