my powerbook says it only has about 700mb left on it's HD, when i restart it's about 2-3 GB. i have about 30gb music in my itunes library.... will storing my music on an external hard drive help and make it faster? (i work with programs like photoshop and autocad, has to be faster!!) or should i rather upgrade my ram?
2007-03-13 13:12:35 · 5 answers · asked by Monica 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Laptops & Notebooks
External Hard Drives are excellent options for storage, but they are not good performers when used for working with files. If I were you I would get a second internal hard drive as long as your system has an available location for it in your bays and an available IDE or SATA cable to attach to it.
Remember the very first time you used your photoshop program? A message popped up telling you that the scratch file will be located on the same drive with the operating system. It said that it would perform better if it was located on a separate drive. I've seen how much less time the program takes to render changes such as blur when the scratch file is on a separate drive; its quite a difference! Sometimes, a difference of up to 2 minutes.
http://www.easyelements.com/scratch-disk.html
http://www.photoshopninja.com/2006/04/making-the-most-of-your-photoshop-scratch-disk/
My suggestion is to get a second, much larger internal hard drive and use that to store all your files. Also, relocate/redirect all your scratch or rendering folders to that drive as well. It will increase your performance and decrease your wait time for changes!
Upgrading your RAM should be done after you solve your shortage of storage problem. Besides, adding more RAM won't increase your performance as much as the suggestion I made in your case.
2007-03-13 13:22:59 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It wouldn't hurt to move your iTunes library because OS X needs at least 15% of hard drive space to be free in order for it to run problem free. You can free up space by deleting unneeded language files with Monolingual, just make sure you don't choose English for deletion. Clear all caches and log files and delete unneeded print drivers, along with applications you don't use.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
Adding more RAM wouldn't hurt either.
2007-03-13 19:43:44 · answer #2 · answered by Elbert 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Western Digital MyBook is fully Mac and Vista compatible and uses a power supply to power it. Or you can pick up a cheap usb hub to plug into one of the ports. Targus makes USB hubs that are smaller than a cracker and are made for notebooks and compatible with Macs. DZE is wrong, the drive she listed still uses the Y-USB cable. Get a hub to use your existing drive. People need to do their research before answering.
2016-03-28 22:19:16 · answer #3 · answered by Lottie 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yes...put your music on an external harddrive..
I found out the hardway that adding music to itunes copies the music so that you have two copies of the same song on your harddrive..etc..make sure that your 30gb of music is really not taking up 60gb of space..
also that fluctuation in memory usage is the Virtual memory adjusting based upon the amount of physical memory in your Mac..
2007-03-13 13:17:03 · answer #4 · answered by m34tba11 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
move your music to an external drive and or get a bigger drive for the laptop and more memory
2007-03-13 13:15:31 · answer #5 · answered by bsmith13421 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋