Bus power external drive for Intel IMac recommended?

Getting ready to replace external hard drive.I have a 2TB now that is formatted in to 2 drives, 1 for TM and 1 for clone. Told that TM needed it's own drive and should get a second for clones and other files. I can make a bootable drive out of the external but not TM drive.
I was looking at some bus-powered drives and not sure how IMac and TM on a bus powered drive would work. Am I able to consider these bus powered HD's - they have power supplies available? Can I depend on my Mac/TM to work well with a bus powered drive with an ac adaptor (because of there small size) or should I get a powered external hard drive for Time Machine and something smaller for my clone? Any ideas?
Looking at OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini, GDrive mini and the CalDigit AV drive. Open to any suggestions and using FW800.
Thanks.

I have never trusted bus powered usb devices. I use a powered multi port hub. Not only does this supply bus power to an army of usb devices (printer, scanner, camera, hard drives, etc.), the hub can be placed close to me. No need to reach for hidden usb ports, no trying to figure out which way is up on the plug ....
http://usb-hub-review.toptenreviews.com/
p.s. there are many posts here about usb devices being arbitrarily disconnected from the computer for lack of power.

Similar Messages

  • Using G4 as external drive for Intel iMac?

    I have a G4 DA with lots of personal information in it, including one bootable HD with OS 9 stuff. I have finally broken down and bought a 20" 2.66 GHz iMac as I can see that software for non-Intel based machines is beginning to dry up.
    My question is, is there a way to hook the G4 to the iMac so that it can be used just as any other external drive could be used, without having to attach and detach cables every time I want to do it, or is the difference in processors such that this can't be done?
    I know many would say "just transfer the files from one to the other," but I am sentimental about the old machine and don't want to get rid of it. I have upgraded the processor to 1.67 GHz so it is no slowpoke, but it can't compete with the newer ones for applications like video streaming, and I have become tired of seeing the spinning beachball.
    Thanks in advance,
    Dave

    a brody:
    One way I have to keep running a G4 for at least 30-40 years is to have 2-3 fully functional backup towers. I have a heavily upgraded Sawtooth and 2 spare towers in waiting for parts. I plan to get at least 1 more if not 2. A Sawtooth can be grabbed for as little as 50-80 on ebay. Even The lower MDD models like the dual 867 are well below 200 now often. Not an overly deep money pit to have some spare hardware.
    I also own a Mac Pro but I honestly have more pride in my Sawtooth. The one I run has painted plastics from an automotive painting shop. Along with many many other customizations that would take over this thread to have to list.
    My point is that with the proper arsenal of hardware to keep you going for years you can essentially keep running a G4 forever. I can understand someone's need to want to keep a G4 around forever. No matter how slow they are now or will be these towers have an appeal far beyond simple aesthetics.
    Message was edited by: zen.state

  • Can anyone recommend a good 2TB external drive for my iMac 10.9 ?

    can anyone recommend a good 2TB external drive for my iMac 10.9 ?

    The Griffin Survivor is a military-grade case that I use. It's $40 and I purchased it at Best Buy. It has a rubber piece that covers the charging port, but can be easily removed for charging while still in the case. The only downside of the case is because of the added girth, it makes the iPod unusable with iHomes or other docks unless you take it out of the case.

  • Bus powered external drive for MacBook

    Hi,
    I'm looking for an external HD to use with my MacBook, and I'm a bit confused about power. I'd rather avoid lugging around an extra power supply and international adaptor when I'm traveling if it can be avoided.
    Does the MacBook's firewire port provide bus power? Is it sufficient to power a 2.5" external HD?
    Is USB a better option if I want a bus powered HD? Are there any clear advantages to one or the other?

    For the longest time, FireWire was the only practical solution to bus-powered hard drives. FireWire provides a heck of a lot of power (typically 7 to 8W) while USB by definition provides up to 2.5W per port (if powered). FireWire has so many advantages, but cost seems to be the consideration that's won out.
    Current USB bus-powered external drives seem to be feasible because of newer 2.5" drives with reduced power consumption. Still - many drives come with (or they can be bought) cables with two male ends. One end is used for data/power, while the other draws more power from a 2nd powered USB port.
    I have no problem getting a 160 GB WD Passport (Black) USB 2.0 drive to work on my iBook 1.42 or my new MacBook. It does take a while to mount in the OS though, although the same goes for Windows.
    Message was edited by: ypw

  • Brand new iMac 23.GHz Intel Core i5.  Mounts external drive for time machine, then dismounts after backup is complete.

    brand new iMac 23.GHz Intel Core i5.  Mounts external drive for time machine, then dismounts after backup is complete.

    The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.
    If you bought the product in the U.S. directly from Apple (not from a reseller), you have 14 days from the date of delivery in which to exchange or return it for a refund. In other countries, the return policy may be different. If you bought from a reseller, its return policy applies.

  • Trying to run Tiger on an external drive for Pro Tools LE on a new iMac...

    okay, i am buying an mbox2 that runs pro tools LE (which, as we all know, is not yet supported by leopard), and i am also buying an iMac 20-inch 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory (with leopard pre-installed). i've read in some forums that people have been formatting an external firewire 800 drive an installing tiger on it so as to use it as the startup disc when running pro tools LE. i basically have two questions regarding this:
    1) does anyone think this would not work? why? and
    2) will i be able to install tiger on the external drive using my macbook pro osx install disc that came with my laptop? (it's a tiger 10.4.8 install disc, but it does say "macbook pro" on it, so i'm wondering if apple doesn't allow you to install these on anything other than the laptops). my laptop is a macbook pro 2.16 GHz intel core duo.
    thanks in advance for your help. please let me know if there's any other information i need to provide.
    -mike

    I run my Pro tools from an external drive on my iMac and have no problems. Digidesign say this:
    +To use Pro Tools LE 7.x currently, you will need to boot from a Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) startup system.+
    +If you choose to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), you will need to install Leopard on a separate hard drive or drive partition.+
    +If you purchase a new Mac with Mac OS X 10.5 preinstalled, you will need to install Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on a separate hard drive or drive partition.+
    +If you are purchasing a new Mac with Mac OS X 10.5 preinstalled, check with Apple to see if your computer is able to boot from Mac OS X 10.4.+
    You may well have problems using your MBP disks however. I would suggest buying a copy of Tiger.

  • Make use of Seagate 120gb SATA as external drive for imac

    I have a nice seagate barracuda 120gb drive in my PC, which I virtually don't use. I was wondering whether there is a way I could use the drice as external firewire drive for my iMac g4 1ghz. Can you actually leave it in the PC and connect to it via a Firewire card in the PC or do you need to take it out, put it into a case with Firewire adapter and use it that way? If so, can you recommend a decent case at good price?
    Thanks,
    Matthias
    imac g4 1ghz   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

    Hello and Welcome to Apple Discussions. I believe your choices are:
    Network the two machines such that you can share the storage space.
    iFelix's Tech Pages provides details of the set-ups required, you can network over Ethernet, Firewire or Wirelessely.
    Or get a SATA to FW/USB2 enclosure. It should be firewire as you need FW to boot a PowerPC OS X Mac from an external drive.
    I don't believe a PC can do Target Mode so that rules out that option.
    mrtotes

  • What is the best and reasonably priced external cd/dvd optical drive for an Imac 21.5 inches from late 2009?

    What is the best and reasonably priced external cd/dvd optical drive for an Imac 21.5 inches from late 2009?

    A lot of people have a Mac where the superdrive has been taken out to be replaced with a harddisk. Try to find a friend who has done that, give him a beer and take the superdrive, then buy a superdrive container from OWC or another for  afew dollars and put it in there. This slimdrive container has a USB connector. There you go.

  • Question - What is the best external optical drive for an imac W8******5PE ?

    Question - What is the best external optical drive for an imac W8****5PE ?
    <Edited by Host>

    Try http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/
    Allan

  • Power pc g5 or intel imac with compressor

    This is my present computer:
    iMac 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo (2008 model)
    4 gigs of 800 mhz ddr2 sdram (this is the max ram for this computer! )
    NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB
    Hard drive: 465 gig (I use mainly external drives for editing)
    I use this mainly for video editing with final cut studio 2.
    Rendering in compressor takes forever!!!
    A friend suggested I pick up a used G5 Power PC.
    I found this one, here are the specs:
    APPLE POWER MAC G5 PowerPC DUAL CORE (2 x 2 GHZ)
    System Mac OSX 10.5.8
    RAM 12 GB
    1 Hard drive of 160 Gb
    Superdrive 16x CD/DVD/DL DVD (32x)
    Video card NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (VRAM 256 Mb)
    3 open PCI-Express expansion slots.
    1x FireWire 800
    3x FireWire 400
    4x USB 1 and 2
    2x Ethernet Port
    2x Displays ports
    Is this insanity or a smart move to move over to the older G5.
    According to my friend, the older G5s are much better at processing video.
    Is a dual 2 GHZ processor enough or would I need a 2.3 or 2.5?
    OR is there another option that someone might be able to suggest?
    Thank you so much for your advice
    Bill

    I am fairly sure that the old G5 will not perform anywhere near as well as the Intel iMac.
    I don't know what you are doing that "Takes forever" but there are some settings in Compressor, which if selected, will take many times longer without producing much of an improvement.
    Can you give specific examples of exactly what you are doing and with which settings/presets etc. together with the time taken, so that we can determine whether it is excessive or not.

  • How to best partition an external drive for my purposes?

    Hello, please help,
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire) portable external harddrive for backing up my data prior to iMac repair.
    I also plan to totally wipe my PPC iMac and reinstall it with Leopard.
    I erased the external HD, zeroing out the data from it's previous owner, and reformatted it as Mac OS Extended (not journaled).
    Now I realise that it might be even more useful than I'd imagined.
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    I've heard I should format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HFS+, what ever that is
    I'm currently running OS 10.4.11 but plan to buy Leopard and install that after the wipe.

    17" 1.9Ghz iMac G5 (iSight)
    I've just bought a Western Digital 'My Passport' 320Gb USB (no firewire)
    I'd now like to partition it so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable copy of my entire iMac while using the rest of the drive as a separate partition for just backing up data.
    Ideally I want to be able to use the drive on both Intel and PPC Macs and even PCs, is this possible? How should I format the drive to achieve this?
    For what you want to do, there is a mismatch between your PPC computer and the external drive that you bought.
    With a few exceptions, a PPC Mac requires a firewire external drive for booting and will not boot from a USB drive, regardless of which OS is installed and regardless of the partition scheme and volume format on the drive. I also have an iMac G5, and mine will not boot from USB.
    If you do exchange your drive for a firewire drive, do not get another Western Digital model to use with your G5 - many external WD firewire drives will not boot a PPC mac. See [this page|http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787]
    If you want to keep your present USB drive, you can still partition it with one partition for a backup clone and another for "other stuff". With respect to immediate use for recovering your stuff after a clean Leopard install on the HD, I think that Migration Assistant will still work, though I haven't tried this. As for the future, the problems with a clone not being bootable are 1) You can't test it to see if it works OK, and 2) If you do need to restore from it you'd need to boot from "somewhere else" - I think you could boot from an install disk and use Disk Utility's Restore feature to clone it back.
    With regard to PC access, a PPC mac normally requires an Apple Partition Map partition scheme on the drive for booting, and such a scheme does not allow for the FAT32 volume format that is readable by PCs. However in this case since your PPC mac can't boot from it anyway, you could partition the drive as GUID. This would allow the main volume to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the nonbootable clone, and would allow the extra volume to be formatted as FAT32. If you eventually got an Intel Mac, a clone from it to the main volume would also then be bootable.
    But what I would do, if feasible, is exchange the USB drive and get a non-WD firewire drive instead.
    Message was edited by: jsd2

  • Which external drive for backups?

    My brand new 21.5" iMac is on its way here today, and I've been told to buy an external drive for backups. Which I think is a great idea. However, my head's starting to hurt from all the info I'm reading here on the forum about WHICH one, Firewire cables, etc etc. The Rocstor 500GB has been recommended to me personally, but I've read about Lacie and a few other brands. I'm thinking it'd be best to get a 1T size. But WHICH HARD DRIVE SHOULD I GET? I don't wanna spend a lot of bucks!!!
    Plus I have a Firewire cable but how do I know if it's a 2 or a 4? I bought it when I migrated data from my Silver edition iMac to my G4 iMac back in 2004 or 2005.
    Thanks!

    Congratulations Sheryl on the new iMac.
    I recently replaced a G-4 tower with an iMac. The G-4 had a port for Firewire 400. The iMac came equipped with one Firewire 800 port a firewire cable and 4USB ports. I suspect that also applies to your new machine. In order to transfer files from one machine to the other using Firewire 400/800 I had to buy an adapter from the Apple store. Your help menu will explain how to set up the iMac as a target for the transfer.
    As to backup: I use Super Duper and over 8 years had backed up religiously to a Lacie external HD. About the time I needed to use it as a file transfer source to the iMac it quit.
    After much study and considering how Time Machine can eat up space I settled on the external hard drives described below - all were partitioned. The Drobo uses firewire 800 and 4 multiple internal hard drives. It is the place where time machine is backed up. The setup was about $600.
    The two lacie hard drives are USB 2.0 driven.
    I have learned the hard way that it pays to backup the backups.
    If I could only have one external hard drive and with all things considered I would opt for the 1TB Lacie Stark (about $125) that is USB driven.
    Sure hope this helps a bit. To help further we need to know more specifics about your need.
    Mcthomas

  • Formatting external drive for storage/backup/video files

    Hi,
    I just purchased a 500mb My Book Pro external drive for use with my imac duo which runs Windows XP via bootcamp. This computer is shared by three family with very different skills and needs. My dilemma. I want to format the drive so that the imac can be backed up easily three users. It is formated Fat32 and is supplied with Restrospect Express 7.5 backup software. It would be nice to backup the modestly used windows sector, but that's a secondary consideration. My problem is that one user has a lot of larger than 4 gb video files which are too large the Fat 32 format. My notion is to segment the backup drive so that I leave 300 mb in fat 32 to facilitate backup with supplied software, and segment a second 200 gb drive using mac os extended so that the user can manually move her video files for storage/backup on the backup drive. Is there a simpler solution? For example, if I formatted the entire 500gb as mac os extended, could I still run the retrospect backup software? If not, is there a reasonably priced alternative software? And finally, with either Fat32 or Mac OS extended, can I move files from the Windows platform? Would I be better off just biting the bullet and telling my daughter to make her own arrangements to compress and backup her video files or get her own hard drive, thus leaving the backup drive to the simple factory supplied software solution?
    G-4 and iMac core duo   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   use emacs and imacs at work location

    Hi,
    I just purchased a 500mb My Book Pro external drive
    for use with my imac duo which runs Windows XP via
    bootcamp. This computer is shared by three family
    with very different skills and needs. My dilemma. I
    want to format the drive so that the imac can be
    backed up easily three users. It is formated Fat32
    and is supplied with Restrospect Express 7.5 backup
    software. It would be nice to backup the modestly
    used windows sector, but that's a secondary
    consideration. My problem is that one user has a lot
    of larger than 4 gb video files which are too large
    the Fat 32 format. My notion is to segment the backup
    drive so that I leave 300 mb in fat 32 to facilitate
    backup with supplied software, and segment a second
    200 gb drive using mac os extended so that the user
    can manually move her video files for storage/backup
    on the backup drive. Is there a simpler solution? For
    example, if I formatted the entire 500gb as mac os
    extended, could I still run the retrospect backup
    software? If not, is there a reasonably priced
    alternative software? And finally, with either Fat32
    or Mac OS extended, can I move files from the Windows
    platform? Would I be better off just biting the
    bullet and telling my daughter to make her own
    arrangements to compress and backup her video files
    or get her own hard drive, thus leaving the backup
    drive to the simple factory supplied software
    solution?
    G-4 and iMac
    core duo   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   use emacs
    and imacs at work location
    Hello,
    You're indeed in a pickle. If you use Bootcamp and want the HD accessible via the Mac and WinXP, then you don't want to format it as Mac HFS because WInXP wouldn't be able to access it. If you go FAT32 then both WInXP and Mac OS can access it, but you face the dilemma of the 4GB threshold.
    If you format as NTFS, then you eliminate the 4GB threshold but then Mac OS cannot access it.
    I have a similar dilemma, which is why i use Parallels more than Bootcamp. I have 2 external FW HD's (160GB/250GB), both formatted to Mac HFS. The 160GB i have partitioned as 50GB and 100GB. I have a bootable backup of Mac OS residing on the 100GB partition (yay to SuperDuper!) and some other stuff on the remaining 50GB. The 250GB is exclusive for movies (cough..cough..bittorrent) and for streaming via Orb 2.0 to my Treo. I have WinXP running in Parallels, and Vista Ultimate via Bootcamp. In Parallels, i can access my external HD's via Parallel's Shared Folders but in Vista (Bootcamp) since the HD's are in a non-Windows recognised formatting, they're not accessible (which is a bummer, as i'm loving Win media center).
    What you can do is partition the HD the way you're thinking and format (one part Mac HFS and the other NTFS), but my best recommendation is that with the falling prices of HD's nowadays, why not just get a seperate HD do what you want with it. I spied a WD MyBook 500GB USB HD at CompUSA for $129.99 (no mail-in rebate nonsense) and similar good prices at Bestbuy and Newegg.com.
    iMac 17" 2GHZ C2Duo 2GB RAM 160GB HD   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

  • Internal versus External drive for Backup/Clone?

    Internal versus External drive for Backup?
    Suggestions/comments as to the pros and cons of each approach.
    Looking at purely doing Clone of main drive.
    As a side thought I am noticing topics on issues with mounting drives. Does having the drive internal make this a non-issue?
    Thx in advance.
    Power MAC G5 Dual 2.0, 30" ACD, RADEON X8000XT card   Mac OS X (10.3.9)   I also have a IMAC G5

    If you use internal and the machine is stolen your backup is lost too.
    If it's for backing up for Business use, your insurers may insist on offsite storage, secure offsite storage that is of a backup or they wouldn't pay up.
    External is often good too because if you ever sent the machine in for repair and the fault(s) were mis-diagnosed and the engineers wiped the HD, they may wipe your backup too.
    That would be very unfortunate. At least with external it could be safe with you. Depending how important your backups are you can also 'Scale' your backup by adding more drives to backup to. So increasin odds of recovery at a later date.
    Mark

  • I just replaced the power supply in my Intel imac and now the screen is really really dark and I see the missing folder icon, what do I do?

    The power supply in my Intel iMac went out (and smelled pretty burned) so I replced it and now when I start it up the display is so dark I can hardly see it and it shows the missing folder icon. Is it the inverter? Or if shine a flashlight on it and re-install the OS will changing the display settings maybe fix it?

    Thanks for ur quick reply to my problem. I tried all of that with no results... I did notice tho that the lights next to and above my caps lock key and my num lk key are now flashing. They flash in unison three times then there is a two second pause then they flash three more times and this repeats. They may have been doing this before I tried this solution but I did not take notice until now... I was also wondering how I am supposed to know, after pressing f10 to enter bios, how I can tell if my new drive is being detected when my monitor will not function? Was pressing f10 supposed to possibly make the monitor turn on? In a last ditch effort to try and further identify the problem, I re installed my old drive. Before replacing it my computer would begin to boot then display a hard error that would not allow me to continue booting and run Windows. My display would still work but I could not run Windows. After re installing the drive the monitor will not turn on. I'm beginning to think that I have a bad monitor. Is there a way of testing this with out buying one? Where does the monitor connect to the mother board? I wonder if maybe its been jarred loose, although I highly doubt it, it may still be worth looking at. Thanks again for your advice.
    Casey

Maybe you are looking for