Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Beginner's Questions => Topic started by: jalcocer on January 08, 2011, 07:26:23 pm

Title: Replace hard drive of 21.5 core i3 imac?
Post by: jalcocer on January 08, 2011, 07:26:23 pm
Hi, me again with another post, was trying to find something about it but no luck on this. After all my journey through linux I finally get a 21.5 inch, core i3 3.06ghz, 4gb, 500gb hd, imac, would love the 27 inch with core i5 but not enough money for that, instead I opted to add an extra 4 gigs.

My hessitation is about the hard drive, it only comes with 1 500gb hard drive, I know I dont have all that much pictures  taken since I'm beginning, but between music, videos, pictures and all my important files I surpass the 400 gb at this moment (still gonna need more cause there are a lot of iso's from media i haven't created).

Right now I have in there only mi pictures, just about 10gb at the moment, and my music and websites and documents I'm working at the moment, everythin else, including a copy of those files is in one external usb 1tb drive, and have another 1tb external partitioned in two, to backup the most important data and the other for time machine.

My question is, should I keep going with just my recent jobs data in my imac and all the rest outside? should I replace the internal drive for a bigger 1tb or maybe 2tb drive so i can keep in there all my data, then have the extra 2 external for only backups? or should I stay that way and maybe add a firewire 800 drive?, dont have that much usb ports, and only one firewire 800, besides I know internal drive would be a lot faster with my data for everyday than an external drive, Nas is out of the question, i don't want that for my day to day basis.

the imac is brand new, so I really don't know what to do here, know my pictures are not taking that much at the moment, but I'm really starting to take more and more as time goes by. would my guarantee break if I make the replacement for a bigger drive? I know it is not that difficult to replace, it's even easier that with the 24 inch 2008 model.

regards
Title: Re: Replace hard drive of 21.5 core i3 imac?
Post by: davidewers on January 08, 2011, 09:51:12 pm
Personally I would go with some FW800 external drives and keep all of your data on them. Keep the main drive for programs and the OS
Title: Re: Replace hard drive of 21.5 core i3 imac?
Post by: jalcocer on January 15, 2011, 05:21:41 pm
Well, just installed a 2tb hard drive in my imac, not the same brand and after reading a lot and finding out even some times the same brand has trouble with the sensor, I opted for any good 2tb drive I could get and use smc to control that fan, been able to keep reading temps from the smart so I'm ok with that.

Still looking for a good external storage fw800 so i can complete my setup, went for the internal, cause I like to have everything in one place (still beginning with my photos so my library is not that big, most of it is for hobby, so don't lose money if i lose some photo), and have a backup for all that in time machine and another backup again for all my data, so i guess i'll be ok, plus I don't think I could go up even to 1tb that soon, went for 2tb because the price is low and even with 1 tb of data I'll still be under half my capacity, so, no performance issues.

Have to say my imac turned out to be pretty good, only the base model but I feel it even better than my previos pc with quad amd and 8gb.

regards