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Macbook Pro Full Hard Drive

H

Hrothgar

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
530
23
New York
I've at a 160gb drive on my Macbook. It's down to 10 gigs free, which I freed up by deleting some old stuff. I have a 500 gb Western Digital hard drive that I use for a wireless backup. I think I read somewhere that I can move my iTunes music folder onto the hard drive, yet still access it "naturally" when I play music from iTunes. I stream the music wirelessly from my computer through an Airport Express.

Is this possible? If so, can someone tell me how to do it? The WD drive doesn't show up in Finder. Do I need to partition it? I'm kind of clueless about this.

Would I do better to just buy a larger internal hard drive for my Mac, and restore the old info from the WD?

Thanks.
 
2 Things come to mind:

How much music are you talking about?
You stream the music from your airport, is that going from your Macbook, or to your Macbook from another computer?
 
The iTunes music library is almost 45 gb. Yes, straight from the macbook pro through the Aexpress to my receiver.
 
Ok, seems like putting it on your external would be ideal. If you want to have it on your laptop at all times, you can upgrade the harddrive to something larger. It's easy to do if you choose to.

Since you have an external, though, this is how you're going to use it:

Keep in mind that this will erase anything that was on it before. If you were using it with a Windows PC, and you want those files back, you'll have to install Windows through Bootcamp, or find a PC to take the files off.

1. Plug the external in, make sure that it turns on. (Light comes on/you can hear the disks spinning)
2. Launch Disk Utiility. (Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility)
3. Select the external, and select the Erase tab.
4. Make sure it says "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", then name it whatever you want.
5. Hit Erase and let it do it's thing.

After it's done you should see it in Finder. Then just follow this guide to copy your iTunes music folder.
 
Thanks. When you say "plug in," I assume you mean a direct usb connection? Also, can I still use the external as my Time Machine backup?
 
Hrothgar said:
Thanks. When you say "plug in," I assume you mean a direct usb connection? Also, can I still use the external as my Time Machine backup?
Click to expand...

If your already using the drive as a networked external just drag and drop the files onto the external drive and then re direct itunes "library" to the new folder on your external drive.

should be no need to reformat anything if you are already using the drive with osx.
 
EstrlM3 said:
If your already using the drive as a networked external just drag and drop the files onto the external drive and then re direct itunes "library" to the new folder on your external drive.

should be no need to reformat anything if you are already using the drive with osx.
Click to expand...

In the original post, it stated that the hard drive wasn't showing up in Finder. To me that says that it isn't formatted correctly for OS X to read it.
 
StopSign24 said:
In the original post, it stated that the hard drive wasn't showing up in Finder. To me that says that it isn't formatted correctly for OS X to read it.
Click to expand...
it should show up regardless - be it FAT32, NTFS or even ext3. if the OP was reading from it then it might just be a mounting issue, Disk Utility will help to show indicate what is happening.

the processes is extremely simple, copy stuff to networked drive, hold option when opening iTunes and select library on networked drives. :)

beware though, you will have quite a bit of noticeable latency.
 
Hrothgar said:
Would I do better to just buy a larger internal hard drive for my Mac, and restore the old info from the WD?
Click to expand...

If you already had to delete files from your hard drive, then moving stuff to an external drive will not help you for long time. At the moment we have reached the point where a 500 GB internal drive is _cheap_. If you have a MacBook, and not a MacBook Pro, then it is easy to replace the hard drive on _all_ MacBooks (it is also easy on all _new_ MacBook Pro's, so we'd have to know which model).

You will need a size 0 Philips screw driver, you need a small Torx screw driver but if you don't have one then a pair of pliers will do :D and the one thing that you need to watch out for is that the drive must be 9mm or 9.5mm high and not 12mm, the 12mm ones don't fit in a MacBook. If you can operate a screw driver, then you are fine. If you don't, then you better ask someone else. And if it is your first time, have someone watch every step you make so you can reverse the steps. Especially take notice which way round the hard drive was when you pulled it out.

By the way: All hard drives get slower as they get full, so a 500 GB hard drive that is 2/3rds empty will be faster than your almost full 160 GB drive.
 
My MBP is almost 4 years old. I'm across the street from an Apple store, so maybe I'll stop in. The drives on Apple.com refer to "drive carriers"? What are those?

And my back-up drive doesn't appear in disc utilities either. Although it says that it's successfully backing up. ?
 
Dude. Just replace your internal harddrive. You don't want to lose your whole iTunes library WHEN (not if) your external fails. If you are afraid of opening your precious then you could at least get a second external.
 
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