MacBook Pro Storage Limitations
The overall transition from a powerful desktop to a slim portable machine has been very smooth to date. I enjoy portability much more than the added power of the desktop machine, the MacBook Pro is one tool I don’t think I could go without now having used it for a few weeks.
However, there has been one downside to the transition which I expect to see eliminated over the course of the next 24 months - data storage. It’s difficult when you have over 500GB of live data but just a 160GB internal hard-drive. This will start to improve as manufacturers pump out higher density drives, Western Digital already have a 320GB drive on the market. I don’t think it’ll be too far away until we see those as official Apple BTO options for the MacBook Pro.
I’m very interested in the new WD Scorpio 320GB 5400-RPM HDDs. Installing a 320GB drive into the MacBook Pro would mean less data to keep on external drives, in turn leaving me with less headaches. It’s no fun receiving a warning message like shown above. Thank goodness for my 250GB LaCie Porsche external drive, which is now home to my extensive catalog of digital images in Lightroom (review coming very soon for those who have asked).
#1
elliott cable → elliottcable.name
Less headaches? Are you kidding? Ugh a 5.4k RPM would be a PAIN. Ouch!
#2
Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com
I’m currently on a 5400 RPM with the drive in the MacBook Pro, so the difference wouldn’t be there from what I’ve been used to for these few weeks. 320GB 7200 RPM..now I’m listening even more ;-)
#3
ChrisIWHi Glen, Now you are using a MacBook Pro instead of a desktop, do you find the need for a mouse, or do you just use the trackpad. I have a MacBook and really dont use a mouse at all these days, these large trackpads are just great.
Im new to this site and it looks great, you do a good job.
Chris
#4
Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com
Chris. I’m using a keyboard and mouse 70% of the time where I have my MacBook Pro at the desk hooked up to the 30″ Apple Cinema Display. The trackpad is impossible to use navigating the 30″ display ;)
#5
Arjun Muralidharan → www.cupofchai.net
Glenn, I’m not one to judge, but 500GB of live data?
I wonder what all that might be, but my 2 centimes would be that you should also try to declutter your drive (make it as clean and nice as your desk).
Other than that, if your looking for good external drives, you know the good ones: LaCie and WD MyBooks :-) gotta love the MyBooks storage meter…
#6
Andy → goodonpaper.org
All my music has to be stored on an external drive as theres no way I’d get it all on my 120GB internal alongside everything else. Really sucks when I want to listen to music - thank god for last.fm and Hype Machine!
#7
ImranHi Glenn, sorry for being a bit clueless about this, but do you know if there’s any association at all between larger storage space and the amount of heat that’s produced by a drive?
Looking forward to your Lightroom review…
Imran
#8
Rob Schultz → www.truebluetitan.com
I wonder if anyone has found a NAS hard drive that they would recommend. I too am running into the limited hard drive space on my MBP. Right now I have a 750GB MyBook to keep me going when I’m at home, but lacking portability kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop doesn’t it?
#9
ChristinaUnless you are doing HD video editing (or longform SD video) or high-end 3D modeling (which you wouldn’t be doing on a MBP - the 3D modeling anyway), I cannot fathom the need to access 500 GB of “live” data at any time. But a better question would be - if you are mostly using the laptop connected to a display and using a keyboard/mouse, why would you not just have a 500 GB or 750 GB external connected and use it as such? Are there truly THAT many situations when you are away from an external (even a 2.5″ external that is self-powered) drive and need to access more than the 160 GB at one time? Really?
#10
JakkoSeriously Rob, why not ask on a forum where there are actual business users? You sound like an absolute fool posting here. Do you really think that a 15 year-old blogger with no practical business experience is going to offer you reliable business advice?
Everyone, if you need more \’mobile storage\’ then you\’ll need to either upgrade your laptop\’s existing 2.5\” drive or attach a firewire/usb2 2.5\” drive and suffer with wires. GET OVER IT! If you want NAS, go out and buy the appropriate hardware from Apple, Buffalo, Linksys, etc…
#11
John Pastor → www.macspark.net
Glenn,
I’m using the 250GB WD Scorpio in my MacBook (Core 2 Duo) right now, and it works great.
John
#12
Adric → oddboot.wordpress.com
I was running into space problems on my MacBook, so I purchased a 160 GB external Maxtor hard drive that would run off USB power. This has worked great for me. I don’t do much with video or photos, but I do keep a lot of Ghost images handy incase I need to restore a computer (I work with hundreds of public access computers, so this comes up a lot). The USB hard drive is small, and fits easily in my back pack. I may purchase a larger internal at some point though, I only have a 60 GB internal drive.
#13
Rob Schultz → www.truebluetitan.com
Jakko,
Nice guy! It was a hard drive-related question on a hard drive-related post. Sorry to offend you with my foolish antics. ^__^
Adric,
The more I think about it the more I think I’m going to head the route that you went. Thanks!
#14
Henning → www.firstofall.net
I feel your pain, man. I’m currently in the market for a harddrive myself. It’ll probably be 250GB. I have a 250 LaCie that I’ll be using for time machine. I have an iTunes library of a hair under 100GB, so I suspect this won’t be my last storage-related upgrade.
#15
Paul Stamatiou → paulstamatiou.com
Haha, seems like we’re on opposite ends of the table. I’m only using ~55GB (mostly itunes) now and plan on switching to a 64GB SSD as soon as I can get my hands on one.
#16
RobM → rhymeswithgeek.com
My MacBook has it’s 3rd disk in it now. It’s an original “Core Duo” model and it came with the 80Gb that was standard back then and I’ve upgraded 80Gb –> 160Gb –> 250Gb.
It amazes me this is easier in the macbook than it is in the macbook pro, but however you look at it, portable storage is only recently starting to chase after desktop storage.
Actually even on desktops it isn’t all peaches and cream. I have a windows desktop and an apple laptop and I’d love to get an apple desktop to replace the windows machine.
However, I can’t really justify a Mac Pro (It’s not that I don’t have the money, it’s just that I have more important things in life to spend it on) and the iMac is actually quite an unattractive proposition to a ‘techhead switcher’.
If I purchased an iMac, I’d get a 20″ monitor I didn’t need or a 24″ monitor that’s too big for me to use comfortably built into the iMac in place of my perfectly fine 22″ TFT I have now, I’d get tighter memory expansion ability than I currently am used to.
Worst of all, I’d lose the ability to stuff several medium-sized hard disks into the case that I currently rely on. Especially as I could drag all but one of them over as part of switching, leave the OS drive in the old machine so I can sell it and bring my data across on the other internal drives with no mess or fuss.
A real shame, I want to switch fully but Apple aren’t making it easy for me.
#17
Grant → www.grantmc.co.uk
Ave gone off macbooks n that now! am no gettin a motorbike n ma licence n CBT n that for ma bday instead, the big 16 mofo’s!!
#18
Dan MaurathIm in the same situation. I refuse to be without my extensive music collection which occupies the majority of my 100GB drive. I plan to upgrade in a year or so to a 200GB but am not sure how complicated/risky the process is on a macbook pro. Any idea?
#19
GarethLooking forward to 512GB SSD’s :D
#20
Grant → www.grantmc.co.uk
A lot less comments on the site, has glenn LOST more viewers from this PR stunt?
#21
Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com
Grant. A lot less comments? Look in the archive, this is around the average. Please stop with your spam comments, this is your second warning.
Back on topic.
#22
Blair BeckwithI myself often find myself limited to my space on my laptop. One thing I use that slightly adds to my available space is a 16 GB USB key.
#23
Henrey KissinggerI don’t know about others experiences, but i really love lacie hard drives.
#24
Blair BeckwithSee, I have used Lacie external hard drives, and honesatly, have found them terrible. They look great, and often match Macs perfectly, which would usually be enough to have a spot on my desk. However, I went through three lacie hard drives in a 6 month span, which was enough to get me to switch to the Seagate FreeAgent series.
#25
Henrey KissinggerFreeagent drives are insanely ugly… They don’t match any mac setup.
#26
Blair BeckwithSee, my Macbook is a Colorware painted one (Black), so it matches my ‘book perfectly, with a little bit of an orange flair. I’ll post an image sometime to show you what I mean.
#27
Blair BeckwithJust as a side note, it’s worth noting that Macs are healthiest when they have 33% of their hard drive empty; so having it this full is probably slowing down your machine, Glenn.
#28
Ben Carroll → bencarroll.wordpress.com
Personally I keep all images and projects on a external drive. I find this much relieving on my mac and frees up disk space for programs such as soundbooth and premiere pro. And it feels much more organized, I whip out my drive and its and instant library of all my files that I need. And with spotlight it makes it so much easier.
So I really suggest in investing a much bigger external drive and just keep it in your back pack. Also another great suggestion would be to get a networked drive with 1tb of storage, although you probably wouldn’t have that portability that you would want. Of course I don’t have much experience with these kind of drives you could give it a domain and access it from the web. But I am not so sure you could do this so don’t take my word for it.
Thats my 3 cents.
#29
Eric LudzenskiI have an original MacBook Pro Core Duo with the 80 GB hard drive, and I have been looking all over the web for the 320 GB you mentioned, but I think they’ve been sold out everywhere. If anyone knows where I might purchase one (in the states), I’d REALLY appreciate it if you let me know.
president@apercurecords.com
#30
Eric LudzenskiAlso, Glenn, (you might now this already), but if you’re in a desperate need to free up hard drive space on your MacBook Pro, you can delete something around 4 GB of pre-installed printer drivers from OS X here:
Macintosh HD (”MacBook Pro”, is apparently the disk, in your case)/Library/Printers
You can just go through and delete the ones you don’t need, I think HP’s and Epson’s take up the most space.
*You seem quite proficient with Macs, Glenn, but I figured that other people posting might also be interested*
#31
Loren Morris → www.r3fresh.com
I ran out of space about a month ago and somehow deleted 10 gigs of crap most of it being old podcasts. It doesn’t look to be as easy as what I did.
#32
JehadAh yes! something i thought you would experience after your switch from a MAC PRO. External hard drives will have to do!
#33
Jack Sauer → jacksauer.com
Hey Glenn,
Why didn’t you get the 160gig HD @ 7200rpm? I got it and although I am 3.3gigs away from a full HD (Another external drive coming soon) that extra 1800rpm is easily noticed!
I have had my MBP for a few weeks now, maybe more, I forget, and I had problems with my screen. It has been replaced with a new screen, but I just wanted to know if you’ve noticed any faded or dead pixels on your screen?
-Jack
#34
Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com
Jack. Because I bought refurb because I wanted overnight shipping, I had to go with their listed stock specs.
I’m now considering using a 160GB 2.5-inch Seagate Portable USB drive for the Lightroom library. Bus powered is a huge +
#35
Gillo → www.totaltactics.org
Glenn, now that you’ve fully switched to the MacBook Pro, how do you feel knowing that soon they might release a new version? I’m thinking of buying a MacBook Pro myself, but that’s one of those conundrums…
#36
Blair Beckwith@Eric: You might try looking on eBay or in the online classifieds for your area.
#37
ConnorI’m with the others, i’d get a big external drive.
#38
Blair Beckwith@Connor: See, I don’t think he’s really interested in big, clunky external drive. And also, external drives are often slow when dealing with constant read/writes that occur with photo editing.
#39
Grant → www.grantmc.co.uk
what about they little “rugged drives” they are bouncy for one and if I’m not mistaken they come in up to 500GB! surely that enough if not then why do you have a laptop as you main pc?
Hope my spelling and grammer is up to your standards! You can’t have many standards mind, giving someone you site and all but it appears you have some and like to complain about my spelling and grammer!
#40
Mike EvansHey Glenn, Why don’t you buy a 250GB HD and upgrade that sucker yourself? OWC.com has video’s on how to take apart your Macbook Pro and do the upgrade.
#41
Mike Evans/\ Correction OWC.com should be macsales.com
#42
MichaelHey Glenn, can I ask what happened to Desktop Friday? I haven’t seen a post about it… are you just busy?
#43
Brendan → www.advertisehereforever.com
You need to open your eyes wider Michael
#44
Chris → .
Is there a friday Desktop……I could not find it
#45
Alex Killpartrick → www.firstofall.net
Yeh I know exactly how you feel. My first MacBook Pro (which Apple replaced) had an 80 gb drive. I’ve long since had my iTunes library on an external disk, which is a real pain.
I’m going to install a 320 gb drive in my MBP soonish, external HDDs + Laptops don’t mix very well IMO. The whole idea behind a laptop is portability, which external HDDs seem to completely counter.
#46
Ben Carroll → bencarroll.wordpress.com
Oh hey my friend showed me this really cool trick he does with his drive.
He takes some velcro tape and applies it to the lower bottom lid of his macbook and the hard drive. So now he can have his external hard drive every where but doesn’t have to worry about carrying it but when he needs to detach it simple just peel it off.
And from what he is telling me he uses firewire and that is pretty solid for aperture and all that crazy stuff.
Hope this helps.
#47
Alex Killpartrick → www.firstofall.net
It wouldn’t fit in the second skin, or sit on a desk properly then. Wouldn’t work for me.
#48
David Windham → www.davidwindham.net
I can’t say enough good things about Lacie..stick with the Lacie drives firewire 800 drives. I daisy link three machines with two drives. One for imagery/graphics/video/music/media. And the other for system backups.
#49
Ben Carroll → bencarroll.wordpress.com
Hey Alex,
Put it on the outside of the skin then. Then you put the drive up a little more on the lid so you can tilt your screen all the way down. I find that a lot of my friends are liking this technique.
#50
Alex Killpartrick → www.firstofall.net
Yeh but the problem is that it then won’t lie flat, which I need it to. I often sit books etc… on top of my MacBook Pro on the way to lessons (don’t use a bag once you’re in 6th form).
Plus my internal drive is better than my mini external, and I often end up using all my USBs/Firewire for other stuff anyways.
#51
Nathan Bolender → www.nathanbolender.com
Hey! I have the 320GB LaCie Porsche drive! It’s great!
#52
Max → comingsoon!:D
Glenn,
Ok so here is my problem which I believe I have come to a decision on but want an opinion from someone who knows much more about Mac than I.
I was a Windows user for a long time, and I have gotten to the point where I can’t stand it. So I started using Linux, which is fun by slightly inconvenient.
My problem is that I am going to college in a semester and want a new computer to bring with me. My plan was to build a new PC, but then it stuck me “A laptop would be best right?” So I stumbled upon the MacBook Pro. I was wondering what your thoughts on that particular machine are for college work specifically.
Thanks,
Max
#53
Alex Killpartrick → www.firstofall.net
@ Max
Just get it, you’ll love it :)
A lot of people do what you’re doing right now, asking if it’s the right thing to do. The only answer you’re going to get from Mac users is ‘yes’. Best choice you’ll ever make as far as computers go…
#54
Art BishopThe FileSync folder in my Library is 99 GB! I do not have Time Machine. I am waiting for the solution from .Mac. Would like to hear from those who have gone through this and solved it.