Just curious how you guys manage this. I have a 300gb music library and 150gb photo library. Clearly that won't fit on the 128gb SSD of my newly ordered 11" MBA so I was just pondering my options. Could put the libraries on an external USB drive, or create mini libraries just for the air... Thoughts?
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Limited Storage / Strategies
- Thread starter smacman
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My iTunes library is about 180GB. I transferred just the music to my Air (about 20GB). My full library is on a server in my basement, which I can access through my Wifi at home, or through a VPN when I'm out.
Music: Stream from cloud or home computer. There's nothing quite as nice as Simplify Media used to be, but Grooveshark seems nice until they inevitably disable your upload rights due to DMCA takedown notices. Zumocast seems like it might be the best option, but I haven't yet tried it.
Video: Stream from home computer. There's an unofficial Air Video for Mac client in the wild. I found it on these forums.
Documents: Cloud. I like SugarSync, personally, though some go for Dropbox.
Email: Cloud. I think I may forgo any local email client and have Gmail check my other inboxes for me.
Photos: Local. It may be time for me to switch from iPhoto to Picasa for Picasaweb, though. My library is under 40GB though, so I will keep it local for now.
I used to keep iTunes/iPhoto libraries on an external, but you are really, really going to be feeling the speed difference trying to work with hundreds of gigs of media on a spinning HDD. It'll irritate you more than you think. I say go "mini-library" or keep it in the cloud.
Lastly, CleanMyMac has routinely found 7-22 gigabytes of extra space on my drive. Well worth the price.
Video: Stream from home computer. There's an unofficial Air Video for Mac client in the wild. I found it on these forums.
Documents: Cloud. I like SugarSync, personally, though some go for Dropbox.
Email: Cloud. I think I may forgo any local email client and have Gmail check my other inboxes for me.
Photos: Local. It may be time for me to switch from iPhoto to Picasa for Picasaweb, though. My library is under 40GB though, so I will keep it local for now.
I used to keep iTunes/iPhoto libraries on an external, but you are really, really going to be feeling the speed difference trying to work with hundreds of gigs of media on a spinning HDD. It'll irritate you more than you think. I say go "mini-library" or keep it in the cloud.
Lastly, CleanMyMac has routinely found 7-22 gigabytes of extra space on my drive. Well worth the price.
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MBA is a secondary machine for power users. It is clearly not to be used for your MAIN COMPUTER! Especially for users like you who have 300 GB Music alone.
hcho3 looking at his music library.
I don't even have 20 GB. How the hell you people have this much music? Torrent!??? way to go...
hcho3 looking at his music library.
I don't even have 20 GB. How the hell you people have this much music? Torrent!??? way to go...
Apple really needs to provide options to iTunes and iPhoto like they do for the iPods where you can specify what gets put on your internal drive versus an external drive. I realize the implementation is very different, but concept is the same -- how you partition the mobile from the the main library.
That's not really true any more. Combine an Air with a server on a fast network that handles most of your storage needs and you have exactly what you'd have if you had two machines: lots of storage when you're at home (plus a monitor, keyboard and mouse if you like), and something portable with less storage, and a subset of your data, when you're not.
I think you make a great point -- and I would agree 100% -- if Apple would have included Gigabit Ethernet and FW800 for connecting to all that external storage. Maybe that is the role of the future MBPs. A system with inherently limited storage and no high speed storage access is a little lame as a "primary machine."
Well, I have 3 other macbooks in the house, and a TC, so most of my stuff will retains it;s position on those, and I'll simply access them wirelessly over the HN. When I travel I'll just transfer what I need. Job done.
i have a 11" mba, and i put all my songs in macmini core2duo 1.86ghz, 1gb of ram, and 256gb external hard disk attached to the mini.
the macmini is headless and acts as a server, but boy it's pretty slow because the wifi is B, unlike the MBA which has N.
the macmini is headless and acts as a server, but boy it's pretty slow because the wifi is B, unlike the MBA which has N.
802.11n is fast enough for most things, I think. If you're trafficking multi-gigabyte files around your network all the time, no, this probably isn't the best setup. I don't think that's the usage scenario for the majority of users.
I have an airport extreme basestation and iomega 1tb external drive that i stack right underneath it.
http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-MiniMa...O8/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1289585005&sr=8-26
it also has extra usb ports so i plug my printer into that as well then plug all of that into the airport extreme.
all my music/photos/documents are all on the external drive that i access wirelessly.
I also use mobileme so i'm able to access the drive when i'm not at home as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-MiniMa...O8/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1289585005&sr=8-26
it also has extra usb ports so i plug my printer into that as well then plug all of that into the airport extreme.
all my music/photos/documents are all on the external drive that i access wirelessly.
I also use mobileme so i'm able to access the drive when i'm not at home as well.
Some people (like me) play music and desire a wide variety of music to inspire the creative juices. While I don't have 200GB of music, I can certainly see legit music libraries of this size. Heck, find all the legally downloadable .FLAC Dead shows and you'll probably have some TeraBytes of music.
I have a similar set-up that I use for local Time Machine backups. I also have MobileMe and recently saw the option to provide access over the internet. Do you know if I can do remote Time Machine backups -- asumming I am not blocked by a firewall of something on the other end?
sorry, i wish i knew. i don't store anything on my actual computer except programs. everything is on the external drive.