You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much disk space...

March 12, 2006 10:30 PM

You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much disk space...

I'm using a dual-G4 desktop (Panther) with a 28GB hard disk.

You won't be surprised to hear that I'm running out of space.

So I got a chance to improve the situation when another mac gave up the ghost completely. I cannibalised two 9GB SCSI drives from it, installed them, and I've got another 18GB ... what should I do with it?

Obviously I should put files on it, but, which ones.? I'm pretty much used to the OS X "Documents", "Applications", "Library" etc setup. Should I just use one of the disks as my Documents folder?

I'd put my iTunes Music folder on one, but that folder's already over 10GB and climbing. And it probably wouldn't be sensible to put Applications or Library on it.

My problem is of course that I haven't got an extra 18GB, I've got an extra disk of 9GB and another extra disk of 9GB. Combine the two into a RAID maybe? Fiddle with mounting options so that one of the disks appears to be /Applications when it's really not? Do something truly scary and try to combine all three physical disks somehow?

Supplementary question -- this is all reminding me of the OS 9 days when people used to have their pet schemes for partitioned/multiple disks. People would have the OS on one, apps on another and documents on a third or whatever. Does that kind of thing make any sense in the era of OS X?

posted by AmbroseChapel to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

At this point, with 120GB disks under a hundred bucks, I wouldn't bother with those old 9GB disks at all.
posted by zadcat at 10:33 PM on March 12, 2006

Should I just use one of the disks as my Documents folder?

Sure, no reason why not. Just about anything you'd keep in ~/Documents, you can stick on a different drive.

I wouldn't bother messing with a RAID or anything like that. From a time/benefit perspective, you'd be far better off getting a large new internal drive, or an external (Firewire) drive. New drives are big and cheap -- without even looking hard, I found a 160 GB FireWire drive for $120, and I bet you can do even better than that.
posted by xil at 10:41 PM on March 12, 2006

Also, complicated partition schemes are a lot less popular than they used to be. I usually partition so I can have multiple OS installs on the same drive, but that's the only reason I'd bother.
posted by xil at 10:43 PM on March 12, 2006

Best answer: iTunes should be able to cope with music stored in more than one location. Just fill one with music, then put the rest of your collection (and the default ripping/downloading folders) on the other. Point iTunes to the two folders, making sure that it doesn't feel the need to move or copy all the files into a single area.
posted by krisjohn at 10:52 PM on March 12, 2006

You can get a brand new 250GB drive (which is probably faster than the ones you have now) for $80 on sale if you look around. Why nickel and dime yourself to death like this?
posted by Rhomboid at 11:32 PM on March 12, 2006

I've certainly put documents on a separate disk/partition when using OS X. As a matter of fact I do that now. (Habit from the last computer, which had a lot of sketchy drive business.) But I gotta chime in with the others saying to just buy a new hard drive – you can get a new 80 gig drive for like $40 if you really want to lowball; ain't no excuse to be tooling around with 9 gig SCSI drives in this day an' age. Man, single digits. Reminds me of my old Performa!
posted by furiousthought at 12:51 AM on March 13, 2006

Response by poster: Sorry, to everyone pointing out I'm wasting my time, I probably should have said, this is my computer at work.

My work is in the impoverished public sector, and they're not going to buy me a new HD just because I've filled up the perfectly good one they gave me with my MP3 collection. And I'm not going to buy my own HD and install it in my work machine, that way lies madness.

So you're right of course, but in this particular case, the question is, "what's the smartest way to use the measly 18GB I've managed to acquire?".
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:38 AM on March 13, 2006

In this case the right answer is the boring one. Just keep them as they appear. You can rename them to something cute (I have a tuna-based naming scheme -- my HDs are named Yellowfin, Albacore, Bluefin... etc).
posted by unSane at 5:45 AM on March 13, 2006

Response by poster: You can rename them to something cute

Way ahead of you. Mine are called Charles, Sebastian and Julia though.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:40 PM on March 13, 2006

Response by poster: I gave krisjohn the Best Answer because he pointed out something I hadn't thought of and also gave me the simplest strategy for moving an enormous chunk of content off my central HD.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:41 PM on March 13, 2006