How do you manage laptop HD space if its your main computer (and it has a SSD)?

Toying with the idea of new laptop having an ssd, but sizes are limited (and if i go for a retina macbook pro, I also cannot upgrade).

So, if the laptop is your main computer, how do you lot manage storage?

There seems little point in having to cart around a mobile drive.

My movies and music are the worst culprits (so itunes library basially).

Photos are the other thing, but I keep older files on 2 backup drives as I don’t need them on the machine all the time, so they are not an issue.

Looking at a machine with a 512gb SSD, so that would keep me going right now without issues, but would love to hear your thoughts as to how to best manage media libraries. On a mac.

Cheers!

Kev

At that point I’d say a cloud or some big sd cards. What do you need the ssd for? If it’s not for fast file access why bother? To be honest 1gb is as low as I would spec a laptop currently and that’s near a network a lot.

If your mainly using at home, then a network drive attached to a router may work. Can get 1tb drives for reasonable prices now.

Music, the hard drive style ipods have big storage…

Photos: Flikr or Photobucket

Online storage: Cloud based eg Dropbox or I think there is a Cloud service with an Apple product…

Cougar will probably be along in a minute ….

Toying with the idea of new laptop having an ssd, but sizes are limited (and if i go for a retina macbook pro, I also cannot upgrade).

I simply wouldn’t buy a machine from a company that was going to do my wallet over and had built obsolescence into their machines.

There are plenty of machines around that aren’t deliberately crippled and cost less.

Hadn’t thought about big SD cards, and yes, I agree that 1tb should be a minimum.

Cheers Rick, main issue is itunes movies. Maybe I have this all wrong though as technically they are always in the cloud and i just download when I want… hmmm

cranberry, yes, I agree it is a bit silly to go for a retina machine, it is so restrictive. Will prob be a bit more sensible and go for a “normal” MBP.

Pfft 1TB is more than 99.99999% of people need for primary storage, just use cloud or external storage for secondary stuff you don’t access frequently.

Just get the normal MBP HDs can be swapped easily and the media drive removed and replaced with another drive.
Storing movies and music seems a bit odd on what essentially is a working machine, why clogg it up with ‘entertainment’ just keep the library on another drive (with a back-up) its what I do.
I use a MBP for work and only keep the current shoots/jobs on there. Shoots can be anything from 5-20gb so drives fill up fast and I don’t like to run more than 70% full. Have an ssd in the media bay for scratch disk/internal backup which helps.

USB3 drives are the quickest for cheaper storage, thunderbolt for the ultimate in speed if you need it.

Pfft 1TB is more than 99.99999% of people need for primary storage, just use cloud or external storage for secondary stuff you don’t access frequently.

Very true but if it was my only machine and I was of network a lot I’d want 1tb. My drop box is 50gb and so is my Google drive. I’m often away from WiFi and the last data bill when I was away nearly made me cry. Also if I wanted to keep the laptop a few years I’d be aware how file sizes grow and grow. Everything is hd now. Give it 2 years and see where we are.

My main computer uses less than 200Gb, all the bulky stuff is stored on servers / NAS drives / in the Cloud.

Look inside your laptop,my Acer has 2 hard drive bays internally,mind you I had to kill a hard drive to find out.
Ian

Otherwise,buy a 1tera hard disc and a caddy,copy current hard drive to new one,install new drive internally,reformat old drive,then you’ve got your terabyte,and an external back up.

No way do i need 1TB on my laptop – there’s far less than that currently on mine and that’s with a lot more of my photos, music and films on it than I really need to be carrying around with me.

Toying with the idea of new laptop having an ssd, but sizes are limited (and if i go for a retina macbook pro, I also cannot upgrade).

Recent posters seem to have missed this bit, it’s a mac so glued in just in case they can squeeze a little more out of you.

Mostly depends how far and how long you will be away from a good connection really.

Sorry,missed the Mac bit,buy 2.5 external drive,and use a little self discipline to transfer your files to it regularly,if you do fill it buy another,they’re not that bulky.

If you have an SD card slot then buy the biggest and best make you can and use that as extra storage.

I have got one of the tiny sandisc cruzer fit USB drives permanently in the side of my laptop which I back up important files too (and then have another back up too) but I wish I had thought about using the SD card slot instead as the usb drive still sticks out a bit so I have to remember to put the laptop with that edge up in my bag.

I’ve got a 128gb mSATA ssd for OS and programs and 750gb HDD for data. I won’t get anywhere near using the 750gb hdd so tempted to replace it with a 256-500gb SSD when they come down in price. I have used about 80gb of my SSD for windows, office and programs but there was no 256gb mSATA available when I got mine. (It’s a PC not mac).

If an SD card is not enough then get yourself a small HDD or SDD based USB/thunderbolt storage device and carry it round with you. You should have another backup system that is fixed somewhere as well (in case you lose/damage the drive). Oh and cloud based for smaller important files is always good.

Not all the mac laptops are “glued in” the MBPs have user replaceable ram and HD’s that take 10 min and a Phillips 00 screwdriver. The retina MBP’s have ram soldered to the motherboard but you can buy aftermarket HD’s here
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Retina_2012

I have to say I find all this talk of extra cost a little odd, admittedly the people who buy them as lifestyle accessories pay any increase in price willingly (you are not held at gunpoint to make a purchase) but for work use if you can’t make the increase in cost back in a days work then perhaps a career change or how you price your services needs to be looked at.

No way do i need 1TB on my laptop – there’s far less than that currently on mine and that’s with a lot more of my photos, music and films on it than I really need to be carrying around with me.

Yes, that is all well and good, but how much data will you have tomorrow? in a year? in 5 years? One of the reasons my Dell 9400 that I bought in 2005 is still going strong is that I have been able to slot in more memory and storage as and when needed/the price had dropped to a reasonable level.

I’ll bet you the cost of a new drive that the same will be true in a year. In five years I might well have gone for an upgrade, but I was talking about now. 😕

If you are going for a Mac then using a 1TB potable hard drive with Thunderbolt connection would probably be the best option. They are relatively small and so easily portable. Very easy to use as well assuming that you are not trying to do so on a crowded train or similar.

In five years time I think cloud storage will be the norm.

Also have just seen that SDHC can scale to 2TB. It may take a while to get to affordable status but is likely to be the long term solution.

I thought SDHC was 32GB max. Old SD was 2GB.

SDXC which the latest MBP have can do 2TB. You can pick up a 128GB class 10 SDXC card from the big names for under £100 now so they are pretty good value (for solid state memory).

Home Server.

I struggle with long sentences.

Personally: SSD + HDD in one MBP, and my OH has a MBA with just an SSD, then a portable HDD.

Both are setup similarly. Photos are the big space culprit, but using Aperture you can keep your masters separate from your previews. Google for details, but basically that’s what we do. You still carry 1080p versions all the time, and can import etc without the drive, and then connect up the HDD when you want to consolidate masters or export higher res.

You can do the same with iTunes, though generally small enough to keep on the SSD.

iMovie events/recorded video goes on the HDD, but again the indexes etc stay on the SSD so it works with or without it. Then when appropriate transfer it to the HDD.

I don’t have stores of video just to “consume”. If I did, i’d just copy it to the laptop as and when, delete when not needed.

Hmm, thanks all, interesting stuff. Lightroom is my app of choice by the way, and photos are not the issue as I have a good system (for me! YMMV and all that).

This is not a work machine, photography is a hobby, so it is for storing everything, inc garageband projects etc, itunes movies and tv shows etc etc

Also, did not know possible to update the SSD in the retina. Good to know.

Agreed cloud is the future, but when out and about, and even at home, my connection is just not fast enough to make that work yet.

Here’s my issue with the optical drive – it’s all about back ups.

Keep everything on one HD in laptop = one cloned drive backup
I also have a partition on the backup drive that is older photo/video storage (usually everything older than 6months), nd that also has another drive as backup.

So, 1x clone of main HD, 1x clone of photo/media. not perfect, but not bad.

Would relying on my portable drive for neccesary storage for my laptop not complicate this a great deal? How do you handle that? How do you ensure a backup of your main system, and also of the contents of portable?

Or am I really missing the point?

Kev

my laptop has all its files stored either on a cloud (dropbox) that I need occasionally or on an external SSD for jobs I am working on.

I don’t trust normal hard drives any more.

If my laptop breaks, I will have a bit of a ‘mare sorting out installing programs onto a new one but that’s all.

Not sure I’d get on with a laptop with hardly any storage though.

I’ve kept quiet here thus far as Macs aren’t my thing.

One thing I’d like to throw in to the mix though, if you’re backing up to an external disk that lives in the same place as your primary storage then you’re protected against hard disk failure but not against things like burglary or fire. You might want to consider some sort of off-site backup for anything irreplaceable (doesn’t have to be complicated, I just leave a spare hard disk at my mum’s).

Remember – if it’s not backed up in 3 different physical locations, then it’s not backed up at all.

Get a NAS drive or a external. 1TB minimum.

I have a 1TB external, 500GB in my MBP, and 2TB in my desktop.

Just been upgraded to a fully tricked out retina MBP at work… The retina screen is amazing, don’t even consider a regular MBP

As for the storage, I wouldn’t bother too much with iCloud, the photo stream isn’t permanent and it’s just not as flexible as Dropbox.

I’d want at least 3Tb for current storage and ongoing backup, plus ongoing additions to media. It won’t take that long to add two or three Gb.
It wasn’t that long ago that 80Gb was considered adequate for a full-on professional laptop; my G3 PowerBook came with 80Gb, I’ve got 144Gb of music on my iPod…

Argh, tor5 you bum! Was just about to click order for a high res non reflective one, and you’ve got me going back to look at the retina ones in the refurb store…. 😈 😆

So I would need to get an external, bus powered drive to keep stuff on. Can i keep ‘some’ itune movies on an external drive, or does the whole library have to be there?

Thanks all!

Kev

Don’t know if this answers your questions but I’ve just put a 256G SSD in my Mac. I’ve also got a Synology NAS, with 2TB of storage, which I can get to over the Internet. It’s got my iTunes on it and I can also access that remotely over the web too. Got 3 macs making time machine back ups to it. You can also use it to stream video and photos, and lots of other things. But iTunes on my phone over 3G was a bonus, didn’t know it would do that.

Got my Retina MacBook Pro on Saturday. The screen is simply amazing…

Rachel

Abdul you are right about SDXC – sorry for any confusion.

I run a 128GB MacBook air as my main machine, with a 60GB partition assigned to VMware and Win8. Nowhere near the max storage, even with effectively only a 68GB hard drive.

2TB Cloud server at home which acts as the main storage, iTunes library points to that and it works really well. I was sceptical at first coming from a big desktop but it’s so much better for me this way. It’s perfectly good enough for eveything I do, mobile and if I do want a screen it just plugs into a 24″ monitor with a thunderbolt & usb cable. I had planned to get this air and then get the new iMac when it came out as a home machine but I really don’t see the point now. Caveat is of course you need the other kit to do it seamlessly, decent NAS and router. If you have a good upload connection then you can even access it remotely.

If i’m going away for a week or so which I often do I just chuck a few films/series/tunes etc on the main drive to provide entertainment, the only time I normally need more space out and about is when I take my camera on holiday, then I have a couple of USB drives to take care of that, which I would do anyway as I wouldn’t keep those files just on one drive incase of loss/damage etc. When I use the camera for work stuff I can’t fill the SSD in a day before it all comes off onto storage, but I could see why a pro/heavy photographer would eat that amount of space in a very short time.

Yes you can also have iTunes look at different locations, not on one library but you can create multiple libraries, i.e. 1 local and 1 on a storage device and hold option when you start iTunes, then you can select which library to load.

Synology NAS and MBP here. Have got my entire iTunes library on there which is about 2tb. It also acts as a repository for my laptop backups (via time machine), and feeds content to my apple tv.

The NAS is also a raid (5) so if a single drive fails I wont lose anything. If the whole synology box explodes/catches fire/is nicked it’s going to be inconvenient – but stuff thats irreplaceable is also backed up elsewhere.

Seems to work pretty well

So, not got the NAS yet, but deffo next.

Went and bought a refurb retina with all the goodies, and a big flash drive.

iTunes remarkably good at managing libraries on remote disks, so actually this is much easier than thought.

Also, rather than having years of lightroom libraries on local HD, just keeping current year -1 on there and mov ethe rest continuously to remote disk.

Seems to be working well, and by god that macbook is an absolute ripper. 😀

Cheers all!
Kev