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Western Digital 2TB External Hard Drive question

F

French iPod

macrumors regular
Original poster
alright so i bought a 2TB External Hard Drive and i was wondering if we could you the hard drive as your main hard drive like the Mac system files ect...? because my current one (250GB is kind of small) compared to the 2TB😛

if we can can you please tell me how to do it?

thanks for the help😀
 
Yes, you can re-install the OS on the external drive and use it as the boot device but you must be very careful. If you disconnect the external drive for even a second whilst the OS is running it'll crash.
 
robbieduncan said:
Yes, you can re-install the OS on the external drive and use it as the boot device but you must be very careful. If you disconnect the external drive for even a second whilst the OS is running it'll crash.
Click to expand...

performance will be MUCH slower using USB. I suggest a firewire drive, or upgrade the internal drive. You can get up to 1TB internal.

If you want to use the 2TB drive, you can find a firewire enclosure and move the 2TB drive to that.
 
I think the OP may want to replace their internal 250GB drive with the 2TB drive.

Unfortunately there's no mention of the model of their current Mac, which may use a 2.5" drive. Could even be an old G4 with PATA technology.

So if it's a G5 or later, swapping the drives is certainly possible. But the big caveat is that external drives are invariably of the green variety. It's work but the performance may be awful, constant spinning beachballs waiting for the drive to spin up.
 
robbieduncan said:
The external 2TB drive is almost certainly (I'd say 99.9999%) based off a desktop drive so that would be impossible on any Mac laptop.
Click to expand...

I don't think the OP's referring to the MBP in his signature, the sig shows it having a 320GB internal drive and a 750GB external. stock desktop 250GB drives are from about 2005/6 - late G5 era. We shall wait and see what Mac they have.
 
BertyBoy said:
I don't think the OP's referring to the MBP in his signature, the sig shows it having a 320GB internal drive and a 750GB external. stock desktop 250GB drives are from about 2005/6 - late G5 era. We shall wait and see what Mac they have.
Click to expand...

Ah. I was going by the section the OP posted in 😱
 
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