External hard drive question

Buy an external HD, plug it in, transfer files, carry it with you?

I'm not sure what the question is....

Upgrading the internal HDD would be more convenient in the long run as compared to lugging an external drive with you...

Do you need to carry 70gb of music with you on your laptop? I have no music on my MacBook, iMac or ipad. I do however have music on my iPhone. I use music when on the go not when sitting at my desk or on the couch. Also can you free up space elsewhere? I just can't fathom needing a full 250gb of data while on the go. Just take with you what you need and throw everything else on an external hdd and keep that in your laptop bag for when its needed. I try to keep my pcs as light as possible. I find things from years ago I don't need all the time. That stuff gets moved to an external hdd or deleted. I'm sure you can free up a good amount of space by getting rid of things you don't really need. If not then upgrade your internal drive as mentioned above.

Unless you are using up over 90% of the space on your hard drive. There won't be much of a performance benefit by moving the files.

A larger and faster internal would make more sense. Say a 7,200 RPM drive. If you really want to maximize performance get an SSD for your main drive for OS and apps. Then replace your optical drive with a bay adapter and a large mechanical drive for file storage. That way you have the convenience of carrying everything with you and maximum performance.

With a bay adapter be sure to get the appropriate one for your Macbook model. Older ones need an IDE to SATA newer ones use SATA to SATA. Don't fall for the high priced Optibay. You can get cheap ones on eBay that are just as good.

I just can't fathom needing a full 250gb of data while on the go. Just take with you what you need and throw everything else on an external hdd and keep that in your laptop bag for when its needed. I try to keep my pcs as light as possible.

Click to expand...

A larger hard drive is lighter and much more convenient than lugging an external drive everywhere you go. It also introduces another failure point. My MBP is my primary machine and I want all my music, videos, files, pictures, etc where ever I'm using it.

The hard drive in that vintage MBP is fairly easy to upgrade. I had a slightly older 17" MBP that I upgraded to 500gb. Took longer to clone the drive than to swap the hardware. Cost will be less than an external drive.

I would put the SSD where the current 250GB HD is. If the caddy is jiggly, then maybe you should put the SSD there because the SSD is less sensitive then spinners in regards to turbulence.

In terms of primary/slave etc., and speed, I don't think it makes a difference, but someone correct me on that. Sometimes however, it does make a difference whichever SATA port you connect to; when the system tries to wake from sleep (I'm thinking about some previous gen. Sandforce controller based SSDs)

For SSD brand, I highly recommend the Samsung 840 or 830 Series SSD.

I also recommend a clean install of Mac OS.

Cpnyc88 said:

SSD sounds good. I have a mid 2009 13" macbook pro. I want to upgrade to 8GB RAM and add an SSD at the same time. This will be my first time doing something like this myself so I have a few questions. Should I replace my 250GB hdd with a 120GB SSD and then replace my optical drive with that same 250GB hdd that came with the macbook using a caddy tray from amazon like this?

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Would it make a difference if I kept my HDD where it is and just added 120GB SSD in place of the optical drive?

also which folders besides Applications would I have to transfer to the SSD?

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Suggest New Internal Hard Drive

I just upgraded my Macbook Pro hard drive going from 300 gb to 1 tb. Always go for the biggest you can afford. Get a portable kit with the new drive. Then when you upgrade you can put the new drive in the portable kit, clone your interal old drive and then swap the drives, old in the portable enclosure, new cloned drive in your laptop. Then you have a backup of the old just drive just in case and ultimately can erase the old drive and use it as a portable.

I'd also suggest getting an external drive for running Time Machine.

I've heard good things from users of hybrid SSDs -- you get a lot of the SSD performance, but at lower cost/MB, e.g.:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momen...TF8&qid=1355932893&sr=8-1&keywords=hybrid+ssd

If you don't want to mess around with your optical drive why not just buy a larger 7200 hard drive (and a USB hard drive enclosure) and do this:

1: Put your new hard drive in the external USB enclosure and connect to your PC.
2: Use a disk cloner (such as Carbon Copy Cloner) to clone your drive to the external.
3: remove your original drive and replace with the one you just put in the external enclosure.
4: Boot up and your mac should work as it always did, just with more space.

I've done this loads of times without any issues at all.

An SSD would be nice, but you are going to have to pay a considerable amount for one larger than the drive you already have. If you dont want to remove your optical drive or use an external this may be your only real option.