How to use an external hard drive?

Factual Questions
1

I have an iBook G4 with 60 GB of memory. 2.5 GB of which are still available. I have 27 GB of music, 4.5 GB of pictures. I’ve been thinking about buying a new MacBook when Leopard is released but only because I don’t have enough memory.

I’m now thinking I may be better/richer buying an external hard drive rather than a new laptop. But I’ve never used an external hard drive. So I have some questions.

I’ll want to add another 10-15 GB of music and my photo library will increase by about 2 GB per year.

Can I use the external hard-drive to store 15 GB music, leaving another 15 or so on my iBook?

Can I transfer programs (like Photoshop CS2) to the external hard-drive so that it isn’t taking space on my laptop ( I rarely use Photoshop but hate to get rid of it so that I can someday start using it more.)

Can I transfer most of my iPhoto library to the external hard drive, leaving 1-2 GB of pictures on the laptop?

Thanks,

whistlepig

2

You can use the hard drive just like the one in the computer.

I have a 100GB external hard drive with 50GB worth of pictures, music, and other documents.

Edit: I generally leave my laptop at home and so it is not inconvenient to have a lot of stuff on a relatively large external hard drive.

3

Once the external drive is connected to the USB or firewire port it pops up just like another drive o the system. Same as a thumb drive. I’m not familiar with your notebook, but if you want to move stuff quickly it needs to have USB 2.0 capability or firewire. USB 1.1 is dog slow for working with external hard drives.

Get the biggest you can. [A 500 gig external WD is only 180 this week after rebate and this week some CC stores](5-Piece Nonstick Bakeware Set ) have a bunch of 15 off vouchers at the registers that will bring the pre tax price to 165.00. An excellent deal. It’s USB 2.0 & Works with Mac or PC. There are also firewire + USB versions available but they are not on sale this week.