Apple Storage Advice

[thepominlaw]

My 21.5” imac (late 2009 base) is just about to be no longer covered by applecare. I would like to replace it but money is tight and I cannot afford to spend £1500+ on the base 27” model.

I bought the base 21.5” model as it was my first ever Mac and I was unsure if I would like it. To cut a long story short I stopped using PC’s. I have overcome some of its limitations, to help with encoding I purchased the Elgato Turbo 264 HD USB encoding stick which really helped but the biggest issue I have is storage space. I have a WD Studio drive (2 x 1TB mirrored) for timemachine.

Now though the 500 GB internal drive is almost full and I seem to spend silly amount of time backing up onto blu ray disks or deleting files. I have come up with a few options and would appreciate some comments as I am nervous about opening up the machine.

1 – New internal 1Tb Drive (which one will work with fan sensor??) and SSD in place of optical drive. (Scares me that I could kill machine) - £?
2 – Another WD External twin mirrored drive FW800 connection - £160
3 – WD Passport Studio 1Tb FW800 external - £100

Any help appreciated.....

 

[bflowers]

What do you keep on the internal drive that takes up all your room? There are many external drives out there that could easily increase your storage, and are easier than replacing the internal drive.

 

[thepominlaw]

What do you keep on the internal drive that takes up all your room? There are many external drives out there that could easily increase your storage, and are easier than replacing the internal drive.

I keep all my photos, music and movies on it as I know it can be backed up with time machine. Scared to keep it all on an external incase it dies.....

 

[bflowers]

I keep all my photos, music and movies on it as I know it can be backed up with time machine. Scared to keep it all on an external incase it dies.....

Any drive can fail. You can also tell Time Machine to back up external drives, just remove them from the Exclusion List in Time Machine settings. Any music and movies you purchased can be replaced or recovered/redownloaded. Any that you might have made yourself, along with your photos would be what I prioritize. You will want those on more than one drive, with optical disc backups, preferably stored off site unless you also pay for off site backup. External large HDD are fairly cheap during the holiday season. I picked up a 3TB drive on Black Friday for $100. Not sure what you can get in the UK, but probably something similarly priced.

 

[thepominlaw]

Am thinking I should put libraries on external WD drive as it has 2 drives mirrored and get another 1tb for time machine. Also think its time to carry out clean install of is as I have never done it since owning machine which went from snow leopard to lion and mountain lion as upgrades might be time to start from scratch