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buying new iMac - hard drive size?

R

robgettier

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 24, 2009
4
0
Hello,

I am looking to buy a new iMac soon to replace my curent iMac (first gen Intel). (My daughter will inherit the current iMac).

I have a 1TB drive in the current iMac which is primarily used to house content for iPhoto and iTunes. Currently there is about 100gb of free space.

1TB will not be enough space for much longer. I continue to rip music & video and we recently got a SLR camera that produces large file size pictures.

So thinking to the future, I will need atleast 2TB. Should I do this internally (via upgrade during purchase) or externally? If externally, I could save some money and get the model with only 500gb drive.

My main question is if external is fast enough on a routine basis accessing iTunes and such. (I assume this drive would be USB.)

The second question is, should I spend a little extra now and get model with 1TB drive and thus put off the external need for a year or more. This would allow the prices to drop on external Thunderbolt storage.

Thanks for any help.

Rob
 
Quite A Few Options

robgettier said:
Hello,

I am looking to buy a new iMac soon to replace my curent iMac (first gen Intel). (My daughter will inherit the current iMac).

I have a 1TB drive in the current iMac which is primarily used to house content for iPhoto and iTunes. Currently there is about 100gb of free space.

1TB will not be enough space for much longer. I continue to rip music & video and we recently got a SLR camera that produces large file size pictures.

So thinking to the future, I will need atleast 2TB. Should I do this internally (via upgrade during purchase) or externally? If externally, I could save some money and get the model with only 500gb drive.

My main question is if external is fast enough on a routine basis accessing iTunes and such. (I assume this drive would be USB.)

The second question is, should I spend a little extra now and get model with 1TB drive and thus put off the external need for a year or more. This would allow the prices to drop on external Thunderbolt storage.

Thanks for any help.

Rob
Click to expand...

I have a 1TB in my (July 2011) iMac, but have NAS external storage too. You could spec up to 2TB on the iMac, then add external storage as required.
 
Well right now, hard drive prices are very high, but I would still go with the 1 or 2 TB HDD and get a Thunderbolt external HDD to go with your new iMac when you get one.

This way you'll have plenty of storage and should have to worry about it for a long time. Plus the Thunderbolt speed won't affect any transferring of data from the external drive to the iMac.
 
I'd go with the external, far cheaper, and since portability is not an issue you should be fine. I use my external for all of my iTunes music and it does just fine
 
Go for the 2TB internal. It will be less noisy and you will not have wires hanging all over the place.

You can always add external crap... but you can only get the clean internal option now. Just do it and don't look back.

/Jim
 
I would BTO an iMac with 2TB since you're already close to maxing the your current 1TB system. That way you wouldn't have to manage iTunes/iPhoto folder locations and have less clutter. You're still going to want an external drive for Time Machine because it would suck to lose that almost 1TB of music and memories.
 
I went for the 1TB + 256Gb SSD options when we bought our iMac a month ago. Didnt feel the need to go for the internal 2TB HDD as I will (When money permitting) be buying a 2TB external HDD (Will use Firewire 800) to store all our music, photos, ripped DVDs and more importantly Time Machine backup.
 
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