how can I get 2tb in a new macbook pro

Onboard storage and screen real estate seem to be ongoing problems. I am trying to look towards the future, and I'm wondering what others are doing. I have had two sequential 17" MBP's with an Opti-Bay drive supplementing the boot drive. My current one has a 1TB boot drive and 2TB drive in the Opti-Bay. This leaves me plenty of room for music production and a lot of other complex and data heavy work.

The he problem is, the 2008 MBP is down to a crawl and beginning to fall apart. I have ordered a new 2015 MBP with a ITB ssd.

So, I have told myself that if others can live with a 15" screen,miso can I.

But, the storage! I have ordered a 2TB Thunderbolt drive, and I guess I'll just have that thing dangling into my lap when I'm working in my easy chair, fearing it will be disconnected every time I shift positions - a stick would have been better, but no luck. And I figure I will search the machine for any large files I need, but not urgently, and will try to put them in the cloud.

My longer term solution is to try to live long enough for a 4TB ssd to come out that is ALSO Retina MBP compatible, and hope that my current ssd is not soldered to the motherboard.

Any other good solutions out there? Or approaches? I'm committed to a new machine, but want to retain some of my old convenience.

oscarfromguilford wrote:

But, the storage! I have ordered a 2TB Thunderbolt drive, and I guess I'll just have that thing dangling into my lap when I'm working in my easy chair, fearing it will be disconnected every time I shift positions

Get a longer cable and put it on the desk rather than on your lap.

I feel your pain. My MacBook Pro17 began to crash when any hard drive was inserted in either of both slots (Logic Board?). i had 1.2TB of iTunes content and 500GB of other things. So I get a new MacBookPro 15 Retina with everything (16GB of RAM, 1TB Solid State Hard Drive). You cannot open and change anything on the Retina macs. So my solution was to split out my iTunes content out to another large drive (NAS). Then I gutted my original iTunes of video. It went from 1.2TB down to 300MB. Fits fine on MBP SS hard drive. All is good.

If I want to use music, I use the smaller iTunes on my MBP.

If I want to use video, I hold down the option key during the launch of iTunes so I get prompted for where my iTunes is located. I point iTunes to my external drive its all there. Point it back later. You can move files between the 2 iTunes libraries if you want video on the road.

Good to hear, Brad! I thought about a similar thing with the iTunes library, and I already have it off on the second drive, but I like the idea of gutting the one and keeping it on the boot drive. Great!

I won't get my new Retina MPB until Tuesday, but unless something has changed a lot, I'm pretty sure you can at least get into it if you're motivated enough (I managed to get into my iPad 2 with a heat gun!). But, even if so, it remains to be seen whether the new larger SSD's will be in any way compatible. It's better to find a workable solution as you have.

I'll have to see what Tuesday brings. Thanks for the helpful reply!

Oscar

Sorry to wreck your SSD dreams. There is no place to insert a 2.5 Size drive. The 1tb SSD looks like the wrist band of a chrome wrist watch. It is stretched out. The RAM is soldered in place. Opening will just cry.

lol - I guess they want us in there even less than ever, or perhaps it's just getting more like my car, a bunch of heavy metal boxes packed tightly together under the hood, almost indistinguishable as actual parts. Oh well, all the more important to think like you have been! Thanks.

Your 2008 MacBook Pro probably just needs its original internal hard drive replaced. Spinning drives slow down over time, and in my experience, replacing the drive will resurrect many MacBook Pro's. (Factory speed is about 100-120 MB/sec. When it eventually slows down to half that, the drive will be unusable with modern OS's.) Blackmagic Disk Speed Test in the App Store can test your drive speeds. (Also, upgrade it to 6 GB of RAM. OWC has tested and sells upgrades for that even though Apple says that your max is 4 GB.)