RR_Trials Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 (edited) Looking at getting an external harddrive.I have seen a few and they all seem around 500gb which is more then enough for what i need, now 500gb would be a waste of time to me if i can't (for example) store a program/game on it, due to buying a harddrive would be so that i can keep anything school related on my macmini itself so that when i take it to school its there, and then all other memory hogging apps/files on the harddrive for use at home.I have firewire ports on my macmini so im guessing getting an external harddrive that uses firewire cables to connect is the best way about it.So basically heres what im asking.Will an firewire external harddrive be quick enough or even capable of running apps off, of?If not, are they even quick enough to pull music off, of (for example, putting all my music on the external harddrive and having iTunes on the macmini harddrive, will the songs lag as they change)?What sort of price am i looking at for a decent sort of external harddrive and are there any good ones with about 150gb memory due to 500gb being way more then i need?Any recommendations on hardrives/were to buy them?Will it cause any-problems if i am unplugging it to take my macmini to school if i have apps on it (obviously not ones that i am going to use).-------------------------Projectors.. anybody got any recommendations? Edited October 5, 2007 by RR_Trials Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonMack Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 (edited) Will an firewire external harddrive be quick enough or even capable of running apps off, of?If not, are they even quick enough to pull music off, of (for example, putting all my music on the external harddrive and having iTunes on the macmini harddrive, will the songs lag as they change)?What sort of price am i looking at for a decent sort of external harddrive and are there any good ones with about 150gb memory due to 500gb being way more then i need?Any recommendations on hardrives/were to buy them?Will it cause any-problems if i am unplugging it to take my macmini to school if i have apps on it (obviously not ones that i am going to use).Yes.Yes, I use mine to hold my music and videos on, and it's plenty fast enough.For 160 gig youre looking at about £30. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist....sortby=priceAsc is good, there you can see the Westen Digital MyBook 250GB for £56, check Amazon though, could be even cheaper, my 250GB portable external was £100, that just needs a USB lead to use, the big ones need power supplies and cables. As i said, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/, http://www.amazon.co.uk, and http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/ are all good.Any more probs, you got my msn.QUICK EDIT:250GB here, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-El...1165&sr=8-1 which requires you to carry the hard drive, power supply and cable around, £44250GB here, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-25...1165&sr=8-2 which doesnt require you to carry a power supply, just a USB lead, however, it's a bit more expensive, at £100. Edited October 2, 2007 by MonsterJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixed Pants™ Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 (edited) As long as the drive path (d, e, f what ever) doesn't change you'll be fine with running your tunes through itunes, i do it, on a normal usb EHD and it's fine, just hope/make sure you don't let the drive path change, or it'll gay your whole list thing.I also have most of my stuff on it (apart from installed things, program files etc) but yeah, it's all good, not a problem with speed or anything.I have a 250gb Elements one from argos, 75 quid i think it was a need to buy kinda thing as my mum raped my comp and i needed to back up everything asap, didn't bother looking around. Edited October 2, 2007 by Fat Pants Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greetings Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 It's SLIGHTLY slower, not noticeable though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 2, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 Ahh so a usb one will be quick enough? I would probably prefer firwire due to lack of USB slots, but im guessing there more money etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonMack Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 USB will be fine, although most are triple interface, so theyre USB/FW400/FW800, and no they're not more expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted October 2, 2007 Report Share Posted October 2, 2007 USB will be fine, although most are triple interface, so theyre USB/FW400/FW800, and no they're not more expensive.They usually are. I know I had to pay a few quid more to get a Firewire one. Obviously if you have a spare slot then firewire's convenient. But USB2 is usually slightly faster, especially for smaller files. Neither of them is significantly slower than the internal hard drive. In fact, since the MacMinis use laptop hard drives, a 'normal' external hard drive will probably be faster even.As Jon said, try and get one which doesn't need a power supply if you plan on taking it places. When you get it, you will need to make sure it's formatted in FAT32 so that both PCs and Macs can read and write to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Ahh got'cha.Cheers for all the info that just what i needed. I'll be able to get one after my CBT (not this sunday but the sunday after.) .Once again, Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 3, 2007 Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Speed wise, there's a big difference. Firewire 800 gives you a maximum bandwidth of roughly 100 megabytes a second compared to SATA which runs at 300 megabytes a second. I don't know what interface a mac mini uses for it's internal disks but if it's slower than firewire you should have bought a proper computer like everyone says though - you'll be fine running music, movies and desktop type apps off an external disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Will i be able to format the harddrive so that it will look like the primary harddrive inside? Like this basically: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonMack Posted October 3, 2007 Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Why would you want to do that?That directory structure comes from the OS installation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Why would you want to do that?That directory structure comes from the OS installation.So it would be easy for me to put my stuff in each folder ie music pictures etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted October 3, 2007 Report Share Posted October 3, 2007 Speed wise, there's a big difference. Firewire 800 gives you a maximum bandwidth of roughly 100 megabytes a second compared to SATA which runs at 300 megabytes a second.Yeah but no hard drive on earth can actually read data at those speeds so the speed of the bus isn't that important. Since laptop drives have even slower rpms and slower seek times than normal hard drives, the speed of the interface isn't that important.So it would be easy for me to put my stuff in each folder ie music pictures etc.You can make whatever folders you want Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Garland Posted October 4, 2007 Report Share Posted October 4, 2007 All about eSata, 3Gbps.Remember if its a desktop drive it will need a power socket to supply it, I think "portable" ones as they are called get power from the USB, but dont quote me on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 4, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 4, 2007 Yeah but no hard drive on earth can actually read data at those speeds so the speed of the bus isn't that important. Since laptop drives have even slower rpms and slower seek times than normal hard drives, the speed of the interface isn't that important.You can make whatever folders you want Nono.. sorry i didn't explain myself i mean in that picture i attached you know on the sides it says 'music' etc in those little tabs on the left. Can i format it so that when i open the drive it will look basically like that.Ahh its hard to explain .All about eSata, 3Gbps.Remember if its a desktop drive it will need a power socket to supply it, I think "portable" ones as they are called get power from the USB, but dont quote me on that.Desktop drive? Im all confused now, sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted October 4, 2007 Report Share Posted October 4, 2007 Nono.. sorry i didn't explain myself i mean in that picture i attached you know on the sides it says 'music' etc in those little tabs on the left. Can i format it so that when i open the drive it will look basically like that.Ahh its hard to explain I know what you mean. No, I don't think you can do that because those sidebar things are links from the 'Finder' program in OS X to a place on your computer. You can always add new links there, though. E.g. Have Music and then Music (Ext) or something.Desktop drives he means ones that are used in Desktop computers rather than laptops. Your Mac Mini is an exception though, since it uses laptop bits in a desktop case - that's how they make it so small. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 4, 2007 Report Share Posted October 4, 2007 Yeah but no hard drive on earth can actually read data at those speeds so the speed of the bus isn't that important. Since laptop drives have even slower rpms and slower seek times than normal hard drives, the speed of the interface isn't that important.You can make whatever folders you want but a 5400 rpm drive (which is pretty normal for a laptop) can read data at considerably more than 50mb/s so you will see the difference. I know that cos I have a usb2 drive caddy with a 5400 rpm laptop disk in and a 5400 rpm disk in my laptop and the one in the laptop with the SATA interface reads and writes a shit load faster than the one in the caddy with the USB2 interface.it's all academic though since all he's gonna do is put music on it which you can play in realtime off a usb 1 connection Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RR_Trials Posted October 5, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2007 I felt guilty opening a new thread just to ask for a few recommendations for projectors so fire away if you have any. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Garland Posted October 5, 2007 Report Share Posted October 5, 2007 For clarification.Desktop Drives : Your normal 3.5", 7200rpm drive in a caddy that 99% of the time requires a 12v mains power supply (provided) to power the device. Thus not being very portable.Laptop Drive : Your normal 2.5" 5400rpm drive that is normall found in a laptop. These get their power from the USB cable as they do not require as much power to work and thus are more portable. IE can be used on the train if your doing a 12 hour journey without needing mains power for the drive, so long as you have a laptop battery that lasts this long or a spare battery.Put simply, if you plan on moving it a lot might be worth going with a laptop drive, if its just a normal external to sit on your desk due to case limits (ie you cannot add another drive internally) get a desktop drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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