Ableton Forum

I installed a 320 about 3 months ago and son of a b. if it isn't already reaching capacity. Looks like my dream of having everything on 1 drive is already reaching it's limits with more software waiting in line to be installed. Damn you sample libraries!

With a new computer in my near future I want to slap the largest drive possible in it before I start the month long process of installing and authorizing everything. There aren't that many 500 GB laptop drives available at the moment and I wanted to know if anybody is using one yet.

We're talking a MBP by the way.

Bump

So I've thought about it, getting a 320, to replace the 160 I have now, but since it would void the applecare warranty I bought, I'm quite hessitant...

Seems simple enough though... And it's only like $130 with shipping and handling...

I put in the 320 after my Apple Care expired. It was quite the experience installing it myself but having accomplished that I've never felt so alive (yeah, my life is boring). Before that I had an 80 GB drive and about 3 externals and that was not sexy at all. Now I just have the 320 GB internal and a 1 TB external and it's just so so sexy.

I used an external enclosure to clone my 80 onto the 320 and made it bootable. I then ran it externally for a week or so until I was comfortable that it would work. It was screwing up some of my Live sets running as an external but once I installed it internally everything worked fine, not sure what that was all about. My advice is to test drive it for awhile but don't do anything important if possible.

I also read somewhere that on the new MBP they make physically swapping the internal drive a lot easier.

Word... I'm rocking the before now MBP. 2.33 GHZ Dual core...

It is still very tempting to do the upgrade, cause I could always cancel the apple care and have them give me a pro-rated refund... Then again... I'd be cancelling the apple care...

Apple would probably stop caring about me.

i have a 500 here in a new mb. man it's so easy to swap drives now in these machines.

anyway, no problems. and lots of free space. =)

drush wrote:i have a 500 here in a new mb. man it's so easy to swap drives now in these machines.

anyway, no problems. and lots of free space. =)

Right on. Which drive manufacturer did you go with?

the only, imo, 2.5" drive manu you should consider: seagate. this one is the seagate momentus. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, 500gb.

Hm, I've used a lot of Western Digital drives and they seem to get the highest user rating in general/least amount of "the damn thing failed!" reports, but no manufacturer is completely free from those type reports.

yeah, it's really whatever you've had experience with.. OWC (eshop.macsales.com) has good DIY bundles.. which really means the drive and an enclosure. i got my 500 and a usb2.0 enclosure for $154

(after you back up) i'd also recommend just sticking the new drive in there, formatting it (boot from the external), installing a fresh copy of the OS, and then using the Migration Assistant to move all your stuff to the new internal drive. in doing this before with other machines, i don't always trust the 'clone to the new drive then change them' method. weird things invariably happen.

In this case I'm talking about sticking it in a brand new computer so I won't be needing to back anything up. Hell, I might even order the drive before I get the computer so I don't have to wait when I do get the computer.

Also with drives being so cheap I sometimes get in the habit of buying 2 when there's a big jump in drive size. 1 is for the new internal drive and 1 is for cloning/back up.

buying two is certainly a good idea.. but you can get a 1tb external for <$100 these days. use that to back up. (time machine, not mirror)

I have a 1tb drive I am currently using to manually backup my internal 320 as well as storing "bulky" things I don't want on my internal, like Apple Loops and MacProVideo tutorials. Also I'm on 10.4 so no Time Machine yet.

I think the big system I am going to have to figure out is transfering things back and forth between my production computer and my gigging computer and somehow throwing Time Machine in the mix for all of it.

got an airport extreme base station? i have a 1tb drive hung off mine; my computers wirelessly time machine themselves. i never think about it.

(a time capsule will, obviously, do the same thing)

I have a time capsule but have heard nothing but bad things about using it for time machine. It takes forever.