External hard drive pros and cons

Hi

My emac G4 150 gb hard drive seems to be almost full, not sure of what but I need more space, or I need to dump stuff.

My question; is it a hassle to install or have an external HD?
is there a plug and play HD? If so what.

I just do not want to get into a bunch of partitioning, booting, reloading software etc...

I had a PC for years and spent so much time with all that junk, I would rather just buy a huge HD and use it, if I could just plug it into the firewire and be done.

What does it entail adding an external HD?

Thanks

Wait for hughvane, on e opf our prominent eMac members to see tour post and I am sure he will PM (Personal Message) you. Best option may be to place say a 250GB IDE HDD in the eMac, and pop the existing drive into an external Firewire case and keep it for backups.

Hehttp://www.wilko.com/emac/re is a how to replace the HDD, and optical, drives.

After reading a lot of forum posts, I think I would like to go with one of the Western Digital external 1T hard drives. I saw them for $139 not on sale, so that may be an option.

The WD website said the drive is Mac ready? What does it entail to install/hook up?

If the box says it is already Mac *formatted* (as opposed to just "mac compatible") then your entire "setup" will be to plug it in.

Otherwise, you may actually have to make three or four mouse clicks to reformat it using Disk Utility. Then it will be ready.

It's really not a hassle. This is Mac, not Windows.

Thanks, I have never really had to do anything on the mac in three years, but still harbor an aversion to messing with things. I would spent weeks, screwing around with hard drives and FAT32 and other horrible Windows stuff.

With utilities, are you saying it is easy to point say iTunes to a new external HD?

Designed for Mac - Formatted for Mac and compatible with Apple® TimeMachine™, this drive is plug-and-play ready for Mac computer users.

This is what the Western Digital My Book Studio 1TB says.

I have read things about, firewire vs usb. WD makes a USB HD as well, a My Book. Do you all recommend the fire wire.

I assume I will store photos, and maybe music. The photos I do not access much but the music is always being played, suggestions?

gburnham2004 said:

Hi

My emac G4 150 gb hard drive seems to be almost full, not sure of what but I need more space, or I need to dump stuff.

My question; is it a hassle to install or have an external HD?
is there a plug and play HD? If so what.

What does it entail adding an external HD?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Replacing an eMac's internal hard drive is not easy...but then it's not super hard either...it all depends on how good you are "with your hands" & how confident you are.

Here are instructions on how to do it:

How do you replace or upgrade the hard drive in the eMac models? Does the eMac have PCI slots or expansion bays? @ EveryMac.com

An external hard drive is much easier...but then an external hard drive takes up extra space, extra wires, and costs more.

If you decide on an external hard drive...it needs to be in a external hard drive housing, you can use USB or Firewire (firewire is faster).

Hope this helps,

- Nick

gburnham2004 said:

Do you all recommend the fire wire.
?

Click to expand...

I would recommend firewire simply because it's faster. If speed isn't an issue for you, I wouldn't worry about firewire; however if you have a lot of music/photos to move like I did firewire cuts the time spent moving files pretty nicely.

Music playback from an external drive is no real problem. I simply copied my iTunes Music files to the external drive then launch iTunes. In the advanced preference pane you have to point the program to the new file location. You don't move the library files just the folder containing the music.

Also be sure not to move the iTunes program out of the Application folder. If you do Software Update will not find it when new updates are introduced.