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How do you fit everything onto an ssd?

nick1516

nick1516

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
564
0
I wanted to hear from everybody that has an ssd with a bootcamp partition, how do you keep everything on it? I have a 250gb hard drive, and between my itunes, everything I have stored, and about 6 games installed on bootcamp, I am already starting to run out of space. I would love to get an ssd, but to get one with the space I need would be way out of my price range!
 
The most logical way to do things would be to put the OS and all most used files on a SSD, while keeping files that wouldn't benefit from it on another internal hard drive (via an optibay) or external hard drive.
 
yeah lots of dudes put their media content on a different drive, be it external or pull out their superdrive and stick a hard drive in there.
 
rgarjr said:
yeah lots of dudes put their media content on a different drive, be it external or pull out their superdrive and stick a hard drive in there.
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Ditto, with a SSD you simply have to make sacrifices with and prioritise what needs to be there and what you would like to be there.
 
There is no secret, hard drive space is hard drive space and everybody with an SSD uses it up the exact same way that you do. When reading SSD posts you'll notice that most people with smaller SSD's keep a lot of their media on an external. Either that or they just don't have a whole lot on their computers : )
 
easy!
well if i got an ssd it would be. i have a 200gb hdd with 165gb free.
i just dont have much music/videos/pictures/games on my mbp.
i have external hdd for that
 
I bought the 500 GB with rhe 7200 RPM. The salesman at apple recommended that over the SSD. Works great for me.
 
Would it be possible to have everything from itunes(music, tv shows, movies, apps etc.) stored on an external hard drive and still be able to sync(I kind of doubt it) And I'm assuming games would need to be on the actual ssd?
 
nick1516 said:
Would it be possible to have everything from itunes(music, tv shows, movies, apps etc.) stored on an external hard drive and still be able to sync(I kind of doubt it) And I'm assuming games would need to be on the actual ssd?
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iTunes music and movies would sync just fine from an external drive. iTunes will search for the music, movies, shows etc. on the external hard drive as long as you set iTunes to search for this stuff on the external.

All your applications will have to be stored on the drive containing the operating system though.

I've got an SSD installed with a 320GB drive located where the superdrive used to be. The computer is blazing fast and I still have a ton of storage capacity. Besides, if you work in photoshop/illustrator a lot, it's smart to use a secondary drive for those programs to write their scratch files so you don't take up unnecessary space on your OS drive.
 
nick1516 said:
Would it be possible to have everything from itunes(music, tv shows, movies, apps etc.) stored on an external hard drive and still be able to sync(I kind of doubt it) And I'm assuming games would need to be on the actual ssd?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can have the iTunes stuff on a separate disk and still sync it up.

I wouldn't expect games to be notably better on an SSD except for launch speed, since they're designed to work from the HDD just fine. But others would know more than me.
 
rafatmit said:
Yes, you can have the iTunes stuff on a separate disk and still sync it up.

I wouldn't expect games to be notably better on an SSD except for launch speed, since they're designed to work from the HDD just fine. But others would know more than me.
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But would the games take a performance hit if they were on an external drive? I'm guessing so.
 
If you plan on using bootcamp, please get something >80 gb. It's doable on 80 GB but for the past couple of weeks i've been pressed HARD for some space after installing some high profile applications (office, creative suite MC, solidworks etc). This is after following my general practices of all non essentials on an external disk, not installing additional languages or other useless packages, etc etc. This is worse so because you can't change the size of the swap file that OS X uses (to my knowledge?) so when memory leaky applications (safari) run my hard drive suddenly gets full all of a sudden.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
If you plan on using bootcamp, please get something >80 gb. It's doable on 80 GB but for the past couple of weeks i've been pressed HARD for some space after installing some high profile applications (office, creative suite MC, solidworks etc). This is after following my general practices of all non essentials on an external disk, not installing additional languages or other useless packages, etc etc. This is worse so because you can't change the size of the swap file that OS X uses (to my knowledge?) so when memory leaky applications (safari) run my hard drive suddenly gets full all of a sudden.
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Yeah, I was trying to see if I could fit everything onto apple's 128gb ssd(I couldn't find that size cheaper) for when I upgrade next year, otherwise I will probably just get the 500gb momentus xt.
 
nick1516 said:
Yeah, I was trying to see if I could fit everything onto apple's 128gb ssd(I couldn't find that size cheaper) for when I upgrade next year, otherwise I will probably just get the 500gb momentus xt.
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Look into the MCE Tech Optibay. I have an Intel 160GB SSD as my primary drive and a 500GB 7200RPM drive as a secondary drive for data and games :)
 
First of all, GET A SSD!

I just got a new MBP w/ SSD (i7, 17", 8 gb ram) and it is amazing!
I got the 256gb SSD from apple and have had no issues, i found the price similar to doing it on my own.

I think you could get away with 128 gb if you are just going to run OSX and Windows, but no media.

Since mine is 17" it is more of a desktop replacement I usually keep it parked on my desk with a 4 TB Graid firewire external HD which is awesome, when I travel I just take my media on a WD firewire 840 gb (I think, maybe its 720 gb) external drive. If you are on an airplane you can just leave the external drive in your bag at your feet and run the firewire to your laptop, it really isn't a huge deal. I mostly use my media through Songbird and VLC player, if you are really into itunes you might have issues with having the library on both drives, not sure about this.
 
Thunder82 said:
Look into the MCE Tech Optibay. I have an Intel 160GB SSD as my primary drive and a 500GB 7200RPM drive as a secondary drive for data and games :)
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Wow this is awesome, I just don't know if I would want to void my warranty yet. Very tempting, why the hell do we have optical drives anyway!?!?
 
I posted about this in a similar thread earlier today. I use a 1TB dual band Time Capsule and a 120GB OCZ SSD w/GC. I have all my media on the TC and OS, games, and apps on the SSD. Transfer speeds are fast on my home N network, even when streaming HD content or transfering large files. When away from home for extended time, I setup the external connection to the TC so I can authenticate to my content from abroad. I also get the added benefit of backups with time machine, fewer devices cluttering my office, superdrive access when remote, and no voided warranty. :eek:

Works great for me, your results may vary.
 
Restinbeast said:
First of all, GET A SSD!

I just got a new MBP w/ SSD (i7, 17", 8 gb ram) and it is amazing!
I got the 256gb SSD from apple and have had no issues, i found the price similar to doing it on my own.

I think you could get away with 128 gb if you are just going to run OSX and Windows, but no media.

Since mine is 17" it is more of a desktop replacement I usually keep it parked on my desk with a 4 TB Graid firewire external HD which is awesome, when I travel I just take my media on a WD firewire 840 gb (I think, maybe its 720 gb) external drive. If you are on an airplane you can just leave the external drive in your bag at your feet and run the firewire to your laptop, it really isn't a huge deal. I mostly use my media through Songbird and VLC player, if you are really into itunes you might have issues with having the library on both drives, not sure about this.
Click to expand...

I would love to get a 256 gb ssd, but I think that would probably be out of my price range. Plus I'm wondering how much it would effect resale for upgrading each summer to the newest refresh.
 
As others have noticed, SSD should contain the OS, and programs, that's where the huge speed boost is going to come into play. All media can be on removable drives and/or thumbdrives, optical media, etc.
 
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