Any disadvantages of HD vs SSD external for iTunes Movies?

[Turnpike]

I'm wanting to put my (HUGE) iTunes TV show & Movies collection on an external hard drive. The hard drive will be used EXCLUSIVELY for iTunes TV & Movies, so I can take them all with me from the iMac at work, to the iMac at home, to the Macbook on the road, so I can download them all once and just have them handy, with internet or not.

Obviously I can fit far more per dollar on an non-SSD external hard drive, is there any disadvantage of using an external HD that's not SSD for movies? Lag? Something else that might mess with the viewing experience?

Thanks in advance!

 

[redheeler]

For storing and playing back HD movies/TV shows/music a traditional spinning drive should be fine. Only disadvantages are having to wait longer when copying them onto/off the drive and having to wait for the drive to spin up when you first access it after a period of inactivity, but that's no big deal.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Well models of the three will come into the picture. I guess the model iMacs and MacBook will affect speed etc. Obviously if all are +2012 models with USB3 that will help a lot with lag, copying etc.

 

[HDFan]

An SSD would be a waste of money. DVD's are typically 5-8 mbps. A Blu-Ray can be in the 30-40 mbps range. A typical hard disk can run in the 100-150 MB/sec, about 20 times faster than a Blu-Ray.

 

[Turnpike]

Awesome! Thanks so much for the input.... and I should be able to set each Mac to play the iTunes stuff right from the external hard drive, right...?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Awesome! Thanks so much for the input.... and I should be able to set each Mac to play the iTunes stuff right from the external hard drive, right...?

Yeah in preferences you just point to the files on the external for all your media.

 

[burgman]

Awesome! Thanks so much for the input.... and I should be able to set each Mac to play the iTunes stuff right from the external hard drive, right...?

Depending on what you mean by large in GB’s, I use a Samsung T5 1 TB external SSD. I travel a lot so the small rugged size works for me. External HHD will work fine, just a bit larger and slower to fill up. Be careful if you decide to put music on it later and you use multiple ITunes libraries. Using ITunes Match will result in duplicates.