need some help, kind of a specialist question

[iWheeler]

firstly sorry if this is in the wrong place! didnt know where to post this.

my mac details:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8

basically im a musician and im getting in producing, for now my macbookpro is running fine with the software i use, but i will be buying a lot more software which ive noticed comes with a lot of extras such as Komplete 8 im looking at has over 110GB of sounds or the ultimate version comes with 240GB of sound! and this is just one thing im hoping to get in the near future, so i basically want to prepare my macbook for when i start getting these things so i dont experience any problems with the running of it.

so my question is what upgrades do you think i should do to my macbookpro to keep it running fast and smoothly for running music software?
i dont no all the technical information about what music software requires from the computer to run smoothly, hope someone else can help us out on that?
but i have noticed with some software it will only work on the very latest version OS X 10.6 (or if you for some unknown reason still have a windows PC then it requires windows 7 + latest service pack update)

with my basic knowledge of computers i was thinking of getting a terabyte (or 2) hard drive and maybe even more RAM? not sure what else i need to consider getting (or things i should do on the computer) to make sure my computer will never slow down due to amount of software etc i will putting on here.

these dont have to be budget solutions, im willing to pay the money if it will make my macbook run perfect!

also if there are limitations to how much i can upgrade certain areas to, that would greatly help and the reason why would be even better!

+ im guessing for hardware upgrades ill have to send my macbook off to Apple to install it all?


sorry if ive asked to many questions! i thought id write everything down that i would like to no before i forgot

many thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

 

[louishen]

Sound like those music programs are going to eat up disk space, and the really large drives you are talking about dont come in macbook sizes.

Are you going to be using all this music software on the go, or mainly on a desk in your room or studio.

For music production you should max out the ram, but is is easy to do that yourself and a lot cheaper than sending it to Apple for a RAM upgrade.

Consider using an external 2 TB drive to store the bulk of your sound files, consider getting a firewire external drive as thats got faster bandwidth than uSB 2

 

[iWheeler]

thanks for your reply, i think i will be using it in more than one place a lot more soon as im about to start studying a degree at The Academy of Contemporary Music so ill be doing lots of work there and at home.

how do i find out what the maximum RAM i can put into my macbook? and is there any videos or something on how to do it?

yeah i thought an external hard drive would be the only option, my knowledge on this isnt great but cant you get a usb 3 hard drive then? or would that be pointless as i only have usb 2 ports?

 

[bobtomay]

Note: Moved thread. This is much better place than The Lounge which is for off-topic non-technical discussions only.