Do I need a new hardrive or get external drive?

[barely working]

I have an ibook I bought last year with 40gb on the hard drive. I just recently started to use it to store music in itunes. I have filled up all the space and cannot add any more disks.

What should I do? But a new 80gb hard drive and have it installed? Buy an external drive or ....?

Please keep in mind that I am pretty computer illiterate and will have to pay for a technician to install everything but the most basic of products.

Thanks.

 

[Texas04]

I have an ibook I bought last year with 40gb on the hard drive. I just recently started to use it to store music in itunes. I have filled up all the space and cannot add any more disks.

What should I do? But a new 80gb hard drive and have it installed? Buy an external drive or ....?

Please keep in mind that I am pretty computer illiterate and will have to pay for a technician to install everything but the most basic of products.

Thanks.

It depends, how much are you going to be using you ibook on the road? or is it like a desktop machine that is rarely ever unplugged?

 

[barely working]

Rarely take it on the road. Used at home as a desktop.

 

[DCBass]

Since you won't be traveling much with this machine, I recommend you get an external harddrive. Not only would it be massively cheaper than getting a new harddrive installed in your ibook, but it could also serve as a backup drive as well.

Good Luck.

 

[atari1356]

Since you mostly use it at home, you could get a nice big external firewire hard drive to hold your music (and also use it to backup all the files on your internal drive).

The Lacie D2 drives are pretty popular and I've heard they're reliable... you can get a 250Gb for a little under $200:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154069

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I'd probably vote for the external drive too. If you move around a lot with your iBook it will be a pain to lug a Firewire drive everywhere with it, but if you use it mostly at home on a desk than the external drive is fine. And cheaper.

 

[barely working]

Thanks for all your help. I already bought an internal drive at a retailer earlier today and left my ibook with their tech support to install it. They haven't started yet because they are waiting on me bringing by the power cable and the start up disks. I can just return the hardware and cancel the service. This looks like it will save me a few $$. This unit I bought was $160 plus they were going to charge $125 for the install.

I also bought some additional RAM (512) to add to my existing 256. Is this something easy for me to install or should I have the service dept install it?

Thanks again.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Bear in mind that a new internal drive is more convenient, in that you only need to lug the laptop around if you move it. It is also the neatest solution - less cords etc. But if you are not moving the computer much an external drive is cheaper.

Installing RAM is pretty straightforward, but can be frustrating for somebody with a light computer background. You'll save money doing it yourself, but sometimes it is best to have a technician install and test it - they'll handle things in case you get a bad stick of RAM.

 

[adk]

I also bought some additional RAM (512) to add to my existing 256. Is this something easy for me to install or should I have the service dept install it?

Not too tough. If you know somebody who knows anything about computers, They could give you some pointers. Also, Go here and it will show you how.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Big external 3,5" Firewire hard drive, definitely.

twice the capacity for the money
no $125 installation
7200 RPM instead of 5400
Put all the files you don't need to travel with on the external
You can make BACKUPS of all your data

and the big one

You can clone your internal drive to it and use it for an emergency boot drive if your internal drive's OS X gets b0rked.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

Go BIG external Firewire......theys mo better
A. Faster
B. Cheaper
C. Portable

Partition into 2 or 3 smaller drives
1. Back up from internal drive
2. Storage for your music/photos ect
3. Scratch disk (if you use any graphics/video/audio apps)