Should I avoid filling my Hard-drive?

[Jamesbtp]

Hi, I'm just looking for some good advice for storing music.

Basically, I have a 160gb ipod, which i sync with a windows pc, because i ran out of space on my 80gb Imac. I have just bought a Macbook pro 250gb and want to sync my ipod with it long term. I don't use a huge amount on my hard drive otherwise, so should i just swap it all on to the macbooks hard-drive or use an external hard drive. I believe there is a way to tell my mac that the music is on an external drive, but i don't know how to do this. Obviously it would be easier to have it on my internal drve, But crucially will this affect my macbook's performance?

sorry it's such a long winded question, but any replies and opinions greatly appreciated.

James

[mac57]

This is hard to answer without knowing how much space you are using on the iPod.

The thing to keep in mind is that OS X is a "self defragmenting" file system. This functionality works well until the disk gets low on space, and then OS X is no longer able to do it. At that point, you will start to see performance impacts.

As long as you have roughly 10+ GB of free space after you dump your music on to the disk, you should be OK. If you go below that, you might want to consider alternatives.

[Jamesbtp]

Thanks for the quick reply. At the moment there is about 90gb of music, so i will still have a lot of space, well over 130gb. But not being an expert on these things, i just wondered over time would it affect its performance. But going by what you said I shouldn't have a problem. Thanks again.