Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

250 GB and 2GB RAM enough?

T

Twowildman21

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 14, 2008
40
0
I'm thinking of buying a new 250GB HD to replace my 80GB HD on my Macbook. I got the Macbook last Christmas and im also going to upgrade my RAM from 1GB to 2GB, on my HD right now i have 13GB free, but once I upgrade my RAM and HD will I be able to put Final Cut Studio 2 on my Macbook and is 2GB of RAM enough to edit my videos off of my Canon HV20 camcorder.

1) I have a LaCie 320 GB External Drive and is that what I would use to transfer my Disk to the new Harddrive?

2) Would I have to reinstall all my Applications again, such as Leopard, iLife 08, Final Cut Express, etc?

3) How long would this process take?

4) These are what i was going to buy:

-Western Digital Scorpio 250GB HD
-2GB of RAM (2 1GB sticks) from Crucial.com

Will those be good? Any better suggestions?


Thank You for your help in advance and for reading my long post! I appreciate it :)
 
1. Yes - but make sure you've got enough free space on it, obviously.
2. If you want to. One option is to clone your old HD to the LaCie using SuperDuper! (in fact do this anyway) and then clone it back to the new HD after you've fitted it. This should give you an exact copy of what you had. Or, you can re-install your apps and copy your other stuff over file-by-file. This will take longer but would give your system a nice spring clean. EDIT: Both TimJim's and dukebound85's solutions (below) should work as well. There you go, no less than 4 options! :)
3. Depends how you do it. See above.
4. If you're upgrading the RAM anyway, upgrade to the maximum (eg, 4GB if Santa Rosa) instead of 2GB. You'll probably only want to max it out anyway pretty soon if you're using FCP, and it'd probably be cheaper to it now rather than later.

HTH - GL
SL
 
Buy an external HD enclosure and clone your HD with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
 
Santa Rosa??

Ok I think I'm going to use Super Duper looks easy :)

Also where do you recommend getting 4Gb of RAM?

Thanks for your help
 
Twowildman21 said:
Santa Rosa??
Click to expand...
Santa Rosa refers to the chipset in the latest incarnation of the MacBook (and MacBook Pro and iMac). Santa Rosa Macs can handle up to 4GB RAM. Earlier Macs can't handle as much.

Twowildman21 said:
Also where do you recommend getting 4Gb of RAM?
Click to expand...
It depends where in the world you are. Try a forum search, this is one of those questions that comes up every other day. :rolleyes:

Check out www.crucial.com to find out how much memory your particular MacBook can handle (although they aren't necesarially the cheapest or best).

SL
 
superleccy said:
Santa Rosa refers to the chipset in the latest incarnation of the MacBook (and MacBook Pro and iMac). Santa Rosa Macs can handle up to 4GB RAM. Earlier Macs can't handle as much.


It depends where in the world you are. Try a forum search, this is one of those questions that comes up every other day. :rolleyes:

Check out www.crucial.com to find out how much memory your particular MacBook can handle (although they aren't necesarially the cheapest or best).

SL
Click to expand...

I think the old Macbooks can handle 3GB? correct me if I'm wrong

So I think I'm stuck with 2GB :(
 
It depends on the model of macbook what the maximum memory is. Here is a link to the guides on this website:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Understanding_Intel_Mac_RAM


The maximum RAM is different for different logic boards:

Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa machines, (MacBook Pro SR, Aluminum iMacs and the Nov 2007 MacBook SR) can recognize a full 4 GB of RAM.
Earlier Core 2 Duo machines can recognize a potential 3.3 GB (with 2 x 2 GB installed... the top 700 MB is wasted, so the practical maximum is 3 Gb with 1 x 1 Gb and 1 x 2 Gb). This is a hardware limitation.
With 4 GB installed, these machines will report 4 GB in System Profiler, but the operating system will only use 3.3 GB.
Core Duo and Core Solo machines max out at 2.0 GB. Again, this is a hardware memory controller limitation of each chipset.

I updated to 4 gigs (even with my earlier Core 2 duo) becuase I wanted to keep the duel channel performance increase and get that extra .3 gigs vs a 1 gig and a 2 gig unmatched pair. I don't know if it was worth it or not, but I noticed a huge performance increase vs the 1 gig total I had before.

For the hard drive, I am considering one of the new 320 gig drives that just came out, rather than the 250 gigs. I think they run about $180-200 from newegg.com.
 
If you're in the US, you can get 4gigs for $80 from Newegg, and the 320gb drive for <$200, or the 250gb for <$120.
 
Butting into the thread!

Is Time Machine enough for backups? I keep hearing about this Super Duper that can clone...I'm not sure what the difference is :confused:

One can't boot from the external with Time Machine? Should I use this Super Duper instead for backups? Does it also clone the VM?
 
SuperDuper produces a bootable & browsable clone (backup) of your hard drive. It can be scheduled, but you can only go back as far as the last backup. Also it's not yet fully Leopard-compatible (but they are working on it).

Time Machine does the zooming-back-thru-time thing, but the backups aren't bootable. However, you can do a full restore a new system from a Time Machine backup by booting from the Leopard CD and selecting "restore from Time Machine" (or something, sorry... never actually tried it).

I use both (or rather, I will when SuperDuper is Leopard compatible).

SL
 
actually i just did that upgrade today, i would probably recommend you to upgrade to one stick of 2gb taht way next time you want to get more ram you won t have to buy two more sticks you ll just have to get one more, i know it s alittle bit more pricey but i think it will save you money in the long run...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back