Greetings all, I recently made the plunge and switched over to Mac from PC. I never thought about a hard drive swap until recently. To my surprise, it cannot be done easily! How many people choose the Macbook pro or Mac Pro just because of this? I was hoping this computer would last me a very long time, but now I'm kinda ticked I didn't know about this planned obsoleteness. I need storage space for family vids and pics, I am already up to about 200 gigs in 4 years. Would a Mac Pro be complete overkill just for storage space? The most intensive program I use is Aperture. Now the question is just *when* my hard drive will die, and I will have to rely on a repair shop to safeguard my data. I think a 2010 Mac Pro would be fine, but $ 3,000 for the computer and display is a little hard to handle right now. What can be done to address storage space? Thanks for any insights you can share.
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No Imac because of Hard Drive swap??
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The iMac can be configured with a 2TB drive... which is more than enough for most people. With your TB or Firewire port, you can get high speed external storage as well.
Irrespective of what you do, make sure you have a good fully automatic backup strategy.
/Jim
Irrespective of what you do, make sure you have a good fully automatic backup strategy.
/Jim
Sometime last year I picked up an external 2TB hard drive for ~$70 (I think it was during black Friday sales). Currently, I'm just using it for Time Machine backups, since I'm no where close to filling up the standard 1TB that comes with the iMac (eh, I got like 300GB so far).
I too was worrisome about upgrading my hard drive, as I didn't want to drop a bajillion for an SSD right now and wanted to wait for future price drops. So I'm pretty much left with three options: 1) Tear my iMac apart and install the SSD myself (which personally I'm not afraid to do), 2) Wait for an external SSD via Thunderbolt and make it my boot drive, or 3) get a new iMac in 2 years (I like upgrading my computer every 2 years, lol).
I mean, if storage is your only issue, then just get external USB or TB hard drives (they're getting cheaper and cheaper these days). Or, at the very least, go with the 2TB build-to-order option. If you're only consuming 50GB a year, and you're currently at 200GB, then that leaves 800GB with the standard configuration. That would mean it'd take you another 16 years to fill
EDIT: Also, if you have a decent internet connection and don't mind the monthly/yearly fees, perhaps cloud storage is a viable option for your photos and whatnot?
I too was worrisome about upgrading my hard drive, as I didn't want to drop a bajillion for an SSD right now and wanted to wait for future price drops. So I'm pretty much left with three options: 1) Tear my iMac apart and install the SSD myself (which personally I'm not afraid to do), 2) Wait for an external SSD via Thunderbolt and make it my boot drive, or 3) get a new iMac in 2 years (I like upgrading my computer every 2 years, lol).
I mean, if storage is your only issue, then just get external USB or TB hard drives (they're getting cheaper and cheaper these days). Or, at the very least, go with the 2TB build-to-order option. If you're only consuming 50GB a year, and you're currently at 200GB, then that leaves 800GB with the standard configuration. That would mean it'd take you another 16 years to fill
EDIT: Also, if you have a decent internet connection and don't mind the monthly/yearly fees, perhaps cloud storage is a viable option for your photos and whatnot?