iMac HDD and USB HDD

[carlosbutler]

i was planning on getting a new imac soon enough. although im not sure if to go for the 1TB hdd. the main issue was that with iTunes im using about 190gb, and then i have some .wmv movies as well that in total add up to about an extra 60gb.

What i have tried with a windows PC when using iTunes was using an external hard drive (USB). but the drive letter kept on changing, and therefor iTunes didnt pick up the new location. but does the same happen on OSX iTunes. when you plug in a USB hard drive does the name/location ever stay the same or is it changing. is it a good idea/common idea to have entire iTunes on a hard drive...
thanks

 

[Phil A.]

OS X doesn't use drive letters - what happens is the drive gets mapped to a directory under /volumes and uses the drive name.
So, if you call the disk iTunes, it will get mapped to /volumes/iTunes and will do that consistently (so no issues with drive letters moving around).

The only slight issue is if you have 2 disks with the same name - the first one
will get mounted to /volumes/name and the second one /volumes/name1 - this is done on a first come first served basis so things can move around.

As long as you give your external drive a unique name on your system you should be fine.

No real issues with having your iTunes music on an external driver, except for one word of slight caution: By default, external drives are excluded from Time machine backups, so if you use Time Machine and want to back up your music you'll have to remove the external disk from the list of exclusions under time machine preferences

Finally, do you already have the external drive? If not, then have a look at FireWire drives: They work much more efficiently than USB ones. I think all new iMacs have FireWire 800 ports on them which is very, very fast if you get a decent drive

 

[carlosbutler]

i have not got the hard drive just yet. im waiting to buy the new computer and anything else at once.

there arent a huge amount of them with firewire, and the ones on the apple store are generally more expensive and smaller capacity. also i would need the hard drive to work with a laptop which doesnt have firewire. so, although i would like to get a firewire one, im not still sure about it.

but could someone please recommend a firewire hard drive with at least 500gb
thanks

 

[citron230]

I have 750GB in my HD on my iMac. I have over 6600 songs on my computer and lots of photos and some video's. I currently have used 103GB of memory. Initially I was going to go with the 1TB internal HDD, but I followed the recommendations I received from these forums and went with the 750HDD. I did buy a WD My Book Studio 1TB external HDD from eBay for $219 and I use that for my Time Machine.