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Big HDs... why?

K

klb028

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 10, 2006
426
0
Texas
Not too sure where this topic should've gone, so feel free to move it moderators wherever you see fit!

I wanted to make this thread to get a few responses from people who like having big hard drives in their laptops. Why do you want more than 120GB? I have an old desktop at the moment with 40GB and I'm not even close to running out of space. Then again, I also don't have any type of music or video on my computer. But, I do like pictures and I take a lot of them... that would probably be the only thing taking up major space in my computer. With college coming up and all, I'm not sure how much space I'm going to need exactly. I notice that most people are upgrading from 120GB to 160GB. Do I really need to do this too (when I plan on purchasing) or... ? Why do you upgrade? I hope this wasn't too confusing to follow...

Any advice/comments are appreciated! Thanks!
 
Usually it's for people who do any type of video production or music production. I do some really light video editing so my little 40gb is enough for now, but for guys who plan to edit even a 45 min movie are looking at about 20gb or more of raw footage. I know the raw footage off of my little Mini DV camera creates some huge files. I could just imagine the size of the files from a professional HD camera. Any type of production is going to require quite a bit of room.
 
Essentially any kind of multimedia and/or games. My current laptop has a 60 GB HD and its been at full capacity for quite some time now.
 
Frankf300 said:
Usually it's for people who do any type of video production or music production. I do some really light video editing so my little 40gb is enough for now, but for guys who plan to edit even a 45 min movie are looking at about 20gb or more of raw footage. I know the raw footage off of my little Mini DV camera creates some huge files. I could just imagine the size of the files from a professional HD camera. Any type of production is going to require quite a bit of room.
Click to expand...

I would say it's usually for people with a lot of mp3s, dvd rips, porn, etc.
 
I have a 60 GB hard drive on my G4 iBook and I've been running at less than 2 GB free for several months. I do have a lot of music and tv shows from iTunes (I don't have time to watch tv during the school year, so I only download the shows that I like).

How many mega pixels is your camera? I just got the Rebel XT a year ago, and I have a hard time shooting in anything less than the highest quality (and sometimes RAW). With an 8 mega pixel camera you average 1.5 to 3 mb per picture. That adds up really fast if you take a lot of pictures. I can't wait to upgrade to the MBP so I can have a bigger HD (among other reasons). I remember when my grandparents bought their first computer way back when and the salesman told them that there was no way they were ever going to fill a 16 megabyte hard drive. Hard to imagine that hard drives were that small not that long ago (comparatively). Things change, don't get stuck with a puny hard drive. Especially with the MBP, it is hard to upgrade. The MacBook is easy to upgrade, so if you don't need or want to pay for a bigger one, you can always upgrade later.

Hope this helps!
 
i have 100 movies on my HD at about 1gb each, i have 20GB of music, and it grows all the time, and as video / music quality grows so will HD capacities, just the cycle of life with computers. plus the prices keep droping so no need not to buy a big HD to future proof ya computer and get good resale
 
People use their space differently. There are people who could still get by with 10GB hard drives.

I have a total of 680GB and I am half way full. Files are getting bigger. With HD on the horizon people are going to need more space.

Music download, movie download, TV shows, etc etc. There is a ton of data out there. Some people ignore it while others embrace it.

Not to mention a notebook isnt like a desktop, you cant just slap more hard drives in it. People keep notebooks for many years, so why not have it equipped with tons of room to store things. So you don't have to have an external hard drive.

Lastly, cost has come down on these things. And it will continue to, just as capacity goes up. We may not use the space but technology moves forward whether you do or not. Thus we get larger capacity drives.
 
Eidorian said:
We store more data? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That's a pretty good summary! :)

I bought a stock MacBook (60GB) which is nothing. I have an iTunes library well in excess of 100GB (on a 250GB extrenal) which is also my backup drive.

Another 250GB external houses my video.

I run EyeTV on my MB and every hour of recorded programming takes up ~1GB space. If I'm away for a while and a few shows get recorded I'm pretty low on space when I get back.
 
I like to have hard drive space so I can store all my music files (close to 70 gigs), edit my videos, and other various things. I need more space than what I've got on my iBook (60 GB) and my external HD on my iMac (120 GB) that I'm probably going to buy another external.
 
Personally, I have 200gb of HDD space and it's barely enough. I rip lots of DVDs, so that eats up 50-60gb at any given moment. I also compile a lot of TV shows by season. I either D/L them, rip them from DVDs, record them over FW from digital cable box, etc. Figure four or five shows at any time, each waiting till I have a full DVD-R's worth (or more usually a whole seasons worth), so there's 5-40gb depending on the month. Add my 30gb of music, 20gb of audio books, OSX bloat, normal applications, a few gigs for work I've taken home (no Mac at work yet, and I prefer to do my web, photo, and video work on a Mac) and you can see where my 200gb's go.

When I upgrade my mini to an Intel model, I'll prolly stick with the 80gb internal, keep my current 120gb FW drive, and add an additional 120gb USB2 (or FW, I suppose, hate to saturate the FW400 with 2 HDDs though). This one will all temp/scratch space, archival web, video and photo work stuff that I can take with me from home to work easily.
 
katielb said:
Why do you want more than 120GB? I have an old desktop at the moment with 40GB and I'm not even close to running out of space.
Click to expand...

:eek: !!!

OS X + all my apps alone take up almost 30 gigs, then add 16.03 GB of my Documents, plus 55 GB of stuff (mostly web/graphic/movie project files) on an external hard drive.

So in total I have 101 GB of stuff... then of course I need extra room for OS X virtual memory, and then lots of extra room for whatever other files I may need to use (lets say double what I already have). So a 200 GB drive would make sense.
 
I have a Powerbook G4 Ti with a 40 GB HD - It's been full for the past year or so, mostly music and design files (photoshop/quark/indesign). I have an external HD that I store the rest of the files I don't need everyday.

When I do update, it will have to be at least 120 GB. It all depends on what you use your computer for and you should buy depending on your needs.
 
some people just don't simply do enough to have a lot of data. I used to not have anything on my computers. But now, I have around 60gb just of music so an 80gb is already out of the question for a laptop. I have tons of music and photos and some video but that's about it.. I'm probably pretty light on the data side compared to other users too. I know for me when I get my MBP it may be tight having a 120gb bc i'll have all my music, photos, and a few videos on there PLUS i want to load xp on there so that will take up more space too. nowadays it's easy to fill up a hard drive with all the crap you can download.
 
When I switched to an iMac in February, from a four year old Dell with a 40GB HD out of which I was using 25GB, I got the minimum 160GB since I thought I would never need any more.

With the ease of iLife (the free PC software that came with the camera was so crap I only ever ran it once) I'm now taking more home videos than I ever thought possible (yeah, crap production values, but no one outside the family is going to see them), and the occasional missed TV episode download, I had to buy an external HD.

Learning my lesson, I went for a 500GB external HD. At this rate of disk space usage it should last me a couple of years before needing to upgrade.

You modify your computer use to match the resources available. With the extra disk space I was able to expand what I could do. When I get a new Mac in 3 or 4 years, when TB flash drives will be the minimum, I expect I will find something else to store on it.
 
katielb said:
Then again, I also don't have any type of music or video on my computer.
Click to expand...

There's your answer right there...I like to put all my CDs and many DVDs onto my computer so that when I want to watch/listen to something I don't have to go searching through (potentially empty) jewel cases to find it. Some day when I have lots of money I'm going to buy something huge. :D
 
To hold your 80GB iPod worth of stuff, of course! And throw in 10-20 GB of photos, OS X, applications and a little breathing room and my 160GB is just right....for now... :rolleyes:
 
DVDs, ripping CDs at high quality, pics & vids from camera? It all adds up. If they had a 300GB laptop drive I would buy it. I'm always burning stuff to DVD or moving data to an external drive to save space.

After the 80 gig in my Powerbook died I bought a 120GB drive thinking, "Bah, that'll be plenty, it'll never be full." In saying that, it was the largest drive available at the time so I was probably just trying to convince myself that was all I'd need. :p Now there's 10 Gigs left. :rolleyes:

It's one of the reasons I'm changing my main computer to a Desktop. I really need the space plus I'll have better piece of mind knowing I'm not carrying all my data around in a backpack, taking all the bumps and tumbles of the day. Seems really dodgy in a way. :confused:
 
i am currently on an 80GB drive and will be getting a 120GB drive in my MacBook. i have abour 30GB of movies and music, tons of apps (which also put stuff in the library folder), 5GB or so of docs and maybe a gig or two of photos, and that takes up 65GB or so. Once I start shooting digital ( I currently shoot 35mm and barely ever scan prints), those free 50GB (because 5 will be formatted and stuff) will be filled very quickly, especially considering that I will be shooting RAW.
 
Completely filled up my 250gb external drive, 12 gb left on internal 80gb MBP drive. That's why we have big drives. I need a 1tb drive!
 
My Mini gets along reasonably well with a 40GB drive (although 60 would give me a litle more elbow room)-
Working files: 20GB

My server on the other hand..
Sites: about 4GB
Photos: 3GB
Movies: 40GB
Music: 410GB
 
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