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Big HDs... why?
- Thread starter klb028
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The space is needed - no one ever needs less space. Music, photos, Video, home theater applications, etc. There is only an ever increasing need for storage...people used to have scrapbooks for photos and tape and CD racks now this space is physically gone and exists on the hard drive...the reason people want so much space is not only to store it but to back it up - this is where apple is thinking about the future...make computers and applications for the 'digital life' and then people will have their lives on the computer and then require a back up which Apple will provide a service for a fee to 'back up' peoples lives on a server farm in CA...
80GB HDD on my macbook now and ive only got less than 10GB left. 40GB of that is stuff that I brought in myself (pictures/video/music) but the rest is random garbage that Apple gave me. Ive used WhatSize to check what Apple apps are giving me the bloat and its mostly garage band and iMove. Two apps I have yet to touch.
With Leopard coming out giving even more HDD demands, I'd prefer to just keep Apples preinstalled junk (just in case its important) and just upgrade to a 120-160GB HDD and an external enclosure for my current drive. Its easy enough to upgrade on a macbook so why not.
With Leopard coming out giving even more HDD demands, I'd prefer to just keep Apples preinstalled junk (just in case its important) and just upgrade to a 120-160GB HDD and an external enclosure for my current drive. Its easy enough to upgrade on a macbook so why not.
Well, with Boot Camp and having to deal with two different OS environments, it certainly has limited my MBP's space so far. I'm looking for an external HD for all my media and stuff, since I get panicky when it runs low.
Wow, thanks for all of the great replies! I wasn't trying to offend anyone in any way by asking why you need more hard drive space... I really was just curious to see what everyone uses it for. I'm not familiar with OS X at all, so I had no idea how much that alone + standard applications take up on the laptops. I figured that once I get into college, I'll start downloading a lot more music/videos.
The 20 GB HD on my 1999 G4 Desktop makes one aware of how fast storage technology and pricing have been changing.
Went a bit over board with compiling an iTunes library, ripping, storing and organizing a large CD collection. Apple Lossless saves a little space over .aif music files and compilations are bit perfect. Re-imports, editing, conversions to other formats and lossy codecs like AAC is possible without degrading the quality, compared to an mp3 only library. Also takes up 10 times the space as mp3! I paid for every one of those bits and I'm not going to toss 90% of them forever! CD quality is the minimul archival qualty I perfer to store songs with.
Filled up a 200 GB HD with an itunes library using Apple Lossless. Went with a 400 GB HD, since investing all that time in ripping CD's to a hard drive it's foolish to not have it all cloned on another HD. I've read to many posts in MacRumours about "my HD broke" and what a catastrophe and/or waste of time to recover/find or duplicate all the downloads from scratch. I don't even care about the price much anymore with very large 400-500GB external FW/USB going for ~$150- 250. Space is just so cheap that storing in a high quality format isn't an issue. Having some extra room for movies or video on another partition works well.
It seems very important to keep a complete itunes library on a single hard drive and not having to split the itunes song files across multiple drives, so a 400GB external FW/USB Seagate gave the 200GB OWC itunes library room to grow. On that move I realized how important it is to have a backup so got a 500 GB seagate drive.
This time I realized that USB and FW are solid, especially usefull having a complete OS and application clone Drive, ready to boot from a 20 GB partition. The bootable clone is backed up regularly with "Super Duper", for peace of mind idiot proofing.
However the ATA drive technology is on it's way out and nearly all new drives in latest gen Macs are SATA technology drive.
SO... I bought a 500 GB SATA drive with the intention of housing it externally, but it fits fine INSIDE that big old G4 case and connects to all my current configuration with only a $70 SATA PCI card. I easily mounted the 500 SATA internally with one skinny SATAe cable attached to one of the optional internal SATA connectors.
The new SATA drive speed seem a little slower than the FW, but when I get a new Power Mac, I'll just pop in that 500 GB SATA HD, doing temporary itunes Library/boot clone duty and be ready for super FAST data transfers.
I'm just amazed that this _huge_, 500GB, late generation SATAII technology, will even work in a 1999 G4, and provide a plug and play bridge to a new Mac that will be able to use the Fast SATA drive fully.
Still think external ATA HD (FW) performance may be a bit more solid on older Power Macs and my G4, as well as being a bargain. An ATA drive purchase at this point is an investment in old technology. SATA drives seem like a useful component that appears very easy to transfer to a current brand new Mac Pro. -
Greenjeens
Went a bit over board with compiling an iTunes library, ripping, storing and organizing a large CD collection. Apple Lossless saves a little space over .aif music files and compilations are bit perfect. Re-imports, editing, conversions to other formats and lossy codecs like AAC is possible without degrading the quality, compared to an mp3 only library. Also takes up 10 times the space as mp3! I paid for every one of those bits and I'm not going to toss 90% of them forever! CD quality is the minimul archival qualty I perfer to store songs with.
Filled up a 200 GB HD with an itunes library using Apple Lossless. Went with a 400 GB HD, since investing all that time in ripping CD's to a hard drive it's foolish to not have it all cloned on another HD. I've read to many posts in MacRumours about "my HD broke" and what a catastrophe and/or waste of time to recover/find or duplicate all the downloads from scratch. I don't even care about the price much anymore with very large 400-500GB external FW/USB going for ~$150- 250. Space is just so cheap that storing in a high quality format isn't an issue. Having some extra room for movies or video on another partition works well.
It seems very important to keep a complete itunes library on a single hard drive and not having to split the itunes song files across multiple drives, so a 400GB external FW/USB Seagate gave the 200GB OWC itunes library room to grow. On that move I realized how important it is to have a backup so got a 500 GB seagate drive.
This time I realized that USB and FW are solid, especially usefull having a complete OS and application clone Drive, ready to boot from a 20 GB partition. The bootable clone is backed up regularly with "Super Duper", for peace of mind idiot proofing.
However the ATA drive technology is on it's way out and nearly all new drives in latest gen Macs are SATA technology drive.
SO... I bought a 500 GB SATA drive with the intention of housing it externally, but it fits fine INSIDE that big old G4 case and connects to all my current configuration with only a $70 SATA PCI card. I easily mounted the 500 SATA internally with one skinny SATAe cable attached to one of the optional internal SATA connectors.
The new SATA drive speed seem a little slower than the FW, but when I get a new Power Mac, I'll just pop in that 500 GB SATA HD, doing temporary itunes Library/boot clone duty and be ready for super FAST data transfers.
I'm just amazed that this _huge_, 500GB, late generation SATAII technology, will even work in a 1999 G4, and provide a plug and play bridge to a new Mac that will be able to use the Fast SATA drive fully.
Still think external ATA HD (FW) performance may be a bit more solid on older Power Macs and my G4, as well as being a bargain. An ATA drive purchase at this point is an investment in old technology. SATA drives seem like a useful component that appears very easy to transfer to a current brand new Mac Pro. -
Greenjeens
Music = ~20GB
Movies = ~10 or 15GB
Pictures = ~6GB
Documents = ~1GB
Full install of OSX + iLife = ~15GB
So that's close to 60GB now with my G4 iBook (which only has a 40GB HDD - I have lots of CDs). When I finally go Intel and gain the massive speed increase in Video encoding that value for Movies will soar.
There's always room for more room.
Movies = ~10 or 15GB
Pictures = ~6GB
Documents = ~1GB
Full install of OSX + iLife = ~15GB
So that's close to 60GB now with my G4 iBook (which only has a 40GB HDD - I have lots of CDs). When I finally go Intel and gain the massive speed increase in Video encoding that value for Movies will soar.
There's always room for more room.
I have 80Gb in my MBP and an external HD of 320Gb. I have about 5Gb of photos that i have taken myself. Im at university, i have nearly 20Gb of work. I have to download Journal Articles which are big files, and research reports. My uni is also getting into e-books which are a pain, and take up lots of space. I also collect music and rip all the CD's i buy to my HD at lossless.
Modern life somewhat dictates we need a lot of space. But everyone has different needs.
Modern life somewhat dictates we need a lot of space. But everyone has different needs.
Between shooting RAW w/ my 350D and having 600+ CDs in my collection (all ripped at 160kb/s), 120GB barely works for me. I really need 160GB or 200GB.
If I had a desktop "workstation", I could keep my primary libraries on there and use the laptop for on-the-go work, but I don't. I have one Mac and on PC, so all of my primary work goes on the Mac.
I saw a PC laptop the other day with dual 160GB HDDs. It was the first time I'd lusted for a PC in a looooong time.
If I had a desktop "workstation", I could keep my primary libraries on there and use the laptop for on-the-go work, but I don't. I have one Mac and on PC, so all of my primary work goes on the Mac.
I saw a PC laptop the other day with dual 160GB HDDs. It was the first time I'd lusted for a PC in a looooong time.
I am selling my macbook pro and getting one with a 200GB HD. I will be using 40 GBs for bootcamp (wow alone takes like 10GB) and 10GB for parallels. That leaves me with 150GB (or 130-135 in real wold numbers). When i travel i normally some ripped DVD', itunes tv shows and some other stuff which really eats up space. I do have a portable HD which needs no power but sometimes its better to carry everything on your laptop.
I would say that for most normal users, 80Gig should be enough. That allows for some music, a few videos etc etc but basically just using a computer for what a computer was used ten years ago.
Each one of my mixes may take up a few gigs though, so I personally eat space - and on top of that I have triple what is required so I can do two backups - one in a secure location. This is also expensive - as One 500Gig drive suddently becommes 1.5TB... Times that by three (scratch drive, Mac Drive and a "sound Storage" drive - and you've got yourself a regular drive fest.
Each one of my mixes may take up a few gigs though, so I personally eat space - and on top of that I have triple what is required so I can do two backups - one in a secure location. This is also expensive - as One 500Gig drive suddently becommes 1.5TB... Times that by three (scratch drive, Mac Drive and a "sound Storage" drive - and you've got yourself a regular drive fest.
HD rips of TV shows usually run around 700mb-1GB alone, and that adds up quickly. one of the reasons i went for a 'big' HD.
I have three hard drives which total to about 750gb of hard drive space in this PC. The reason is that i do a lot of developement work and an SQL backup from one of my web sites is over 1gb.
I went to a microsoft presentation about 3 years ago, and they were mentioning there that it wont be unheard us for people to have 1tb or more for hard drives by now, which is surprisingly true, seeing as i have about 3gb free space on my hard drives, and with a 300gb hard drive around about £100 its very tempting to get a forth hard drive! My case has room for 6 hard drives which is very handy!
I have recently brought a macbook, and i am now looking to upgrade its internal hard drive to 160gb. For a laptop i can't see me needing more than that, my powerbook also has 80gb which was enough for that seeing as i am running windows on my macbook.
You can quickly use up all your hard drive space!
I went to a microsoft presentation about 3 years ago, and they were mentioning there that it wont be unheard us for people to have 1tb or more for hard drives by now, which is surprisingly true, seeing as i have about 3gb free space on my hard drives, and with a 300gb hard drive around about £100 its very tempting to get a forth hard drive! My case has room for 6 hard drives which is very handy!
I have recently brought a macbook, and i am now looking to upgrade its internal hard drive to 160gb. For a laptop i can't see me needing more than that, my powerbook also has 80gb which was enough for that seeing as i am running windows on my macbook.
You can quickly use up all your hard drive space!
Me too. I'm desperate for loads more hard drive space no my MacBook Pro, but the optical drive is also very important...
I wanted a nice 160GB HDD in my MBP but alas my budget didn't agree with that so I only ended up with the default 80GB. I rip movies, animes and tv shows onto my computer, along with listening to podcasts, watching vidcasts, doing some image editing and playing games. I have 75% of my HDD filled right now and it's only been 3 weeks since I got it.
In FAT file systems (at least) performance would take a big hit as you moved past 80% total capacity. I have never checked to see if this is true with OSX's file system. I just have tried to maintain the same discipline, to keep it at, or below that level. My PB has an 80GB drive. I have a lot of programs installed on it. So, I have ~20GB as my comfortable working space. When I return home, I attach a LaCie 500GB, and move my work to its' new home. If I want to take my iTunes library, I have much of it on a 30 GB USB drive. It uses 2 USB ports to run, but is small and compact enough to easily carry in my laptop case. The set-up works well for me.
Speaking of external drive's, how do you like the MyBook's?
I'm going to be needing an external drive soon because the 160 GB in this iMac is slowly running out.
