movies on the macbook

[br.avery]

i have so many movies on my alu macbook, from dvd rips to torrents, will this slow down my macbook? can i use an application to compress them or zip them? what about an external drive?

what do you reccommend? :)

[shawnpringle]

It will slow down your system if you fill the hard drive with it, but as long as you have a pretty good amount of HD space, it will work fine.
I personally use a few 500GB firewire drives to store videos, photographs (photographer), and then create alias's (windows equivalent of shortcuts).
Or just delete videos that you dont watch. I did this when i had them on my macbook HD and i gained 10 GB of space. You can always download them again, or just watch them over the net (www.watch-movies.net)

[vandlism]

get an external drive to save those movies on, or at least back them up to. you're going to be mad if the hard drive dies and your collection goes with it.

[MacGeek7]

It will slow down your system if you fill the hard drive with it, but as long as you have a pretty good amount of HD space, it will work fine.
I personally use a few 500GB firewire drives to store videos, photographs (photographer), and then create alias's (windows equivalent of shortcuts).
Or just delete videos that you dont watch. I did this when i had them on my macbook HD and i gained 10 GB of space. You can always download them again, or just watch them over the net (www.watch-movies.net)

Going along with that, I've read that it is always a good idea to keep 10% of your HD free for optimal performance. Look on Newegg.com for some good deals on external HDs. I was able to pick up a 1 TB for around $200 this summer.

[SnowLeopard2008]

I used to keep all my movies on my external, but delete all of them since they got boring and I don't need them. I went from 60Gb left to 94Gb left. Just keep them on an external HD, they are cheap nowadays. I still have a 160GB desktop external HDD and it cost like $200 back in the days. Now for around the same price, 500GB notebook HDD is what you should expect.

[br.avery]

thanks so much for all the replies, now what external hd do you guys recommend?

i was thinking the "Western Digital WDMS3200TN 2.5" External Hard Drive" from newegg

but i don't know if it's good for movies, its 320gb. and its $130.

[nope7308]

thanks so much for all the replies, now what external hd do you guys recommend?

i was thinking the "Western Digital WDMS3200TN 2.5" External Hard Drive" from newegg

but i don't know if it's good for movies, its 320gb. and its $130.

Stick with a good name (Seagate, WD, etc.) and go for 500GB. The price difference isn't much and that extra space will come in handy. Also, see if you can find a drive with a 5 year warranty.

Personally, I bought a 3.5" desktop HD when it was on sale and then stuffed it into an external HD enclosure (also when it was on sale). I bought the drive a year or two ago and paid a total of about $150. Not bad, eh?