Managing drive space on a macbook air?
July 31, 2011 3:40 PM Subscribe
Just got a macbook air, how do I best manage the drive space?
I've got a ton of stuff like mp3s and movies that I want to be able to move onto and off the Air as easily and conveniently as possible. I've also got a dropbox account, a windows 7 box with a TB hard drive and a Time Capsule with a terabyte drive.
I'd also like to be able to get to my stuff over the internet as well. Drop box is great for moving files around, but I don't want it to sync anything locally on the macbook, and I can't figure out how to do that without losing the dropbox folders.
Also, I'm just curious in general what people with macbook airs do to keep the hard drives from filling up constantly and having to shuffle stuff around all the time.
I've got a ton of stuff like mp3s and movies that I want to be able to move onto and off the Air as easily and conveniently as possible. I've also got a dropbox account, a windows 7 box with a TB hard drive and a Time Capsule with a terabyte drive.
I'd also like to be able to get to my stuff over the internet as well. Drop box is great for moving files around, but I don't want it to sync anything locally on the macbook, and I can't figure out how to do that without losing the dropbox folders.
Also, I'm just curious in general what people with macbook airs do to keep the hard drives from filling up constantly and having to shuffle stuff around all the time.
I deleted some iLife programs that I knew I wasn't going to ever use such as Garage Band. That alone gave me back over 1gb.
posted by cazoo at 3:56 PM on July 31, 2011
posted by cazoo at 3:56 PM on July 31, 2011
I use this, Disk Inventory X It's free but do you have Lion? It may not work. I can get a quick look at what I've got. You can find hidden giganto files.
I have your described set up. Almost. I have a smaller, portable 250 gb drive. I use that for stuff I quickly have to move around. I rip DVDs and such onto the external drive. When I have a lot I move them over to my 2TB. overnight. I also back up stuff overnight.
I love my Air but I do spend some time moving files around.
Also what cazoo said. I'm searching for my unused iLife stuff!
posted by hot_monster at 4:00 PM on July 31, 2011 [1 favorite]
I have your described set up. Almost. I have a smaller, portable 250 gb drive. I use that for stuff I quickly have to move around. I rip DVDs and such onto the external drive. When I have a lot I move them over to my 2TB. overnight. I also back up stuff overnight.
I love my Air but I do spend some time moving files around.
Also what cazoo said. I'm searching for my unused iLife stuff!
posted by hot_monster at 4:00 PM on July 31, 2011 [1 favorite]
I have an air. I do not keep any media on it. I deal with this in two ways:
1) AudioGalaxy (or google music, or amazon music, or whatever) lets me stream my music from my windows 7 box at home to my laptop (or phone, more typically)
2) I have a 2.5 inch external drive to that I can take with me to any place I expect to want media and not have internet. This is pretty rare.
I also use dropbox, but only for tiny stuff - text files largely.
as for keeping it empty... I download everything to the same place, and wipe it periodically. And I do almost all my work on the server, so my laptop doesn't get clogged. My workflow may not be yours. :D
posted by contrarian at 5:09 PM on July 31, 2011
1) AudioGalaxy (or google music, or amazon music, or whatever) lets me stream my music from my windows 7 box at home to my laptop (or phone, more typically)
2) I have a 2.5 inch external drive to that I can take with me to any place I expect to want media and not have internet. This is pretty rare.
I also use dropbox, but only for tiny stuff - text files largely.
as for keeping it empty... I download everything to the same place, and wipe it periodically. And I do almost all my work on the server, so my laptop doesn't get clogged. My workflow may not be yours. :D
posted by contrarian at 5:09 PM on July 31, 2011
As mentioned, it's the media (photos, movies, music) that uses up your space.
I have an Air.. my movies are on an attached 2 TB drive. My music is on music.google.com (or I just use Spotify most of the time), my photos are on the external drive as well (other than the last couple of months of downloads)...
posted by tomswift at 5:46 PM on July 31, 2011
I have an Air.. my movies are on an attached 2 TB drive. My music is on music.google.com (or I just use Spotify most of the time), my photos are on the external drive as well (other than the last couple of months of downloads)...
posted by tomswift at 5:46 PM on July 31, 2011
Ditto to what everyone else is saying. I have an air and just keep all my media on a NAS. Pretty much anything can be played right off a NAS or any external hard drive, so you don't need to usually move anything around, except when traveling I guess if you can't bring your external.
posted by Patbon at 11:15 PM on July 31, 2011
posted by Patbon at 11:15 PM on July 31, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:53 PM on July 31, 2011