Confused..what external drive for MB

Hi all, new MB owner here. I was in a trip to US a couple of weeks ago and bought myself a MB from Amazon. In my last day in the US, Apple announces the new models and that's a bit of a bummer since there is no time to send back and upgrade but still very happy with my purchase.
Anyway, I need to get an external drive mainly to store photos and I want it to be fast enough to work on these photos with iPhoto, Photoshop CS3, RAW conversion etc.
I also need to be able to read from this drive from both my MB and my WinXP PC.
So, first of all will I be able to edit photos from an external drive(will the HD be fast enough) and at the same time be able to read it both from MacOSX and WinXP?
Then I have read that there are 3 options available: Firewire 400, eSata and USB2. I guess that USB2 is the slowest so can I actually use any of the remaining 2 options and what would you suggest? How can I connect an eSATA drive to the MB?
Thanks!!!

Ray Haneski wrote:
USB 2.0 is actually faster than firewire 400
Not on a practical level - even with no other devices on the same USB node. If you've got active regular speed devices on the same node (like a hub) it'll even slow it down further. Add low-speed devices on the same node (like a USB mouse) and a good chunk of your bandwidth is gone. USB wasn't originally designed for high-speed transfers, but the high-speed standard was added on later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire#ComparisontoUSB
Although high-speed USB 2.0 runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 35 MB/s (280 Mb/s), with 30 MB/s (240 Mb/s) being more typical (the theoretical limit for a USB 2 high-speed bulk transfer is 53.125 MB/s). This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire automates the same tasks in the interface hardware.
USB is a host-driven interface. Every packet has to be requested by the host controller, and this usually means devoting CPU resources.
FireWire typically has sustained transfer rates of 40+ MB/sec.

Similar Messages

What external drive for Time Machine?

Hi all,
I just upgraded to Leopard and want to set up TM, so I have been looking at external drives. I have done some research, read the forums, and I am more confused than before! I think I want a desk model with FW connection. I keep reading how unreliable the various brands can be (WD My Book 1T, Free Agent, Simpletech, etc.), so I am not sure how to proceed.
I take lots of photos which I do not want to lose.
Thanks for your help!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You're right about Firewire. Many posters here think it's much more reliable than USB.
If you have a F/W 800 port, look for a drive that can use it. Theoretically, it's twice as fast as F/W 400. USB will work, too, and is usually about as fast as F/W 400, but if you go that route, be sure to get a drive with it's own power supply, as taking power from your Mac via USB can be problematic (and don't use a USB connector on your keyboard for this).
Most of the major brands seem to be generally good and reliable, but even the best have some problems. I got a Seagate Free Agent Pro 500gb a few months ago, with F/W 400 and USB, and have had no trouble with it. The main reason I bought it, rather than any of the others, was the 5-year warranty. Most of the others only have 1 year.

My 320GB external drive for Time Machine now only has enough capacity to keep a backup of one day. All my other backups are gone. What can I do to fix this situation?

I've been using a 320GB external drive for time machine for the last several years. The backups always worked fine and when necessary I was able to look at & restore older data from the time capsule. Recently, I keep getting the message that a backup cannot be completed and an older backup will be deleted. Usually this wasn't an issue because I still had several months of information on disk. Now a one-time backup takes up 315GB and therefore I only have a backup of the previous day. I don't understand this because I thought that the backup only saves information that has changed and doesn't copy everything everytime. What do I need to do to get my backups to a reasonable size so that I can keep at least 1 month data stored on it.? Please don't tell me I need a larger drive ... that would be too easy.

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The recommended size is 3 times what you are backup. So if 315 GB is a backup then you need a 1 TB drive.
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What is the best way to set up an external drive for video storage

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Check the formatting. It need to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). This is also known as HFS+.
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If necessary, you can reformat using Disk Utility.
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I got an old Apple G5 shell from Goodwill. I'd like to salvage the Superdrive and use it as an external drive for my Apple laptop. Is this possible, and what cables would I need if so?
Other info is available:
Superdrive MFG date: Sept 2009
Model: DVR-118LBK DVD-R/RW Writer Unit
My Macbook is: Mid-2010, running Mavericks
Thanks in advance, God bless!

That's a nice Pioneer DVD±RW drive - and an upgraded replacement for the original optical drive that shipped with that G5. For a finished look, you'd want to install it in an external enclosure for 5.25" IDE/ATAPI drives that converts it to USB connectivity. Because SATA optical drives have replaced ATAPI drives in recent years, the selection is getting more limited for a new enclosure, although used ones can undoubtedly be found at ebay. Here's an example of one, although it only features USB connectivity. You can also find enclosures that have both FireWire and USB connectivity, which for Mac users is beneficial. Booting the computer (if needed) by a FireWire-connected device is generally more reliable than USB booting. If this isn't important to you, then a USB-only enclosure would be adequate. The enclosure will have directions, but essentially all you need to do is plug in the power cable and data ribbon cable and then secure the drive to the bottom plate of the enclosure with the included machine screws.

I have the G Drive 1 TB (GEN4 1TB) external drive purchased in 2010. I need to connect to my new MacBook Pro. I'm using the external drive for media storage of my video editing projects. Will a 800fw to thunderbolt adapter cable work?

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thanks
larry

I doubt this can be relocated or moved so you might want to just repost in the macbook pro area.
MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os?view=discussions
Can you afford a new Thunderbolt case and cable? any case with FW800 is going to be slow 72MB/sec and less, and any new 1TB drive is capable of 75MB/s minimum up to 125MB/sec.
Thunderbolt storage can of course when setup properly reach 100's of MB higher using multiple drives.
Use what you have for a system backup or for secondary backup storage.
you might be able to take the drive - most cases allow you to open and swap drives - and use this:
G-Technology 1TB G-DRIVE mini High-Speed Portable Hard Drive
or this:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/HB137VC/A/g-technology-4tb-g-raid-professional -high-performance-dual-drive-hard-drive?fnode=5f

Formatted External drive for Mac OS extended

Hi,
I actually change from windows to Mac (no comparison...!!) but trying to transfer my photos (Pictures in finder) to an external hard disk i can`t drag and drop and i do not know why....i read in one forume that i have to formatted the external drive for Mac OS extended. First question: how could i do that? if my hard disk was originally formatted for windows, do i lose the info when i formatted?
Thanks!!

You will lose the files on the HD when you reformat it. So copy what you want off the drive to a folder on your Mac temporarily.
select the HD on the Desktop and launch Disk Utility.
select the HD in the left hand page of DU.
click on the Partiton button
select 1 Partition
select OS X Extended (journaled) in the drop down Format menu.
click on the Apply button
drag the folder of files onto the EHD to copy back and then delete from your Mac's drive after verifying that they all copied back successfully.
OT

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

Can I use my late 2006 mac mini as an external drive for my late 2012 mac mini?

I have a (late 2006) Mac mini that I would like to use as an external drive for my (late 2012) Mac mini. Is this possible and can anyone suggest what cables would be needed. I am aware that the ports are very different i.e firewire and thunderbolt. Thanks in advance!

- You can boo the old Mac in Targe Disk Mode and connect the two via FireWire (FW) You will need a FW 400 to FW 800 cable or a FW 800 or FW 400 cable and appropriate adopters
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode - Apple Support
- Use the old Mac normally and setup Disk Sharing and access the old Mac via the network. The old Mac's disk will show up under Devices on the new Mac. One you set up the old Mac yo do not need mouse or keyboard or monitor. You can also setup Screen sharing and actually use the old Mac from the new Mac.
- Remove the HD from the old Mac and place it in an external USB enclosure of dock and connect it to the new Mac

I'm trying to find an external drive for the MacPro that will allow me to password protect the external drive in case it is taken. Any suggestions on a very reliable on that is 2TB or a third party software that is compatable with the need I describe?

I'm trying to find an external drive for the MacPro that will allow me to password protect the external drive in case it is taken. Any suggestions on a very reliable one that is 2TB or a third party software that is compatable with the need I describe?

How much of a hurry are you in, and are you considering upgrading to Lion?
File Vault on Snow Leopard only encrypts home folders you select, and doesn't work well with Time Machine.
But Lion will have "full disk encryption" of local or external disks. See File Vault 2 here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html

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)

G4 as external drive for iBook

Hi
I have my old and trusted G4 tower and would like to set it us as the external drive for my iBook, so that I can store on the G4 all my iphotos and itune libraries as well as backups, and do without the monitor and keyboard.
(the laptop then ideally connected to the stereo....)
i like to come home, plug in the laptop and access the G4 via the laptop...
how do I do that? i got firewire lead which I used to transfer files but I still need a keyboard to access the G4 when I do that.
hope this makes sense. it's clear in my head what I want to do, but not sure I can explain properly...
many thanks
Resi

I think you might be better off either buying an external HD, or just buying an external enclosure and putting the HD from the Tower into that. As far as I know, there is no way to boot the G4 into "Target Mode" without a keyboard.

External drive for Time Machine

I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
2. What is a good external hard drive to handles these types of files?
Thanks.

kat.hayes wrote:
I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
As long as they're formatted HFS+, yes. Be sure there's enough room, though -- Time Machine needs considerably more room than the data it's backing-up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

External drive for broken CD rom drive on G3.

I have a g3 also...but don't want to get rid of it. I bought the wireless g4. However , how do i purchase a CD rom/ external drive for a broken g3....??
Please advise what company would be the best.
Thank you..

macbear:
You really should start a new topic. However, both 2001 iMac 500 Mhz versions support Firewire. You could buy an external Firewire CD/DVD burner and use it. Try OWC.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
cornelius

What external drive will idle power down. TM and mini use.

Hello, can someone tell me what external drive will power down after x minutes.
I want two drives to do this.
One for my airport extreme as a time machine location and then another for my mac mini.
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thanks

A virus is not something you need to lose much sleep over. See my Mac Malware Guide:
http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg
As for the question, there's always a danger that something could happen to your backup, whether you leave it connected or not. You need to be sure to maintain multiple backups... Two completely separate backups, made with two different backup programs, is the bare minimum to ensure data integrity in my eyes.

Confused..what external drive for MB

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