Solutions for rapidly shrinking hard drive space?

Gerard_Smith

I am down to about 36gbs of free space on my imac and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what I could do to expand that? Obviously this being a C2D imac I can't simply open it up and install a larger drive so the most obvious solution would to be buy an external Hard Drive. Thing is I have never had to use an external HDD for anything other than back-up purposes. How would I even going about using one for something like this? Would I simply move all my larger files over onto in and delete them from my macs HD? Is there some way of pairing it with my macs HD so OS X treats them as if they were a single drive? Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

jester77

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

I am down to about 36gbs of free space on my imac and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what I could do to expand that? Obviously this being a C2D imac I can't simply open it up and install a larger drive so the most obvious solution would to be buy an external Hard Drive. Thing is I have never had to use an external HDD for anything other than back-up purposes. How would I even going about using one for something like this? Would I simply move all my larger files over onto in and delete them from my macs HD? Is there some way of pairing it with my macs HD so OS X treats them as if they were a single drive? Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

A small NAS server? You can pick up 1TB servers fairly cheaply and you can keep your data on it. I have a Buffalo terastation and it works great, has 4 drives in it with Raid 5 enabled so that my data is secure even if 1 of the drives fail. Also has an FTP and print server built into it which is very handy!

Gerard_Smith

Could I have that in beginner speak?

WUSBDesign

For speed, ease of use and flexibility, I cannot think of any except a external FW/USB hard drive.

Or simply bite the bullet and swap that internal HDD for a much larger one.

Sad Professor

Yeah just get an external hd and move all your media files over. My imac's internal hd is only 160gb so I use an external drive for all my video files and I'll probably be moving my itunes library on to one soon as well.

Diarmuid

I think the extra HD is the easiest solution but a better solution I think would be to delete all those unused divxs/ or dvd images. Adding extra HD space only means you have to increase the size of you backups also.

WUSBDesign

On another thought - there must be some files which you do not need quick, on-the-fly access constantly. In that case, these files copied to (and deleted from your iMac's HDD) a Network Attached Storage (NAS) - as jester77 suggested - will work. This has the added advantage that *any* machine can access the contents of the NAS via your network, albeit speed limited to 100Mbps (wired).

And just as jester77 suggested, using a RAID version of this NAS helps against HDD failures too...

K.O.Kiki

• Run Monolingual & remove all unnecessary language files
• Run WhatSize & remove all those printer drivers which you probably will never, ever use

mr kr0nik

jester77 wrote: »

A small NAS server? You can pick up 1TB servers fairly cheaply and you can keep your data on it. I have a Buffalo terastation and it works great, has 4 drives in it with Raid 5 enabled so that my data is secure even if 1 of the drives fail. Also has an FTP and print server built into it which is very handy!

Hey Jester, what model terastation are you using.

Passenger

Say one was to get an external HD, would it be possible to store an iTunes folder on it?

PhilipMarlowe

Passenger wrote: »

Say one was to get an external HD, would it be possible to store an iTunes folder on it?

I 'moved' my library from my 60gb Powerbook to an external HD - there is a correct way to do this that maintains all your playlists and playcounts etc....

See this article here for the explanation...

When I copied over the library like in this article, I was able to go into the itunes folder on the laptop (using finder) and delete lots of the music files I rarely listen to, keeping my favourites on the laptop HD so they are always available, even when the external HD isn't connected, saved me 10gb or so of space on my laptop doing this.

When the external HD is connected, all the music is available.

Read the bottom of that article, the Using an External Hard Drive and a Portable Computer bit in particular.

jester77

mr kr0nik wrote: »

Hey Jester, what model terastation are you using.

It's an oldish model I have, terastation pro. Doesn't have hot swappable drives like the newer models, but it does look better, LOL Works great, have an USB printer connected to it so any machine on the network can print to it. FTP server is handy when away from home and you need access to files. It's slow to write to but for a home system I think it's adequate.

Almost full though, thinking of getting a terastation live sometime soon, the iTunes server sounds good plus there are some good custom firmwares available for it.

Passenger

Licksy wrote: »

I 'moved' my library from my 60gb Powerbook to an external HD - there is a correct way to do this that maintains all your playlists and playcounts etc....

See this article here for the explanation...

When I copied over the library like in this article, I was able to go into the itunes folder on the laptop (using finder) and delete lots of the music files I rarely listen to, keeping my favourites on the laptop HD so they are always available, even when the external HD isn't connected, saved me 10gb or so of space on my laptop doing this.

When the external HD is connected, all the music is available.

Read the bottom of that article, the Using an External Hard Drive and a Portable Computer bit in particular.

Thanks Licksy.:)

Gerard_Smith

I'm thinking of going with this

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/irl.woa/91024045/wa/PSLID?mco=7C75D77&fnode=home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/storage&nplm=TN131&wosid=EF43L5pXNYJQ3YTr50H2ef3LVLq

Does not require an external power supply which is a definite plus. Any views? Also I'm wondering how CCC would handle this. The stuff I would be putting on the external drive is exactly the kind of stuff I want backed up. Can CCC copy the contents of two drive to my backup drive?

Sad Professor

Is the external power such a big deal? For the same price you could get a lot more storage from a full size drive. I mean it's an imac you don't need a portable drive, do you?

I don't think CCC would be any good for what you're suggesting. Unless you each back up separately to an image file. Are you on Leopard? Time Machine can backup two drives to same location easily. Superduper probably can too but I'm not sure.

And whatever you do don't buy anything from the Applestore. Try Komplett.

WUSBDesign

For about the same price, you can get a 320GB 3.5" HDD and an enclosure with USB/FW interface, assuming portability is not a requirement. As mentioned, check out Komplett.

Gerard_Smith

Portability is not an issue but honestly if I add any more adapters to the room where I keep my mac I'm worried I might bring down the national grid! The fact I don't have to plug it into the mains is a massive plus.

jtsuited

as was said above just run whatsize and you'll find an absolute wealth of stuff you'll never use again. This always frees up a load of space for me.

Gerard_Smith

Does anyone know whether Superduper can back up two drives to the same location as suggested above?

Gerard_Smith

Really need an aswer to the above qeastion. I've found nothing in SuperDupers suport pages and I'm down to 26Gigs

Breezer

Can't answer your question directly, but would you be willing to partition the drive into two separate partitions? That way you could backup each drive to a separate partition. Both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner will handle this no problem.

Sad Professor

Is the backup drive big enough? Then yes of course. If you're using Superduper or CCC you'll probably just have backup both drives separately as image files or something. The backup drive won't be bootable but that doesn't matter.

Gerard_Smith

Yep its large enough. Can I partition the drive without deleting my back-up? Its no big deal really I just need to know if I need to set aside a couple of minutes or hours.

Breezer

Short answer no. Leopard has some sort of limited capability in this regard but AFAIK it doesn't extend that far (Sad Professor explained it to me in a thread a while back but I still haven't used Leopard properly and I've forgotten I'm afraid).

The partitioning doesn't take very long. If it's a USB drive and you want to boot from it make sure to set the drive to use GUID partition table in Disk Utility. Then just run CCC or SuperDuper overnight.

Gerard_Smith

Its firewire 400 actually.

Breezer

Same principle applies: if you're booting from an Intel Mac it needs to be GUID. If you don't plan on booting from the drive and just want to use it for storage then don't worry about this.