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Why are the HDD's so big?

C

CBGFilms

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 16, 2008
118
0
Hey guys!

Going to be purchasing one of the shiny new iMac's when they're are launched, I currently have an early 2008 model but would like some more power and am excited for this ThunderBolt business!

Why are the hard disk drives so massive on these things? I mean the current base model is a default of 500GB, does the average user really need much space and couldn't that make them cheaper by decreasing the size of the drives? I mean my iMac that I purchased in 2008 shipped with a 320GB drive, and it's more than enough... I'm only using 140GBs of it!
 
It really wouldn't make the price any different. The difference between a 320GB drive and a 500GB drive is like $20 these days.

Also, different people need different amounts of hard drive space. Myself I need so much space I offloaded that data to a home server. I still use a majority of the space on my mbp.
 
If you started buying TV seasons on iTunes you'd run out of space very quickly with only a 500GB drive. If the computer's being used only to browse the web and store your music library then it wouldn't matter. You can buy a 500GB drive for under $50 anyway so making it smaller wouldn't make the computer much cheaper.
 
CBGFilms said:
I'm only using 140GBs of it!
Click to expand...
My iTunes library alone is bigger than that. Many users store large music and movie collections and other needs for a lot of storage. Just because you may not doesn't diminish the need for many buyers. As already mentioned, the price difference is negligible, so it's better to have more storage capacity than you need, rather than less.
 
Good points guys! Woah 140GB iTunes library, ahaa... I think mine is 1.31GB xD
 
Not too big at all. I'm using 630gb on my PC for OS, apps, games, music, photos, documents, videos, etc.

I built a server that can hold 16TB of data so I could have space and redundancy for my BD rips. Holds 22 hard drives so I still have some room for expansion.
 
Last edited:
Well I upgraded my MacBooks drive to 500GB and I'm stuck for space on that... despite having a NAS with 500GB of space that last time I looked was over 85% full.

Really depends what you use your computer for. Personally my NAS is mostly full of Music (itunes library) and videos with the occasional downloaded stuff on like linux ISO's etc. My macbook is mostly filled with Aperture 3 libraries.

At the point now where I'm thinking of getting a couple of 2TB drives for my NAS and using the 500GB drives out of the NAS for my Aperture libraries (shoot sports all through the winter so my library grows about 10GB per weekend between August and May - Soon adds up)
 
I have over 300gb of games bought through steam on my bootcamp partition alone , so I need 500gb just for bootcamp

My iTunes library is huge , over 3TB of movies and tv shows and growing around 30-50gb a month

There is never enough room , so the more they put in the better , rather than penny pinching and reducing usefulness to shave 20 of the sales price
 
Replacing the hard drive yourself on the later iMacs is very hard and voids the warranty, so it better be as big as possible.

Yet another reason not to buy an iMac.
 
cube said:
Replacing the hard drive yourself on the later iMacs is very hard and voids the warranty, so it better be as big as possible.

Yet another reason not to buy an iMac.
Click to expand...

I watched the video on doing it at ifixit and it looks pretty easy to me. Maybe 20 minutes from start to finish? But then i'm used to building computers.
 
archer75 said:
So what's the problem? It's pretty easy to swap out the hard drive. 8 screws, couple of cables and the LCD comes out. There's the hard drive.
Click to expand...

No, you need a big work area, have to dismount a lot of stuff, and the glass is a risk and can be hard to put back clean.

It should just have a door for the hard drive.
 
cube said:
No, you need a big work area, have to dismount a lot of stuff, and the glass is a risk and can be hard to put back clean.

It should just have a door for the hard drive.
Click to expand...

I guess if 8 screws is a lot of stuff and a big work area is something other than a table...
I understand how it may make some people nervous to do this.

Lay the glass down on a lint free cloth. Have a person handy to wipe off an dust on the inside when you put it back with the same lint free cloth. I certainly wouldn't use windex!
 
archer75 said:
I guess if 8 screws is a lot of stuff and a big work area is something other than a table...

Lay the glass down on a lint free cloth. Have a person handy to wipe off an dust on the inside when you put it back with the same lint free cloth. I certainly wouldn't use windex!
Click to expand...

It still voids the warranty. I stop right there.
 
My immediate thought is iTunes. Apple wants people to be buying as much HD content as possible (besides possibly application it's the most expensive media in the iTunes store), especially with the new ATVs have no HDD, but that can't happen if consumers have small drives.

As Dalton63841 said, the price difference between the capacities of hard drives are extremely small. If the difference between a 320GB drive and a 500GB drive is $20 for the consumer, imagine how small it is wholesale.
 
CBGFilms said:
Hey guys!

Going to be purchasing one of the shiny new iMac's when they're are launched, I currently have an early 2008 model but would like some more power and am excited for this ThunderBolt business!

Why are the hard disk drives so massive on these things? I mean the current base model is a default of 500GB, does the average user really need much space and couldn't that make them cheaper by decreasing the size of the drives? I mean my iMac that I purchased in 2008 shipped with a 320GB drive, and it's more than enough... I'm only using 140GBs of it!
Click to expand...

1. Price difference between a 500 Gb and 750 Gb and 1 Tb is less than 20% these days - standard size going towards 1 TB and soon to be 2 TB - so why have something more expensive and smaller sized, when oyu can have 2 Tb and not worry about running short of space :confused:

2. My music library alone takes up 1.5 TB and my movie library closing in on 1 TB.
I wouldn't even look at anyhting smaller than a 2 TB normal HDD these days.

Of course when it comes to the fast (expensive) boot drives, SSD, then I'll settle for a lot less (256 or 240 GB SSD) because I only need OSx, Win 7, Office, iWorks, Aperture, Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign on my SSD - and they combined take up less space than 160 GB :)
 
My old MBP only has about a 160GB, I keep deleting and transferring stuff to my external 500GB. I have def past the max on my MBP's HDD at times. So I'm looking forwarding to a huge amount of space when i finally buy a new iMac.
 
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