Lag, and external hard drives

[Blake]

Just some background - I have last year's 13" Macbook pro. It has a 2.26ghz Intel core 2 duo P7550 processor, 2gb of ram, and a 160gb hard drive. I have partitioned the hard drive into 130gb for my Mac OS, and a separate 32gb is partitioned for Windows, where I have Windows 7 Ultimate installed, and I run it using bootcamp.

 

I have very little space left on my windows partition (~500mb), and it's started to run pretty slow, playing runescape and normal computer stuff. I'm wondering if hard drive space would affect this.

 

If it does, (and even if it doesn't), I'm planning on buying an external hard drive. My main question is if I buy one hard drive, would it work for both my Mac OS and my Windows on the same computer, or would I need two separate ones? I'll mainly be putting music, movies and games on it.

 

The last question (that I can think of) is can I install a pc game, for example Skyrim, when it comes out, on the external drive and play it? And is there a way to do this without needing the disk? I had a friend do something with Daemon tools and he put Oblivion on my computer so I don't need the disk. Or, should I just buy it on Steam? I've never used it.

 

Sorry for the question barrage, but hope someone could help!

[Ember]

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[pure_fett]

my only question is if your going to be playing games on this computer wouldn't you rather upgrade instead of having a drive plugged in all the time... I mean, that does limit your mobility...

That being said, i do prefer western digital drives

 

(I LOVE my 1TB drive i got from them and filled up, although the 3TB drive i bought from them crashed after having it for only 28 days)

 

if you just want a bit of room and aren't storing huge files like I'm doing then stick with the 500gb-1tb range, you should be able to find them for around $75-100

[indy500fan]

There are speed issues with external drives (most at least), I wouldn't want to install a game on it. But you will be able to fine with Skyrim if you wanted, if it's like every other game the past 20 years.

 

Daemon Tools is nice, but you have to have the ISO of the Skyrim DVD on your computer too. Copying it to your computer is illegal (some will argue this, but it is illegal according to DMCA rules, whether or not it should be is another matter). Since you are doing something illegal anyways I would just go for a NOCD crack, much smaller (10s of megabytes at most) and easier. I use NOCD cracks all the time on my legally purchased games, even though it is technically illegal, because it is ridiculous to have to have a disc in the tray that is only read once when you start up the game.

[Blake]

Sorry for no reply in a while, been away.

 

I cleared up 2gb of space, and it's running a lot smoother. I still want to get an external hard drive though. I think I formatted the windows partition in ntfs, but not 100%. How can I check?

 

I work at Target in electronics, and I was looking at the hard drives we have. There's a 1.5TB Western Digital on clearance for 69.99. It says compatible with Windows 7, and requires formatting for Mac OSX. Would it still work on Windows after I formatted it for OSX? Also, is WD a good brand? I'd like to get a wireless one, but $70 for 1.5tb is a great deal.

 

About upgrading my computer: I'd like to. I don't know how to do it myself (yet) and I've heard it's harder to do on laptops. If I took it to the apple store to have it done, would they be able to put my two partitions on the new one, and have everything exactly like it is now?

 

About Oblivion/Skyrim - I don't care that it's illegal, i'm not selling it or distributing it. I just want to be able to play without the disk, as it's difficult to carry around and bad for my drive when my laptop is in my backpack, not upright, etc. Would it be better just to get it on steam? I could do all that stuff you're talking about (with a little help from you, perhaps :P) when skyrim comes out.

 

Thanks for your responses!

[Laura]

About upgrading my computer: I'd like to. I don't know how to do it myself (yet) and I've heard it's harder to do on laptops. If I took it to the apple store to have it done, would they be able to put my two partitions on the new one, and have everything exactly like it is now?

Upgrading the HDD isn't difficult at all. In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

iFixit HDD Replacement

 

Eh, so your model makes it a bit more difficult - it's still not too bad.

 

From there, partitioning the disk is a piece of cake.

 

To answer your former question, the rule of thumb is to have 10% of HDD/SDD space free for moving files. This percentage can vary depending on the size of your disk; a larger disk means a lower %. Yes, having limited space will impact performance.

[Sbrideau]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

[Laura]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

 

Don't even have to unscrew anything on the previous unibody Macs. :P Just made an observation, not trying to start anything though.

[Guy]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

 

Don't even have to unscrew anything on the previous unibody Macs. :P Just made an observation, not trying to start anything though.

Do those use the Mac version of SATA though, with the extra pins? I know the case with Mac Pro's is you need to buy Apple branded hard drives because of the non-standard setup.

[Laura]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

 

Don't even have to unscrew anything on the previous unibody Macs. :P Just made an observation, not trying to start anything though.

Do those use the Mac version of SATA though, with the extra pins? I know the case with Mac Pro's is you need to buy Apple branded hard drives because of the non-standard setup.

 

I've replaced the stock 250GB HDD with an Intel 80GB SSD. So as far as I know, it's standard. I've never heard that about Mac Pros. I know several people who have third-party hard drives. Some are SAS, but I don't know if they're using a RAID controller or something. I also know someone who bought an Intel SSD and put it in the Mac Pro's optical bay, using the SATA connector. Can't say I'm too savvy about Mac Pros, though - any material I could read on it?

[Guy]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

 

Don't even have to unscrew anything on the previous unibody Macs. :P Just made an observation, not trying to start anything though.

Do those use the Mac version of SATA though, with the extra pins? I know the case with Mac Pro's is you need to buy Apple branded hard drives because of the non-standard setup.

 

I've replaced the stock 250GB HDD with an Intel 80GB SSD. So as far as I know, it's standard. I've never heard that about Mac Pros. I know several people who have third-party hard drives. Some are SAS, but I don't know if they're using a RAID controller or something. I also know someone who bought an Intel SSD and put it in the Mac Pro's optical bay, using the SATA connector. Can't say I'm too savvy about Mac Pros, though - any material I could read on it?

 

It's just stuff I've heard around. How do apple get away with selling HDDs for the mac pro for a lot more than 3rd party ones then.. dat marketing.

[Sbrideau]

I believe Western Digital is one of the best brands out there right now, if not the best.

 

In fact, I've found that they're even easier to replace in Mac notebooks.

 

I don't know about other brands, but Asus is even easier than the Mac notebooks as you just have to unscrew the 2 screws on the hard drive compartment.

 

Don't even have to unscrew anything on the previous unibody Macs. :P Just made an observation, not trying to start anything though.

 

I know, we won't start anything. I was just mentionning it because on the guide you posted it says to remove 10 screws.

[Nadril]

Do macbooks have an e-sata port? I kind of doubt it but if they did you could run an external through that and it would act just like a regular hard drive. (It's what I do with my laptop).

[Laura]

I know' date=' we won't start anything. I was just mentionning it because on the guide you posted it says to remove 10 screws.

[/quote']

Yeah, made that comment before I saw the different layout. I didn't know apple changed the layout on the unibodies. My apologies, perhaps I should have amended my post.

 

Nadril, no the MacBook does not have an esata port. I believe on the OPs model, the best method of transfer would be FireWire 800. The newer models carry thunderbolt, which has yet to really take off. Hopefully they aren't trying to force something that will never take to market.

[cheeky16]

I notice nobody else has mentioned the different size disks. The one he can get at target is likely the 3.5" model and I'm almost certain the macbook will take a 2.5" only, that's why there are no issues going to SSD as the vast majority are all 2.5". Hopefully it all worked out if you've already swapped drives.

[Blake]

Just wanted to give an update on this. I didn't upgrade my hard drive on my computer, because I didn't have anything I could put the files that are already on my computer on for temporary storage.

 

I bought a 1Tb Wd portable hard drive. It was formatted NTFS, and the guy at the store said I needed it to be FAT32 to be able to read/write on both windows and mac. So I reformatted the hard drive, and put all the installation files back on. Right now I'm putting a bunch of files from my mac os on it, and after that I'll test it on windows. The only thing I don't like about having it FAT32 is that it wont backup my mac os or use time machine.

[Ember]

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