Mac Mini bootable external drive question

mercury7

I asked this in another forum and also wrote g-tech but have not gotten an answer yet,

I appreciate anyones opinion on how to configure my system:



Hello, I wanted to ask this question fresh since specs change so much between revisions. I just got a 2.26ghz mac mini "standard configuration". I also ordered a 1 terabyte g-drive from g-technologies and plan to hook it up via fw800.

My question is : should I try to reinstall the entire operating system on to the g drive and boot from and use that as the main drive, or should I just learn how to configure all my programs to save to the g-drive. I have tons of dvds with video and data on them because I ran out of space long ago and so I am finally going to have some space so I am excited about having the g drive.



I ask these questions because I have read in the past that the internal mac mini drives actually slow down the system, however I dont know if this is still true, I know the bus speed is faster etc in the new ones

kingofsomewherehot

Personally, I'd leave the OS on the internal drive... that way the computer can be started even if the external is unavailable for whatever reason. Of course, there's no reason you can't have a bootable OS on BOTH drives.



Store all your video and music on the external, and you'll find the internal is probably plenty big for everything else. (Configuring iTunes to use the external is easy.)

mercury7

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingOfSomewhereHot


Personally, I'd leave the OS on the internal drive... that way the computer can be started even if the external is unavailable for whatever reason. Of course, there's no reason you can't have a bootable OS on BOTH drives.



Store all your video and music on the external, and you'll find the internal is probably plenty big for everything else. (Configuring iTunes to use the external is easy.)

Thank you very much, I am thinking the most important ones will be iphoto, itunes and imovie, if I can easlily configure all those files to be automatically on the gdrive then I should be good.



The only reason I was considering putting the os on it was speed.....kinda curious if you could "feel" the difference between a fw connected 7200 rpm drive vs whatever apple has in there. I can see it being a nightmare if for somereason the mac stopped recognizing the external....this will be my first one so I am guessing about everything

kingofsomewherehot

I don't think you'd be able to notice any difference in OS speed with a faster spinning ext drive.



iTunes and iPhoto can be configured to always use the external drive... iMovie probably can too, though I've never tried it.

You just hold down the "option" key while starting the app and it will allow you to select or create a new library in any location you choose. If you already have an iTunes library, you can just drag it to that new location.

ivan.rnn01

I do not think it's worth doing. This was valuable and popular recourse with 4200 rpm drives. Now they install 5400 rpm and their throughput (~70MBps) matches very well that of FW 800. Don't forget 800 Mbps = 100 MBps is the peak throughput while average real life one is used to reach just a half that rate, i.e. 50MBps, may be a bit more.

You'd better consider 7200 rpm internal drive (although, they are noisy and there's no big deal proposed right now).

mercury7

I appreciate the input guys, in my search for a terabyte drive, although this is by no means the cheapest, I thought g-technologies reputation and bhphotos christmas deal of 167 was pretty good so I jumped on it, should be here by the 23rd

mercury7

a follow up to this thread, I have been using the gdrive a couple of days and am very happy, it is very high quality.....it is somewhat loader than the mac mini hd I guess do to the 7200 rpm speed but it is only running when it is accessing iphoto or itunes files so far so it is completely silent in stand by mode. anyway 1 terebyte feels good. highly recommended.