Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Perhaps someone can help me. I have run out of space on my laptop and need to transfer my media to a larger HD. However I don't want to have to always have a external HD plugged in when I want to listen to music.

I am hoping to buy a Time Capsule to store all my media and then stream it across to my laptop. Would this work?

In theory yes, it works just fine, but Time Capsules are expensive for what they are, and you can't format them remotely - you need to crack them open, drop them into a dock/external case and format the drive, which voids warranty (not always a bad thing!)

I'd suggest buying the lowest capacity Time Capsule (or an Airport express) and plugging a cheap USB HD, then streaming files from that - that way, you keep backup and media separate.

Another thing - TC's can't back up network drives, so if a USB drive is plugged into a Time Capsule, Time Machine won't back it up. (it will, of course, back it up if you plug it into your laptop)

If you want to get busy with a screwdriver, you can always replace your superdrive with another harddrive; Optibay make conversion kits, but you can always find cheaper alternatives on ebay. I did this with my old MBP when I wanted SSD speeds but no sacrifice on space.

Good space-saving utilities:
X-Slimmer will strip out unnecessary binaries and language files from applications, which can free a good few gB, depending on the apps you have. Demoware.

DaisyDisk (app store) or GrandPerspective (freeware) will give you a good visual representation of what directories take up most room.

Decloner or Chipmunk (app store) do a byte-by-byte file comparison to help weed out duplicates.