Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

pilotkid

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 22, 2006
1,009
215
Chandler, AZ
All you fellow MacBook Air users where do you store all of your music, movies, documents, etc. Do you use a USB Flash Drive, an SD Card, a desktop external hard drive, a portable external hard drive? The reason I ask this is I'm a new Air user and even with the upgraded 256GB SSD I don't have the space for all my music and movies. I currently have a time machine back up of all of my media from when I had a MacBook Pro but i'm missing having all of my media with me. So I'm debating buying a portable external hard drive to carry around with me when I have my MacBook Air, but is this the best choice. Give me your ideas!
 
One option is to keep your favorite media on your internal drive so it's available when you're mobile, with the remainder on an external. Since my iTunes library won't fit on my internal drive, I split it between internal and external drives.

One method is to have one iTunes library, with your favorite music stored on your internal drive, so it's available when you're mobile, with the remainder stored on an external drive.

How to split a single iTunes library over two or more media locations

Freeing up space in Mac OS X
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for your quick reply I might check out this split library idea. All my music fits easliy (11gb) on my SSD but my movies wont fit (250GB+). So splitting up my music and movies could fix this.
 
Pictures, documents and apps are on my internal SSD. Everything else is on an external HDD.
 
External 1TB HDD for anything beefy.

HTPC always on at home so if internet is available I can access video, pics and music from it. Not storing much media on the Air itself.
 
I keep no music or videos on either my notebook or an external HDD. That kinda solves all space related issues... If you really want to store 250GB+ of Movies, then do it on some external device ( same for music if it's really a lot ).
 
Probably really stupid question but not very computer literate.
I have a wd my passport for mac which I use for my time machine backups.
Can I also use it to store movies/music for extra space?
 
Probably really stupid question but not very computer literate.
I have a wd my passport for mac which I use for my time machine backups.
Can I also use it to store movies/music for extra space?

I would also be interested to know if you can use the Time Machine as an external HDD aswell as the backup feature?

Also, is there any cheaper external wireless HDD's on the market?
 
I store all my files on my Synology NAS, which is thanks to their Cloud Station connectable virtually anywhere, i got 4.5TB of storage in that tiny box so that is more than enough. Funny thing about this is that if someone jacks my MBA it's even empty from personal files cause that's all stored @ Home :D

For my music or photo's i carry an 64GB SDXC card with the Air. I got now about 100 Gb used on the Air and that includes, WoW (all expansions) and Diablo 3 and Adobe CS6

So far i'm happy :)
 
Probably really stupid question but not very computer literate.
I have a wd my passport for mac which I use for my time machine backups.
Can I also use it to store movies/music for extra space?
Yes, you can.
 
I use iTunes match to access my 30GB of music files whenever I want wherever I want. Every now and then I'll delete the files iTunes downloads (gets to be gigabytes).

Too bad there isn't an option to just stream that stuff instead of download it.

Everything else is stored on Dropbox on my PC at home - accessible by my Air if I need it (selective syncing only a few files to my Macbook Air) via dropbox.com for the bigger stuff.
 
My 80GB of music and itunes folder sits in the internal. Pictures all sit on the internal. Parallels sits on the internal as well.

Externals hold programs install files, Movies, unused documents, and old picture files that I want for archive and connected to an Airport Extreme so I can access them when I'm at home on the wifi.

Before going on vacation, I would grab some movie files I want to watch and put it on the Air.
 
I have a 32GB SD card for my favorite music and movies, all my docs and apps are on the internal SSD. Everything else I have on my mac mini and I just use home share to stream other music when I'm at home.
 
I keep my music on the ATV and cloud, and documents and install stuff on the Time Capsule. I am totally digging amazon cloud Player with it's matching functionality - especially since it is free.
 
I use a SanDisk Cruzer Fit 32GB for my favorite stuff when I'm roaming, but 95% of the places I'm at for any extended period of time have Wi-Fi, so I use Back To My Mac to connect to my HTPC MacMini at home and have access to all my music and movies.
 
Thanks for all the replies. They have given me a lot of options and many options of things I haven't thought of. iTunes match seems like a great idea for keeping music in the cloud instead of on the internal SSD. As far as movies go I'm thinking about a small USB 3.0 portable external hard drive.
 
You should look at the options available with a NAS. The only drawback is going to be remote access when you are not within local network connection range. Even then you can access remotely but at a reduced data rate.

I use my MBA as a movable iMac (i.e. I take it all around the house for use), so I'm always in range of my network. I have no user data on the MBA so no need for TimeMachine, but I do use CCC.

All my stuff is on 2x NAS units with NAS volumes mounted at boot. One volume is Data, another is Music, another is Video. In total I have 7TB of stuff with two levels of backup.

You might look at a two tier strategy - one set of stuff that you always carry around and another set that you access when in range of your NAS. The first set can also be mirrored to a backup copy on the NAS when in range.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.