Advice sought on external hard drives

Could somebody please suggest a good quality external hard drive to use with a Mac PowerBook G4, which would be compatible with OSX 10.3.9 and 10.5 (which I will be installing shortly)?
Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
For something different, I've built my own drives. I buy a case then add a 3.5" hard drive, the benefit is that it is warranteed by the manufacturer for longer than the pre-built drives. The longest warranty is Seagate at 5 years, and I like to use Western Digital, whose drives come with a 3 year warranty (some of theirs come with 1 year, too).
You want a drive that can connect via firewire, if you want it to be bootable on a Powerbook. Also, some USB-only drives have issues getting enough power from the USB port, so if you get a USB-only drive, consider if it has an external power supply or power cord to the drive.
The last drive I built used this case: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW912UAL1K/ . It has an Oxford chipset, which works well with our macs. I added a Western Digital 500GB drive to it. The install is very easy.... open the case, put the drive in it, connect the short included cable to the drive, tighten 4 screws to secure the drive to the case, and close the case up. Done!

Similar Messages

Advice needed RE: External hard drives?

Hey Everyone,
I'm relatively new to the world of Macs and Final Cut, i've been editng on an iMac for about a year now and have never invested in any external media storage.
I've just got quite e big job that will require me to capture a lot more media than I have ever done before, so think I need to invest in an external hard drive.
I was speaking to a lad I know and he was saying when I do get one I should connect it via a usb 2.0 connection, yet i've read in a book I have that I should connect via the firewire connection. I'm a bit confused so thought i'd put it to you guys, what do you think is best?
Also any recommendations on a decent/reliable hard drive (preferably the cheaper the better as i'm fairly skint).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Scott

Purchase a 7200rpm Firewire drive. It's OK if it also has USB connections, you just won't be using that method. Once the drive is connected to your Mac with a Firewire cable, start up your Mac. Go to Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility. When Disk Utility has opened, locate the drive on the left side and highlight it. Select the Erase tab and then select Mac OS Extended as the formatting for the drive. You do not need to have Journaling turned on. Give the drive a name if you wish. Once the drive has been formatted it will be ready for use with your Mac.
Open FCE and in preferences, set the new drive as the Capture/Scratch volume for FCE. See the FCE help files for details.
-DH

Buying advice - use as external hard drive

I have a 250GB MacBook Pro, and - perhaps because it's a laptop with no fixed location - I just don't get round to backing up as much as I should. Also, the hard drive is not that far off full already. I'm wondering whether Time Capsule might be the way to solve both issues. I have a few questions:
- am I right in thinking that Time Capsule, as well as backing up wirelessly, can act as a normal external hard drive (i.e. visible in Finder when connected wirelessly)? If so, I could - for example - save large iMovie projects to it? Or would working off Time Capsule be prohibitively slow? And I guess I'd then have the same issue of backup, although I suppose i could attach another hard drive to the time capsule!
- I already have a wireless router through my ISP, and I only have one computer in the house, so I'm not sure i'm going to benefit from the networking aspects of Time Capsule. Are there any other advantages to having Time Capsule that I'm missing? For example, could i connect a fairly bog standard printer to it and then print wirelessly?
- I've looked into it a bit online, and the summary seems to be 'nice idea but doesn't really work that well at the moment'. Am i best off waiting to see if the technology improves?
Cheers
Jon

If you are using the time capsule only for a print server and as network storage, it's a good tool - too expensive a solution, but a good solution.
However, don't expect to use it for automatic backups at all. It's perhaps the most flawed piece of hardware ever produced by Apple, at least as regards its intended use.
I've had one for six months. I use it for network storage and it's great. They don't tell you, but you can't mix network storage with automatic backup. The disk is supposed to be one or the other, but not both. If you want to partition it, forget that, unless you want to crack it open, which is a ridiculous solution given what the thing costs.
I really wanted it for time machine backups - it is an unmitigated failure, and after trying extensively to get it to work over the six months I've had it, I have yet to get one successful time machine backup to the time capsule. I keep expecting Apple to call and apologize and refund my money, but I haven't heard from them yet.
My advice - use a directly connected external drive (firewire 800). Partition it and do time machine backups and external storage. Buy a network print server for about $60 bucks. You can do all that for less than $200, and not waste the money on this entirely failed appliance.

Files Disappeared on Wall Street , Need Advice, And on External Hard Drives

My memory was low so I was in the process of archiving files when some of the folders in my Desktop documents folder disappeared. I had begun transferring files into Toast when it happened. The computer had previously been in sleep mode during the night.
When I searched for the contents using Find File. it listed them in the same place or as unavailable. I restarted, turned off extensions I didn't need, transferred some of the files still showing on my HD onto my USB JumpDrive for temp storage and rebuilt the desktop. When I ran Norton Disk Doctor, it found problems with the Catalog B-tree, which makes sense since it's the "data structure where files are stored on your disk." Norton was able to fix some of the issues, but not all, and was not able to finish scanning the disk. I ran it again, with the same results and also checked out UnErase.
When I rebooted without the Norton Disk, some of the missing files reappeared, with the exception of the folder I was trying to copy at the time. My tech repair guy says that due to corruption, I should wipe my HD to zero and reinstall everything, with additional GB hard drive space, of course. What do you guys think? Is this the best course of action? And if so, how pressing is it to do so immediately, since my computer had been running for quite some time without trouble on less than optimum memory space. Any tips on external hard drives that are compatible with the Wall Street?
I currently have 247 MB available. Luckily, I had previously made a backup of everything except my Outlook Express identity folder, for my e-mail, which is too large to back up to CD. So I'm hoping this will not crash in the interim!
Your replies are much appreciated!

Hi Leslie,
It would be helpful to know a bit more about the computer, such as the size of the drive you have and the OS you are running. I believe general guidelines are to not fill your drive to more than 90% capacity.
Norton Utilities receives some bad rap on this forum, but sometimes it's all you have (Diskwarrior and TechTool are usually recommended). With NU you particularly have to be careful to use versions that are at least the same generation as the OS you are using. I usually go with Disk First Aid as a first shot since it's made by the people who made the computer.
Assuming you're okay with the situation about the recovered files then I'd say starting with a clean drive would be good. Keep in mind though that the files will be gone for good. I don't know if you need to really zero the drive, just reinitialize ("erase") it. I'd also run some utility to check the integrity of the drive to see whether the problem was due to the drive starting to fail. You might be able to continue to work with it as-is but it would be nice to know why your drive got corrupted in the first place. At least clear up some room. You might also want to check on the fragmentation status and at least do a clean OS install just in case some of those files are on their way out too.
I don't know the Wall Street model myself, but I see it is a G3 powerbook. If it has USB or Firewire capability then I'd get an external Firewire drive (USB would be very slow but would still work). My backup procedure is to have an external HD the same size as my internal one. Then I can just drag the internal to the external once a week and let it copy overnight. That way I don't have to be bothered with copying select files and if the OS files get messed up I don't have to re-customize my preferences, control panels and extensions (I'm still an OS 9 man!)
Brian

Need advice on what external hard drive to purchase-

hello everyone-
i couldn't find a similar topic so i thought i'd post this.
i'm looking to buy a hard drive to support my laptop but as usual trying to buy something can be quite a fuss with all the choices and reviews.
anyway, i'm assuming that Lacie is a good option for the Mac.
can anyone recommend any other brand? i've read both amazing and nightmarish things about the brand.
also, how good is Firewire 800? i thought it would be good to get something that hosted this option since my laptop can support that speed.
any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you don't need the portability of having the data remotely with you, I'd suggest you get an external firewire drive (you'll want FW if you want to boot from an external drive). Further, I'd recommend you assemble your own. Here are some considerations using a 320gb drive as an example:
A Western Digital 320 gb external enclosure (USB/FW) goes for around $200. However, all have one year warranties.
Assemble your own, requires the hard drive and case: A 320 gb Western Digital, with a 3 year warranty, 7200 rpm ultra ATA interface, cost for the drive around $106. I prefer Western Digital drives over Seagate drives, as I've found them to run cooler.
Add a Rosewill RX30 external case (includes power supply and USB/FW 400) $60. This brushed aluminum case looks like it was made to sit right next to our PB's (I've got one). You can see it at their web site at http://www.rosewill.com/product/product.aspx?productId=80. So for $166, you can have a 320gb hard drive with a 3 to 5 year warranty, and a stunning case. If you want, the Rosewill case also comes with FW800 for another $35.
Assembling it is very easy - you can read the directions on Rosewill's site at http://www.rosewill.com/RosewillSoftware/RX30_eng.pdf , for example. You disassemble the case by taking out 4 screws on the bottom of the Rosewill case, plug the included plug into the hard drive, secure the hard drive with 4 screws to the case, and reassemble it.
I used a 320GB drive as an example....a 160gb drive is a little less expensive. Once you start gathering video and sound files, they gobble up space quickly. If you start out larger than you think you'll need, you'll have space for growth, and if you choose, multiple levels of system backup.
And I would recommend FW800, to get maximum transfer speed.

Need advice on purchasing an external hard drive for video editing

Hi,
I looking for advice on which external hard drive to get. The main purpose for the hard drive will be storing video files on for use with Final Cut Pro. I have the 12 inch powerbook G4 so I plan to use the FireWire (400) port to connect the drive. I'm interested in getting comment from others who use their external hard drives for video editing.
Thanks!

Firstly your decision to use FireWire is a good one, as not only will it free up the USB it performs much better on sustained transfers.
That said you're still limited by the FireWire interface, so opt for a drive with a big cache (16MB would be good) and fast spindle speed (7200rpm+).
Some of the newer enclosures are compatible with SATA drives. While these are easier to install and theoretically will perform better, I'm not sure that the performance would justify the extra cost.
Matt

Types of external hard drives to buy.

Hi,
can anyone provide me with some advice on purchasing external hard drives. What I'm looking for is a high capacity drive around 1-2 TB that will allow two users to access the same files at once. In other words mount on two seperate computers at once. I believe the answer is found in RAID drives but I'm not that clued up on RAID drives and need a bit of help. The external hard drives I've looked at so far are ones from Western Digital and G-Raid.
If its not possible to obtain a drive that will allow me to mount it onto to seperate computers at once and read the same files then I would settle for a solid external drive that can:
- handle large HD files
- store data reliably
Thanks

USB 2.0 is the connection that is natively supported on the T400, no eSATA or Firewire port i think, you can get these ports by buying an expansion card for the card slot (i think it is the expresscard one) on the T400.
Regarding a 1TB drive, most of the large drive manufacturers have one out, but i suggest you unless you need the large capacity, i would stick with a smaller drives like 750 gig or 500 gig since the cost gigabyte is lower. Also i would stay away for storing all your important files solely in these drive, because if these things start to fail it would be on a moment's notice, you probably won't even have time to backup the files, before the harddrive gives up on you.

Need an external hard drive, advice?

Hi,
For awhile now I've been wanting an external hard drive but no nothing about them. I have a 160 GB 17" iMac 2GHz and I'm always running out of space. Right now I have 20GB free.
Anywho the big question is USB or Firewire? Now, I can get USB ones pretty cheap at a local store here and Future Shop has this 500GB USB one on sale right now.
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10089693&catid=2 3795&logon=&langid=EN
or I could go much bigger and order this 1 TB one online too:
http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10299356&search=externa%20hard%2 0drives&Mo=4&cmre=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-CA&Nr=P_CatalogName:BCCA&Sp=S&N=0&wh se=BCCA&Dx=modematchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=PCatalogName:BCCA&Ne=4000000&D=externa%20hard%20drives&Ntt=externa%20hard%20drive s&No=0&Ntx=modematchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
I"ve been told that Firewire is great for things like using iMovie or if you use your video camera for videos etc.
Down the road I want a video camera and may use iMovie more in the future. So how important is Firewire and how big should I go? I'm thinking bigger is better and know I need at least 500GB as I want to back up my whole system and have room for movies, TV shows etc. Also want something that isn't too loud.
Here are two other Canadian stores I've looked at briefly to see what they have,
http://www.tigerdirect.ca and http://www.canadacomputers.com
Any advice would be appreciated,
S.

There are dozens of posts that say basically this:
Bought a MyBook. (USB or FW) - it won't work anymore, period.
After you see 8 or 10 of those you take the MyBook off the list. If all it is, is a backup to a reliable drive then the risk is you lose the drive and need to buy a better one and redo the backups. I would not use a drive with a known failure problem as a backup ever. Certainly not the only media drive on my system.
The LaCie D2 cases do not use fans and I have 4TB of them working for years so that is not the reason the MyBooks fail - they fail because they are not well made. The LaCie cases are about 6 pounds of cast aluminum so they act as huge heat sinks. Even then I use a small desktop fan to blow air over them so they stay cooler.
I suspect the WD bridges are poor and the interface between the drive and the USB/FW port becomes unusable. This is why I don't buy the $10 Tiger Direct cases and put good quality drives in them . Rotten bridges.
One reason to buy them is if the sale price becomes cheaper than the raw drive price then you can open the case and get a new drive for less than buying one but then you wind up with a lot of trash.
Get a LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Message was edited by: Cannibals

FCPX external hard drive advice needed

I have on order the following iMac which will be used for video editing with FCPX.
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM-2X8GB (upping to 32mb when it arrives)
3TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIAGeFrc GTX 680MX 2G GDDR5
I'm coming from an older Mac Pro with internal hard drives, so I need some advice from the video editing experts on a quality external hard drive for the new iMac. Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You've waited a long time...
Here's the deal: Thunderbolt has a bandwidth of 10Gb/s... TB2 a bandwidth of 20Gb/s. The G Raid uses 2 disk drives with 7200 RPM platters. These drives are the bottleneck and about the fastest transfers you can expect are in the 250MB/s range... I get that (and better) with a single SSD in a USB 3 enclosure. Three or more drives would get better transfer rates; you would need a larger enclosure.
You have to ask yourself: Do I want storage or do I want speed?
To make the best use of Thunderbolt speed, you can build your own RAID with an enclosure and buy the drives (matched) separately. A Thunderbolt enclosure with SSD drives will make the best use of the bandwidth provided by TB. You can find 4-bay enclosures and SSDs up to 960GB. You can expect transfer rates of over a gigabyte/second (I'm looking an an Akitio 4-bay enclosure with an advertised speed of 1375MB/s... [ customer reviews ] -- I am not affiliated with this product in any way... I think you'll get even more info here. )
Hope you find the info useful.

New to MacBook Pro - External hard drive advice

I just ordered a MacBook Pro last night which will be my first mac computer and would appreciate any insight on external hard drives. Here are the specs for the MacBook:
2.6Ghz Quad-core Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1 GB GDDR5 memory
8 GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
750 GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
Right now, for my PC I have a WD My Passport Essential SE 1 TB Ultra Portable external hard drive. This drive works but I've had a few hiccups with it (although I can't tell if its the drive or the PC) and figured I should just start fresh with a new external hard drive for the new MacBook. In terms of my use, here's what I'm looking to be able to do with the hard drive:
would prefer something portable (although doesn't have to be)
would like to be able to insert old hard drive into mac, insert new hard drive, and transfer all files from old hard drive onto new hard drive without having to temporarily store on mac
i don't really use the hard drive to back up the computer, i use it more to store all my files (pics, videos, movies, word/excel/pdf, etc.) and only keep certain files on computer (i use another hard drive to back up this hard drive)
i'd also like something fast that would work well with the MacBook's specs
price wise, would defintely like to be under $300 if possible
Again, just looking for any advice anyone might have that would help me out in making a decision! Thanks!

Any brand name external drive will work.

I am using a WD My Passport Studio external hard drive as a Time Machine. I get the error that a back up folder could not be created when my iMac has been asleep, any advice.

I am using a WD My Passport Studio external hard drive as a Time Machine. I get the error that a back up folder could not be created when my iMac has been asleep, any advice. The hard drive is set set not to go to sleep.

Were you not plugged in via USB to begin with?
I would recommend performing some resets just to be on the safe side. Unplug the external HD, and try these steps:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

I want to purchase a two terabyte external hard drive to utilise Time Machine on my new iMac....but which one? Western Digital, Time Capsule, Seagate? Any advice would be most welcome please.

I want to purchase a two terabyte external hard drive to utilise Time Machine on my new iMac....but which one? Western Digital, Time Capsule, Seagate? Any advice would be most welcome please. Thanks Phil

If you are looking for high quality drives and enclosures I'd recommend these 3:
http://g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10330
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
I use the LaCie's, I've got three connected to my system and a 4th acting as my TM drive on my MacBook Air. Any of the above would be welcome on my desk though.

Advice about external hard drive recovery

Does anyone have experience or advice about external hard drive recovery?
I have a USB external drive that crashed during a power brownout, I couldn't mount the image at first but used Diskwarrior to rebuild it. Now I can see and navigate the drive but I am unable to pull many files off without the finder crashing. It would transfer about 130mb of 10gb then stay at that number and not progress past that amount.
Should I try a different recovery program or would removing the drive and placing it in another external drive enclosure solve something like this?
any help appreciated

When in DW there is a Preview to see the old and new volume.
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/topic4557.html#d10aug2010
Data Rescue 3 demo will show you what it's scan finds, costs $99
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
you need to have another drive to recover your files to.
Yes I would try another case, maybe the power brick was all that is now half-dead also
And you really need a UPS - never be w/o
http://pondini.org/OSX/UPS.html
MacBook Pro:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro

Advice on best way to set up 500 GB external hard-drive - scratch & back-up

Hi all -
I would like to get some advice on how to best set up my new 500GB external hard drive. I do lots of video editing, so my primary use for it is as a scratch disc. However, i like to have a back-up clone for emergencies so in the past I have always had a partitioned external. One for back up, one for media. Now that Leopard has the time machine feature, i have read that some people like to use one volume on their external for TM and the other for a bootable clone (using Carbon Copy cloner). Doing this will take up a lot of space on my hard drive and I really need it for media storage. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to set this up? If I had a clone on one volume, could i then put Time Machine on my Media volume and call it a day?
Thanks so much for any feedback!
Karen

You've essentially said that you're concerned about not having enough disk space for everything you do. I suggest a 2nd drive, as there is no partitioning scheme that's going to create more space for you. I'd set up one drive with 2 partitions - a bootable partition and a partition for TM. I'd dedicate the second drive to media. I wouldn't put TM and media on the same partition; in time <grin>, Time Machine will fill the partition.
And by the way, imho you should turn TM off anytime you are capturing, rendering or exporting; you don't want it using system resources (CPU, RAM or I/O) while you're doing those tasks.

Need advice in setting up a portable external hard drive

Since I travel and am away from home for 4-6 months of the year, I would like to to set up an external drive which I can carry with me and will hopefully contain everything I could possibly need to back up and troubleshoot the iBook while away from home. Toward that end, I have purchased a registered copy of Super Duper, a 250 GB Western Digital notebook drive, and a firewire enclosure from OWC with the Oxford 911+. I have also read the X Lab's Backup and Recovery FAQs and a number of discussion threads. But I have never done anything like this before, and would welcome any advice I could get on specifically how to set up and partition the drive in the best possible way.
Because the internal drive is rapidly filling up with music and photos, I am thinking that the partition for the bootable clone should match the size of the internal drive, which is 120GB.
There are a lot of system discs which came with the iBook, which is the very first iBook G4 that came after the ibook G3. I upgraded the OS to Tiger from Panther, so I don't think I would need to worry about the original 3 Panther discs that contained the OS. But there is a separate disc for the AHT and 8 Software Restore discs as well as iLife 06. I know I can burn safety copies to carry around, but if there is a way to do it, I would like to have the safety copies on the external hard drive. At least if that would be OK with Apple's licensing agreement.
Also, my only diagnostic tools right now are the Apple Hardware Test and the Tech Tool Deluxe disc that came with Applecare. But in the future I might need to acquire others such as Tech Tool Pro, Disc Warrior, Data Rescue II, and possibly something else, so I would want to have my drive set up so that I would be able to boot from any of these.
Part of the drive will just be for extra storage space, in case the internal drive starts to get too full, and some media files will need to be archived to the external drive.
Any help, suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance!

Thanks to both of you for your responses!
It sounds like there may be a consensus on making one partition the size of the iBook's internal hard drive, but I am still not at all certain whether the rest of the drive should be one partition or more than one partition. I probably didn't make myself very clear when I posed the question because I'm not sure I know enough to ask an intelligent question. But I think I need to ask a lot of questions because there is so much that I don't know.
One thing I should mention--I have never in my life partitioned a drive so I really have no idea what's desirable, what's not, or really where to start. So perhaps I should try to describe my concerns a bit better.
Because of a highly unpredictable travel schedule, there is a real possibility of being stuck away from home for an extended period of time. For that reason, I want to be prepared for any possible computer disaster. So that means I want to be able to do on the road the exact same things I can do at home where I have all my system discs and diagnostic tools.
I don't really want to carry the originals around--I'd rather leave them at home locked up in my fire proof safe. I could burn copies to CD's and DVD's, but that would result in a pretty big pile of discs to carry around. Also, sometimes the CD's and DVD's just turn into little gold frisbees over time, and I would hate to need one and find out it had gone south and was unusable. So I had the idea of incorporating everything onto the external hard drive so that if it came to it, I could even do an erase and install.
This may be overkill, but I am very paranoid. I am a fair klutz when it comes to computers. I managed to corrupt my OS twice last year. The first time I was trying to reset my password on the iBook and got completely locked out. The second time I was trying to do an Archive and Install on the MBP and made a real hash of it. So I have a real fear of somehow corrupting the software on the iBook and possibly on the clone as well. So I would like to be prepared for the worst possible disaster.
I like the idea of a separate partition for the Tiger OS, the AHT and Tech Tool Deluxe and any others I may acquire. And the Tiger OS would just be what is on the Tiger retail DVD that I have. One question--the DVD just says Version 10.4. Should I update it to 10.4.11 or just leave it as is?
I'm also wondering about a partition for the software that originally came bundled with the iBook and iLife 06? If I ever had to do an erase and install, I would really want to have this. Hopefully I won't--now that there is actually data on the iBook other than the address book and bookmarks, I am beginning to realize why it's only something to do as a last resort. But I would feel better if I had the option far from home. But if it makes no sense to install these on the external drive, would it be possible to burn a DVD of them on the MBP instead of all those CD's?
Also, how do the partitions show up in Disk Utility? Do you give the partitions names? I really don't have a very good idea how all of this works. As I understand it, I have to partition using the Apple Partition Map and I have to get it right the first time, as you can't change the partitions later without having to erase everything.
Oh yes, I did order the power supply for the drive--thanks to reading about that in another post.
Really, I have been trying to research all this, but so often I don't really understand everything I read. I very much appreciate both of you taking the time to help me with this project.
Many thanks!

Advice sought on external hard drives

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