[dbranham]

As we all know, part of the iMac's appeal is it's near lack of wires. Adding additional peripherals and wiring to an iMac somewhat defeats its purpose--to be a simple, clean all-in-one. With Time Machine as a software component of Leopard, backing up will become a much more regular maintenance item among mac owners. Unfortunately, many iMac owners will soon feel compelled to add an external hard drive to their workspaces in order to take advantage of this backup software. Apple needs to avoid forcing its iMac users to add desk clutter. Therefore, it should begin shipping iMacs with two internal hard drives--a boot drive and a backup drive.

In order to make this additional HDD even more useful, it should be removable via a slot on the side of the iMac (a la modular optical drives on laptops. That way, users could easily place the backup HDD in a fireproof safe, or store it off-premises, while on vacation and not fear losing important digital data in case of a theft, fire, or natural disaster.

If Apple fails to offer this second internal HDD, or something similar, it will force iMac users to clutter their desks with external HDDs, thereby diminishing the appeal of the iMac as an all-in-one computer. Some will refer to .Mac as a backup solution. But, please, people. That costs a lot of money AND you get very little storage space. With today's digital media lovers, the backup hard drive should be capable of storing roughly the same amount of data as the boot drive (minus the storage requirements of OS X and apps). Photo, music and video collections have a way of expanding to fill a great deal of space.

[DKeithA]

I think for Time Machine to be truly useful two hard drives are definitely needed.

[::maroma::]

Adding more drive bays in the iMacs will push it even closer to being a Pro machine, taking away a lot of sales from the Towers. As of now the speed difference is nominal. The things that hold people back from buying an iMac over a tower is expansion. Unless Apple wants to eventually only offer one desktop solution for in place of the 2 they have now, I don't see this happening.

But it would be sweet if Apple went to a 1 desktop offering. I would love an all-in-one desktop that has real nice user expandability as well as top speeds.

[houltmac]

Adding drives means adding to the size, cost and compromise of the design. I don't think any of those things are in my interest. The heat generated, power required and overall weight of the system would also be affected.

While I hate the idea of huge drives which fail and loose terrabytes of information, I do think we have the capacity available that is required by probably 95% (pulled from somewhere not so pleasant) of iMac owners. External drives are the way to go for me and with the inclusion of FW800 in the 24" model it's almost as fast too.

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

Wouldn't it be better if time machine partition the Hard Drive? (This would be bad If you had a HD under 160 GB)

[dbranham]

Originally Posted by houltmac 

Adding drives means adding to the size, cost and compromise of the design. I don't think any of those things are in my interest. The heat generated, power required and overall weight of the system would also be affected.

While I hate the idea of huge drives which fail and loose terrabytes of information, I do think we have the capacity available that is required by probably 95% (pulled from somewhere not so pleasant) of iMac owners. External drives are the way to go for me and with the inclusion of FW800 in the 24" model it's almost as fast too.

I agree that iMac owners have enough storage to accomodate our needs on a boot drive. However, that isn't really what I'm talking about. We need a second drive simply for backup. It would contain basically the same data that would be stored on the boot drive.

I feel you on the size, heat, power demand, and weight concerns. Although, hard drives aren't all that large. Surely Apple could fit this extra drive without compromising the compact design too awfully much.

[dbranham]

Originally Posted by C.A.T.S. CEO 

Wouldn't it be better if time machine partition the Hard Drive? (This would be bad If you had a HD under 160 GB)

This wouldn't solve the problem, which is the danger of your boot drive going bad. If that happens, then both partitions will be destroyed, not only the boot partition. This problem requires two separate drives.

[houltmac]

The only way I see it being viable (remembering that in terms of components, the Hard Drive is one of the hottest, loudest, largest and heaviest) is if the secondary drive (or possible both drives) is a 2.5". These drives are considerably smaller in volume and generally give off less heat.

I really think it's becoming tough with backup because more and more we rely on our data, which means in turn that the massive amounts of data we accumulate a day are requiring backup which isn't there. Software is fine, perhaps moving faster now than ever but the hardware isn't going to catch up any time soon; there are too many limitations. For now I think I would probably prefer an external FW800 to an internal drive. I mean, if it weren't for the optical, HDD, and battery the MacBook could fit under it's own keyboard...

I could see an iMac benefit in that.

[dbranham]

I feel like a 2.5" drive would be far too slow to be an adequate solution to this problem. It would also be too expensive per gigabyte.

I honestly think Apple MUST do something about this, though. If it intends for most people to use Time Machine, can it reasonably expect to sell an all-in-one machine while KNOWING that Time Machine users will automatically have to add an external device? Furthermore, everybody NEEDS to be backing up their data these days b/c we store nearly all of our pictures and music digitally. Losing that data would be almost tragic.

[houltmac]

I agree, this issue needs to be addressed by Apple, and every other related manufacturer. I don't think it would be slow having a 2.5" drive though because you aren't reading and writing to your primary drive all the time, so on the downtime it would have more than enough to play catch up.

Perhaps I have mis-estimated these times, but that's the way I see it right now.

[dewhast]

I do mostly audio with my 24 iMac and I don't really see the need for an internal drive that is removed. We have computers with lockable/removable hard drives at work, you know what? No one ever locks or removes them, and although swappable no one ever uses the "sneaker net" but just uses the LAN or email.

At home, I put labels on my hard-drives and hook them in depending what I need, and then take the drives with me on the road with my PB to do mastering work. FW800 is the perfect interface for me (I already have 4 drives) and that is why I bought the 24in Imac instead of the Mac Pro. Also, you can daisy chain FW400 or usb through my FW800 drives, so you can attach audio interfaces, cameras, etc. You can't do that with SATA internals. As far as performance goes, my iMac is limited by internal RAM (2 GB) not HD read/write speed. FW800 performance is close, if not quite SATA level, but running 20-30 audio tracks and 10 software instruments in Logic I have never had "disk to slow" warnings or slow downs because of RAM.

[fisherKing]

if the logic board fails, or anything else, you'll want an external (or removable) drive.

seems simple enough to have an external drive. we have printers, scanners, ipods, etc etc.
run a usb extension, a longer fw cable out the back of the stand and tuck a drive out of sight and all is well...

what i am waiting for:

black iMac, slimmer. *sigh*

[dbranham]

Perhaps the optimal solution would be an aftermarket hard drive that somehow attaches to the current imac. This would be similar to the LaCie hard drive that accompanies the Mac Mini. I'm envisioning a hard drive that sits atop the bottom section of the iMac's metal arm (the horizontal section that sits directly on the desk). This would allow someone to run a FW or USB cable nearly invisibly from iMac to external HDD.

[dewhast]

Perhaps the optimal solution would be an aftermarket hard drive that somehow attaches to the current imac. This would be similar to the LaCie hard drive that accompanies the Mac Mini. I'm envisioning a hard drive that sits atop the bottom section of the iMac's metal arm (the horizontal section that sits directly on the desk). This would allow someone to run a FW or USB cable nearly invisibly from iMac to external HDD.

THAT is a good idea. Maybe Maxtor or LaCie could make such an enclosure with a semi-permanent 400 or 800 connection, with a drive that would be portable and run FW and still have a nice looking integration into the iMac. Good call.

[tooki]

HP actually had a good solution to this a while ago: hot pluggable USB 2 (we could do SATA instead) drives that slid into bays in the front of a machine.

A second drive for backups is really not a "pro" feature, it's something EVERYONE needs to be doing, especially now that people's photos and music are stored in computers. People used to have a showbox full of negatives, which were immune to corruption and most human error. (Yes, they're still susceptible to physical damage.) But computer media is WAY more fleeting than film, and it's critical to keep files safe by keeping multiple copies ON DIFFERENT MEDIA. Hard disks fail. It's not "if", but "when".</rant>

Anyhow, I think that, at least in the 20/24" models, there should be a 3.5" SATA bay with hot-pluggable modules, for use with Time Machine, and users should be encouraged to keep several backup modules, one to store in the house, another in the car, another at the bank, to ensure that precious data -- and memories -- are not lost.

tooki

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by ::maroma:: 

Adding more drive bays in the iMacs will push it even closer to being a Pro machine, taking away a lot of sales from the Towers.

That's what people used to say about half decent GPUs.
That's what people used to say about dual-core.
That's what people used to say about monitor spanning, especially with DVI.
That's what people used to say about 23"/24" screens.
That's what people used to say about Firewire 800.

Now, I'm not saying the 24" iMac will get a 2nd hard drive in the foreseeable future, but I want one. I guess the good news is that out of all the features listed, the extra hard drive is the only one that has been supported all along with an external solution. And now with Firewire 800, it's supported at "pro" speeds too.

[mac128k-1984]

I don't see the need and with the speed and cost of external drives I think this need is mitigated somewhat.

My Macpro is the only computer in recent years that I added a multple drives and that was to implement raid-0. Today's high capacity drives mean that there's little need for a consumer machine to have a second bay. Even a basic business machine probably can get away from having an additional internal bay.

The iMac has nice lines and I assume things are pretty packed in the case so by adding another drive bay apple may ruin the nice lines and/or need to redesign a new imac enclosure.

I have to say though I am such a fan of the old lampshade imac - what a design, too bad they dropped it

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by mac128k-1984 

I don't see the need and with the speed and cost of external drives I think this need is mitigated somewhat.

My Macpro is the only computer in recent years that I added a multple drives and that was to implement raid-0. Today's high capacity drives mean that there's little need for a consumer machine to have a second bay. Even a basic business machine probably can get away from having an additional internal bay.

The iMac has nice lines and I assume things are pretty packed in the case so by adding another drive bay apple may ruin the nice lines and/or need to redesign a new imac enclosure.

I have to say though I am such a fan of the old lampshade imac - what a design, too bad they dropped it

I have 3 drives with my main iMac right now, and one of those three is a 500 GB internal drive.

In truth, I only use 2 drives consistently, but it will be 3 consistently once Leopard ships. I will have one drive dedicated to Time Machine.

It would be nice to get at least one of those drives off my desk, although I'd complain less if Firewire 800 enclosures were cheaper. Perhaps the introduction of Firewire 800 in the consumer lines might lead to cheaper enclosures.

[mac128k-1984]

No question that more is better but in most real world applications I don't think there's a huge need. Apple blurred the product differentation a tad with the 24" model. Beforehand you could make the argument that the iMac was strictly a consumer machine but with the 24" model not so.

I stil think the need for a multibay imac is out of sync with what apple targets the computer for.