In the past few weeks, I’ve gained 505GB of storage. Yay!
- 4GB: Kingston DataTraveler USB key ($49)
- 1GB: Orange iPod shuffle ($84)
- 500GB: I/OMagic GigaBank external hard drive ($149)
At first, I thought the external drive wasn’t compatible with OS X because I just couldn’t mount the drive. It worked after I formatted it to HFS+ rather than the default FAT32, so I did a little digging to see what the problem was. It turns out that OS X can’t read FAT32 filesystems larger than 137GB, so the 500GB drive was obviously not going to work. I wouldn’t mind simply leaving the entire drive in HFS+, except it means that it wouldn’t work on Windows or Linux without extra software.
So, I decided to partition it up:
- 100GB FAT32: for Windows/Linux compatibility
- 80GB HFS+: for backups of my PowerBook
- 320GB HFS+: for general storage
I figure this is the best solution, as it still gives me lots of room for storage while maintaining full OS compatibility. I’ve got tons of room to store all my videos now! It kinda makes me wish I didn’t delete so much stuff though.
