Questions on external HDD - help.

[ryan.apham]

Seeing that I have already bought a MacBook Air 2011 13" 128 SSD, and a Lacie 1 TB external HDD, I have some questions here, hoping that some of you folks can help me. Thanks in advance.

As you can see, 128 SSD is not big, and neither is 256 SSD. I want to put some of my files on the external HDD but do not know which can be put (because it might affect performance and so on). Please answer where I should put these:
- iTunes Library. Not large, 6 GB.
- Films (well, clear on this one, ext HDD).
- Photos. 1 GB. iPhoto or ext HDD?
- Games buying off the Mac App Store. As far as I am concerned, they can be moved to ext HDD. Some games from Gameloft consume so much storage that I just want to blow my head. Can I move them to ext HDD and still play them? Is the in-game speed affected apart from the time to start up the program?
- iWork.
- iLife '11.
- CS 5 Adobe Master Suite. This whole set is like 20 GB or something.
- Bootcamp. Can I install Windows on the external hard disk (not so important)?

The last question: Is there a benefit of partitioning the external hard disk? For example, 1 TB -> 200 GB for games, apps, documents, media and back up (time capsule) each. Or is it better just to leave it as a whole?

 

[LordVic]

I would install regularly used applications such as iwork, photoshop ilife and the like, installed to the local SSD. Things you open a lot and regularly youll want as snappy as possible.

Games? Backup to external, but when you play one regularly, put on SSD. the slowness of the USB drive probably will make some load times pretty high.

any media, photos, music and videos, throw on USB. these things don't need to be snappy. USB based drives are mroe than adequate to handle the speed needed to play them.

As for benefit of partitioning? None for speed / performance. I would say partition it if you regularly want to blow away one of the partitions and wipe whatever is on it.