External hard drive for Macbook

marksoton

Hi all.

For the last two years i have stupidly had my Mac and not backed it up with anything. The time has come to buy an external hard drive for it. The question is which one ?

It doesn't have to have massive capacity, and i wouldn't want to spend a fortune on it.

It's a slightly older Mac (10.4.11 ) with firewire if that helps.

isofa

Any external USB or Firewire (presuming your mac has Firewire) will do. They don't have to be Mac specific, unless you want some extra software with them. Have a look on amazon: Freecom, WD MyBooks, Iomega, LaCie etc.

Marty_J

This is excellent value. It's USB only though; if you want FireWire, you'll have to pay a bit more.

marksoton

Marty_J wrote: »

This is excellent value. It's USB only though; if you want FireWire, you'll have to pay a bit more.

USB will do fine. I take it a normal USB2 cable will connect it to the Mac ?

Have you purchased one yourself Marty ?

M4RKM

from my POV, if you're using it on a laptop, I prefer a laptop based external hard drive, as this will draw power from the USB port, and not need an external power supply.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-Portable/dp/B0012IOHVM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1252082855&sr=8-1

I have the 160gb version of this, in white, and it works perfectly fine with my MacBook Pro.

M

Leopard

If your Mac has Firewire 400 (most do) definitely pay a little extra for an external drive that has (preferably two) Firewire ports as well as a USB2 port.

Bear in mind two things:

1.) Older Macs may have Firewire, but USB ports that are USB1 - not USB2. USB1 is horribly slow to use with (even a USB2) a hard drive.

2.) A PowerPC (i.e. non-Intel) Mac can be booted from a Firewire external drive but not from a USB external drive. This is extremely handy.

3.) A small, portable, bus-driven USB2 drive will likely need to use two USB ports on your Mac (by means of a Y-lead) - the second one to power it. That could leave you short of USB ports that you need for other devices (e.g. a mouse).


If your Mac has Firewire 800 (my 2003 G4 Power Mac has), it's no contest!

If this will be your first external hard drive, buy one with a storage capacity twice or three times as great as you think you need. You will fill it far sooner than you think!

Consider partitioning it, too. I nearly always put a bootable Mac OS in the first partition of an external hard drive - it can rescue you in an emergency.

marksoton

It's a 2 year old Macbook. The external hard drive would only really be used if the hard drive on the Macbook failed.

Whilst i have confidence in the thing and have never had any problems you just never know !

Leopard

You've been skating on very thin ice with your data! :eek:

Hard drives can (and do) fail without warning.

And what if you had dropped it or had it stolen?

Marty_J

marksoton wrote: »

Have you purchased one yourself Marty ?

No, but I build my own drives. I have a FireWire enclosure, so I can just swap the drive that's in it with another when it comes time to upgrade.

marksoton

Leopard wrote: »

You've been skating on very thin ice with your data! :eek:

Hard drives can (and do) fail without warning.

And what if you had dropped it or had it stolen?

I know, i know. Slapped wrist !

I was almost embarrassed to post !

It was only when i realised how many pictures of my daughter i had that the penny dropped.. :eek:

Leopard

Burn them to a CD or DVD immediately!

You will never forgive yourself if you lose them.