Best External HD for backing up?

I want to make a copy of my HD, I have a 120GB HD in my macbook pro 2.2GHz. Can anyone recommend a good, reliable external HD for me to use? Also, what size external. Thanks

HDD prices have dropped dramatically and you can find a wide variety of externals. The larger the drive, the lower the cost per MB, so the right size would be the biggest your wallet can take. Macs are very flexible in terms of usage, so you can buy up to the huge 1TB monsters and split it up into as many partitions you like, cloning the internal drive and even booting from any of the clones as desired. The only important recommendation is choosing a reputable brand that offers a decent warranty and making sure that the drive has a Firewire interface as that is indispensable for booting reliably.
For example, in my town Costco and Sam's Club are offering external drives by Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital ranging in size from 200, 320, 500 and 1000GB. The smallest goes for around $150, and the monster goes for $260. The little ones have the advantage of being bus-powered, meaning they pull the juice off the FW or USB interface and you don't have to lug another power brick around, while the large ones are a speedy 7200 RPM.
As for copying, what you want to do is create a bootable clone. You can use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner for that, or even Disk Utility, but with less ease of use.

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D. Shamburger wrote:
What would be the best external display for the MacBook Air? I would love the Cinema Display, but it just costs a fortune. Do you know where I could get one (or something else of similar quality) for less than $400? (preferably the kind that has iSight and speakers built in)
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The external drive must be formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", exFAT or FAT32, because OS X can't write in NTFS partitions by default.
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Hello,
I recently lost my entire 140 GB iTunes library (along with hours of raw and edited video and audio recordings) when my cheap Iomega 500GB decided to start making a ticking noise and crap out on me. I had my library backed up through iTunes on 9 DVDs a year ago, but i still lost everything I had accumulated over the past year and a half.
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i know this isn't exactly what you are looking for but it REALLY works for me & covers a few ( if not all..) of your requisites.
i have 2 WD 2Tb My Book external drives for my iTunes library : one is the library , the other is the back up & is usually disconnected just in case....
then i have the very same set-up for video/movies. the whole shebang connected through Logitech USB powered hubs & i NEVER have any hiccups during music/video playback. then my iMac is connected via an external USB sound card - M-Audio.. - to my stereo & via mini-DVI to HDMI to my plasma display. how well does it work ? bloody amazing, i'm done with DVD players & CD players.
although it has faster data transfer rates, i think you don't REALLY need to go FW- a lot more expensive drives... - & if 2Tb drives are a little too much , check out WD range, they do have smaller drives although i have found that the 1Tb drives have the best capacity/price/performance ratio, at least here in Portugal
maybe you could set up something static at home with a beefier ( capacity wise..) drive & then have a smaller , both capacity & size wise to go on the move ?
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What is the best harddrive for backing up my macbook pro?

ALL HD WILL FAIL, so asking about A (single , one) HD is always the wrong question, its redundancy and more redundancy.
huge storage, low cost, high quality, very small and portable.
BEST FOR THE COST, Toshiba "tiny giant" 15mm thick 2TB drive (have several of them, lots of storage in tiny package)    $100
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48    /ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390020791&sr=8-3&keywords=toshiba+2tb
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Perfect 1TB for $68
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B005J7YA3W/ref=sr_1_ 1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379452568&sr=8-1&keywords=1tb+toshiba
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http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B009F1CXI2/ref=s    r_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377642728&sr=1-1&keywords=toshiba+slim+500gb
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HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive $88
http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Mobile-Portable-External-0S03559/dp/B009GE6JI8/ref=sr    _1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383238934&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+Touro+Mobile+Pro+1TB+USB+3.0+7 2 00+RPM
Most storage experts agree on the Hitachi 2.5"
Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey:
Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the hundreds of Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors. Adding the highest average lifespans and the best relationship between failures and market share, Hitachi can be regarded as the winner.
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many hundreds of millions of hours of work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can be avoided by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless thousands of people each year have come to regret.
Countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data at any time.

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+"What external HD do you suggest? Does it matter?"+
Just get get some advice from the geeks at your local electronics store, tell them it is for a MAC. You can get either USB or Firewire. With Firewire you can make it "Bootable" so that you could boot from it if something nasty were to happen to your internal HD.
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