External hard drive for Macbook

Marty_J

marksoton wrote: »

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

In addition to a local backup, you might also consider an online backup.

You get 2 GB of free space with Dropbox, and it integrates very nicely with your Mac.

Microsoft's SkyDrive is also very nice for backing up photos, though on a Mac, you can only upload 5 photos at once, which is a pain if you're uploading 100s of photos. Still, you get 25 GB of free storage.

marksoton

Well the western digital arrived today( The one Marty suggested ) . But the Mac doesn't seem to want to open it !

It loads up fine but the only files contained are a western digital logo and autorun. But i can't find an application that will run it !

I know i am being thick but i am stumped, any ideas ?

AHAR

The software that's on it is probably Windows only.
If the drive is NTFS formatted you'll need to reformat with Disk Utility before your Mac will be able to write to it.

CommonSense

Any will do

BikerEd

My Macbook Pro is backed up with an Iomega eGo disk which has both USB and Firewire ports. It comes with two cables as standard and the whole kit fits neatly into a Caselogic case. I've had the disk for nearly two years and it has performed faultlessly.

almillar

That's an NTFS partition you're looking at with Windows programmes on it. They're useless to a Mac user. You need to reformat your drive to use it with your Mac.
Connect the drive. Goto Applications, Utilities, Disk Utility to format.
MacOS Extended Journaled case sensitive is best if only using the drive with a Mac (Windows can't use it)
NTFS is best for use with Windows (OSX can only read, not write it)
FAT is best for use with both Windows and OSX. The only problem here is that you can't place a single file of over 4gb onto this file system.

cyberbob

i'd recommend going firewire as the transfer speeds will be so much faster

cyberbob

Leopard wrote: »

Burn them to a CD or DVD immediately!

You will never forgive yourself if you lose them.

The problem I have is that I have about 2TB of photographs so if I burned them all to disc it would start getting a bit silly. Also discs can have problems as well. There is no 100% safe method. At present I have two backup drives on different home servers.

Marty_J

cyberbob wrote: »

i'd recommend going firewire as the transfer speeds will be so much faster

Agreed, but its a bit late for that now.

DominicQuick

Hiya,

Im a mac fanatic and a business owner so this is some decent advice:

1 - Dont buy a LACIE as they break after 14 months and they dont offer extended warranty. Even the rugged ones are rubbish.

2 - Make the hard drive yourself using user-servicable parts such as a separate enclosure with a triple interface ( FW400+800 + USB or SATA) and get a decent 2TB hard drive. 2TB currently on eBay cost about £87 which is very cheap for the size.

Another thing you may want to consider is getting a raid setup or use multiple machines and network them together using smaller disks.

Dom