MBP External Storage Access Questions!

[Bazzy]

Hi All,

I am getting my Late 2011 17" MBP back from repairs soon & it was running Mavericks 10.9.5. I would like to upgrade to Sierra but I have been told by some of the good folks here that it would really be best if I got a SSD with Sierra instead of the regular spinning drive.

Problem is I need lots of storage so was looking to max it out at 4TB of regular storage via 2 x 2TB HDD's. Now, since regular HDD's may struggle with Sierra & I cannot stretch to large capacity SSD's, I would like to know if it is possible/feasible to:

1) Put a smaller SSD (256GB or 512GB) inside the standard HD Bay inside the MBP (leaving the Optibay alone)

2) & then get a large capacity portable or desktop regular HDD, move over as many files as needed on to it & then connect it to my Time Capsule.

3) I am thinking/hoping by doing this, I might be then able to "Connect" to this external HDD via/on my MBP to access files either by WiFi or Ethernet cable from the Time Capsule.

Is the above (or anything similar) an option - If not can someone suggest an easy alternative? I was thinking this would allow me to leave the DVD drive alone in case I might damage or mess things up in attempting to remove it!

Many Thanks!

 

[Sanpete]

What you're talking about seems fairly standard practice, replace the internal HDD with an SSD and use external storage too. Should work fine. I have a 240 GB SSD in my 2011 17" and all is well with Sierra, though it's a secondary computer for me now, doesn't get real heavy use.

 

[Bazzy]

What you're talking about seems fairly standard practice, replace the internal HDD with an SSD and use external storage too. Should work fine. I have a 240 GB SSD in my 2011 17" and all is well with Sierra, though it's a secondary computer for me now, doesn't get real heavy use.

Hi,

Awesome Sanpete - I will definitely consider this option then & glad to know it is both possible & standard practice then!

Will I still be able to save to, move & transfer stuff easily between the internal drive & the external one connected to the Time Capsule?

Many Thanks!

 

[Sanpete]

I haven't used a Time Capsule (maybe someone who has can speak to that), but I assume it's easy. That's the idea, at least. If not, you can get fairly cheap external drives with large capacities that will be easy.

 

[Howard2k]

Not Time Capsule specifically, but I'd done the "router with a HDD attached" with both DLink and another vendor (I think i was Netgear) and the experience was pretty poor. If I was willing to manually detach and re-attach the drive every day or so, it was ok. But in the end I just went and bought a NAS box and separate router. The NAS does other stuff too, not just storage, and it's not the cheapest solution, but it works really well.


USB3 can interfere with a 2.4GHz wifi network so if you are using the router with an attached HDD I would make sure you're using the 5GHz channel too.

 

[jerryk]

How much space do you need with you built in and with you all the time?

If a lot of the storage is files you are not accessing a lot consider externals storage options. I use a NAS that let's me expand the storage by just getting either bigger drives and/or inserting more drives. Currently configured for 1/2 capacity at 12 TB. Only using 5 TB of the 10.5 TB for file storage, and 1.5 TB configured for for Time Machine.

 

[Bazzy]

How much space do you need with you built in and with you all the time?

If a lot of the storage is files you are not accessing a lot consider externals storage options. I use a NAS that let's me expand the storage by just getting either bigger drives and/or inserting more drives. Currently configured for 1/2 capacity at 12 TB. Only using 5 TB of the 10.5 TB for file storage, and 1.5 TB configured for for Time Machine.

Hi,

For the very most part since I got the 17" MBP, I use it as a desktop replacement & have tied it to a Time Capsule for easy & automatic back ups so it acts like an "All In One" & whatever is on the laptop is backed up on the TC so everything is synchronized etc. In the 5 years I have had it, it has only done 70 Battery cycles so I hardly ever take it out of the house - heck even most of those were indoors when I had not realized the Magsafe connector had accidentally come undone!

Someone told me that the Time Capsule is basically what Apple call a NAS - are they the same then or different? If I can hook up an additional HDD to the TC & it works/communicates with my MBP without issues then that would be really great - I suppose I will give it a try when it comes back from repair but if not, what is a good, reasonably priced NAS that is easy to set up for a novice & is fully compatible with MAC then? I no absolutely nothing about them really - I guess I would need around 4TB of storage space.

Many Thanks!

 

[ZapNZs]

Here are a few possibilities if of interest...

This SSD could be your boot drive -- it is arguably superior to most of the other consumer-grade products on the market, using superior MLC NAND and having a longer warranty (10 years.) SanDisk recently discontinued the model (the profit margin on this is a good bit lower than with their budget drives), so you can sometimes find them for a good clearance sale.

This is a 4TB 7200 RPM HDD you can use, which is a consumer grade drive that comes from a family of drives with a solid reputation of cost vs. reliability vs. performance. These are reasonably fast drives (120-150 MB/s with USB 3.1 // 175-200+ MB/s with eSATA). If your files are important, you will want to purchase two of these so you can run a RAID 1 (that is, you keep two drives with identical information, so that if one drive fails you have a backup.) (Like most 7200 RPM drives, they are quite a bit noisier than the slower 5400 RPM drives.)

If you want a wireless NAS enclosure, this model accepts two hard drives, and can perform the RAID 1 implementation as described above

If you want a wired enclosure that does not have NAS-capability, this model accepts two hard drives and can also perform RAID 1.

 

[jerryk]

Hi,

For the very most part since I got the 17" MBP, I use it as a desktop replacement & have tied it to a Time Capsule for easy & automatic back ups so it acts like an "All In One" & whatever is on the laptop is backed up on the TC so everything is synchronized etc. In the 5 years I have had it, it has only done 70 Battery cycles so I hardly ever take it out of the house - heck even most of those were indoors when I had not realized the Magsafe connector had accidentally come undone!

Someone told me that the Time Capsule is basically what Apple call a NAS - are they the same then or different? If I can hook up an additional HDD to the TC & it works/communicates with my MBP without issues then that would be really great - I suppose I will give it a try when it comes back from repair but if not, what is a good, reasonably priced NAS that is easy to set up for a novice & is fully compatible with MAC then? I no absolutely nothing about them really - I guess I would need around 4TB of storage space.

Many Thanks!

I really don't know much about Time Capsules. But I seem to remember that they were more tied to Time Machine, sort of a backup storage device.

A NAS can do a lot of things. Basic file storage so it appears on your desktop as another disk. Time Machine Backup server. Some can run jobs like converting files video from one format to another, etc. They can also be configured to feed Cloud storage. I have mine also accessible from the internet so I can backup files to it from anywhere. And they come in different sizes. Mine holds up to 6 disks with up to 6 TB per disk. And the disks are in various Raid configurations to provide redundancy in case of disk failure, or higher performance. In redundant mode if a disk dies, you just pull it out and slide in a replacement. You do not even need to turn the power off. Same thing if you need more storage. Pull a 2 TB disk and insert a 6 TB.