[Laminar]

I'm ready for more storage in my iMac and I'm trying to decide if I want to go internal or external.

My current setup is a 2010 27" iMac with a 1TB internal drive and a 3TB external drive. The internal drive has bumped up against being full a couple of times in the past few weeks, mostly due to a large amount of eyeTV recordings. I host video and audio to my AppleTV from this computer, so the iTunes library is fairly large and still growing. I occasionally do video projects that take up a few hundred gigs.

The external drive has two partitions, a 1TB Time Machine partition and a 2TB archive partition, for old movie projects, installers, backups, etc. The Time Machine partition is now full and has no room for new backups. The 2TB partition is about 3/4 full.

Best Buy has a Seagate external 3TB drive for $120 right now, which is the same price as the bare drive on Newegg.

I'm going to install an SSD into the iMac's second slot today, so if I'm going to install a new hard drive I might as well do it now while everything is torn up. The downside is that if I drop in a new internal drive, it likely won't work with Apple's temperature sensors and I'll have to get hacky with the fan settings.

My other option is to keep that drive external, and designate one drive for Time Machine and the second drive for random backups, where I can keep my large video files and other stuff.

Thoughts on this?

[cgc]

Get a NAS.

[P]

First up: a NAS makes a lot of sense, so consider that. If you don't want to do that, I do believe that the 2009 and 2010 iMacs can be upgraded to a drive of the same brand and keep heat sensor functionality.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by P 

First up: a NAS makes a lot of sense, so consider that. If you don't want to do that, I do believe that the 2009 and 2010 iMacs can be upgraded to a drive of the same brand and keep heat sensor functionality.

Right, I should have elaborated: since you serve videos from your iMac to your AppleTV, why not get a NAS and leave your iMac to do other things...all the videos could be stored and served up on the NAS which uses less electricity as well. Synology makes nice NAS systems as does QNAP.

[turtle777]

My recommendation as well. A Synology, serving up your iTunes library, is a good choice.

-t

[Laminar]

I got the SSD installed, Best Buy listed it at $190 bit they price matched NewEgg at $175. Target had the hard drive for $130 and they price matched Amazon at $113. I should have looked more closely though as the package seal was broken and of course the drive was a dud.

The SSD is installed and works great, I installed Mavericks fresh and easily linked to my old user folder on the original hard drive.

I like the NAS idea and will have to look into it more. If I had something that could work with Time Machine and serve iTunes that'd be great.

[turtle777]

Synology works with TimeMachine. I use it to back up my MBP.

-t

[cgc]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Synology works with TimeMachine. I use it to back up my MBP.

-t

As does QNAP...they are the two brands I am also considering...both support Time Machine, iTunes, media sharing, etc.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I should have looked more closely though as the package seal was broken and of course the drive was a dud.

Once I thought about it, I remembered the USB and power ports on the enclosure didn't quite line up with their holes. It didn't make sense at first, but now it seems pretty obvious that somebody bought the drive and stole the actual hard drive out of the enclosure, replacing it with something dead, then returning it to Target. I exchanged it for a good one and let them know it was dead.







Thanks iFixit! Note that I got everything in their $50 "dual hard drive kit" locally for about $17 - the suction cups are $2 each at the hardware store, the Torx screwdriver set was $7, and the SATA data and power cables were a few bucks each at a local computer shop.