Could someone please let me know the best external hard drive for a Mac Pro 17 in. ? Thank you .

Question

Hi,
I am new to the community and need advice as soon as possible . I have been using the iMac hard drive , but need a external hard drive to put on the Mac Pro and dont know what kind to get . Could someone please let me know the best for the Mac Pro ? I was told to get the 500 MB external back up , but when searching for it on the internet I saw different ones that had other things with the 500 MB . Some had 300 or 200 something else along with them and I dont know which to purchase .
I will appreciate more than you know if you could help me with this , as the Pro is needing backed up now.
Thank you ,

Answer 1

I appreciate all the great advice here , but all this is overwhelming to me , as you all are so intelligent with these things and this causes me to feel more dumb about a Mac than I was already .
I paid for a One on One to learn these things , but I have a Immune Disorder and wasn't able to attend one class , so its not that I didn't try , I am just not able to travel . I don't like asking others for help , but at this point I don't have a choice.
I called Apple store and was told to get a External Back-up for the Macbook Pro to back up the info. on the device in the event it crashed . And another reason was "they " said to get this was I have a 2 TB backup on the iMac desktop and that using it to back up things on the Macbook would take up all the space of the backup on the desktop . I hope I am saying these things right for others to understand me as I said I don't know much about these things , at all really . I am wondering if I should have ever bought these products as it seems they are much harder to learn than I thought . I do admire all the brains you all have here and wish I knew just a little of what you all know.
Someone ask the kind of Macbook Pro I have , it was bought in August of 2011 , but sat all those times , was only updated when needed to be , as I was trying to learn on the desktop Mac and with this illness I live in bed more than up , so I couldn't learn on both devices . I should also say at this time I paid for an extra 3 yrs. to have the opportunity to call in for advice , but was only given 15 min. of talk time , and I can't complain as the Techs were very supportive , but the problem was and is I can't be out of bed long enough to learn things I need to with only getting to call Techs , maybe every 3 or so months and sometimes I didn't call for 5 or so months , now that has expired and I don't have a choice but to ask for help .
I know some might wonder why I went to the trouble to have these devices with being sick , but I would like to live some with what time I have left in life . I am not searching for pity here , just wanting to clarify what has happened and why I am having to bother others . With this out of the way now I can get onto the other things here.
I am afraid I might have messed up the backup on the Macbook Pro was trying to make a back up and clicked on something saying do not use this , meaning the device from the desktop again . I had connected the backup device from the desktop , trying to make a backup of things on the Macbook Pro and also cant get the Time Machine turned back on , once I turned it off .
I am sorry I have taken so much time to try and explain this to you all , but I am not computer savvy as you are and have had a hard time explaining all this .
I noticed also someone said this isn't the right forum for this , and would like for someone to point me to the right one if you don't mind.
I appreciate all the good advice here and all the trouble you all went to for me .
Thank you , thank you all .