External Hard Drive Western digital or Seagate?

Looking to buy a External Hard drive for my new imac and just wondering anybody had any experience with both these companies and which one would be the best option to go for:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Essential-External-Desktop-Drive/dp/B0047VOGOO/ref= sr_1_18?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1363649454&sr=1-18#productDetai ls
or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STCA2000200-Backup-Desktop-Drive/dp/product-desc ription/B0084LZI9U/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=340831031&s=computers

I have/had a WD MyBook Studio Mac Edition. In spite of that moniker, it performed badly on both a PowerPC and and Intel Mac. I stripped the bare WD drive out of the WD enclosure and put it in a a Mercury Elite enclosure that's the model offered just before the one den.thed linked, and it works flawlessly.
The problem is with the WD enclosures, not the drives inside. The same drive that ran hot in the WD enclosure runs just barely warm to the touch in the nice metal OWC case. I now have two WD drives in OWC enclosures and can't complain.
PS: I reformatted the WD drive with Disk Utility after getting it into the OWC case. Either the chipset WD used in teh case was wonky or they used some strange formatting that made it appear only as an non-resolvable alias on the desktop. Now it's fine.

Similar Messages

How do I figure out if I have usb 3.0? I am trying to buy compatible external hard drive (western digital my passport for mac) and I can not figure out if it will work with my mac book.

how do I figure out if I have usb 3.0? I am trying to buy compatible external hard drive (western digital my passport for mac) and I can not figure out if it will work with my mac book.

Dont buy a Western Digital, get a Hitachi or Seagate (Toshiba is made by Hitachi). These are the most reliable, and the HD used inside Macs.
ALL HD can be made compatible with your MAC (including a WD if you already bought same), ......they just need to be formatted for the Mac platform, format them in Disk Utility as Mac OSX extended journaled.

I want to take files from my PC (using a Seagate external hard drive) then plug this Seagate External hard drive into my Mac Book Pro and move the files from the Seagate External Hard drive onto my Time Capsule. I do not want to put these files on my Mac

I want to take files from my PC (using a Seagate external hard drive) then plug this Seagate External hard drive into my Mac Book Pro and move the files from the Seagate External Hard drive onto my Time Capsule. I do not want to put these files on my Mac. How do I do this? Where do I put these files on my Time Capsule? Will it affect the functioning of my Time Capsule?

Mixing files with data is not always great idea.
See info here.
Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Why not just connect the PC directly to the TC by ethernet and copy the files over?
It is hugely faster and much less mucking around.
In windows load the airport utility for windows.. if you have not already as this will help you access the drive.
There is more info here.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

How do I get iTunes to recognize my external, wireless-networked hard drive (Western Digital) during installation and set-up of iTunes?

Hello,
I'm re-installing iTunes for Windows 7 (64-bit) due to a bug that occured with the iOS7 update. The Genius Bar recommended that I uninstall and re-install iTunes from scratch. All of my music is located on a WD external hard drive that's connected wirelessly to my PC. I didn't have this problem until the iOS update for iphone 5, v.7.0.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

I didn't relate this; now iTunes will not install on my PC when pointed to my external, wireless-networked hard drive. It appears that it doesn't recognize it.

Time capsule and Seagate external hard drive, Time capsule and Seagate external hard drive

I have Mac Book Pro with Retinal Display Mac OS X 10.8.2 connected Time Capsule 1TB using wireless network. I recently purchased Seagate Backup Plus 3TB and I connected to TC. However, I cannot find the Seagate drive on the network or via Aiport Utility. I used to have Western Digitial My Book and was able to detect the hard drive on TC. I changed to Western Digital Passport 2TB and it did not work. I wondered why it is the case. Please help me to hook up Seagate Backup Plus. Thank you!

Make sure that the hard drive is formatted in Mac OS Extendeded (Journaled)
The USB port on the Time Capsule is under powered, so it is often necessary to use a powered USB hub with a hard drive.....even if the hard drive has its own power supply
If you have the correct format for the drive and sufficient power, the drive should appear in AirPort Utility

Hard Drive (western digital) no longer mounting..?

Hi guys.
I have yet to find any resolution to a new problem I've been having with my Western Digital Hard Drive.
I've had it for about 6 months. Has run with no problems, until recently.
I have been running it on my Macbook Pro 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 and Playstation3 since I bought it. I went to load up my Macbook one day, and it would not recognize the hard drive. I have run the Disk Utility repair/verify options on it. It shows up on the list, when I select eject, nothing really happens. It just stays on the list. When I select the particular partition (FRANK) on the hard drive, and click Mount, I get an error message stating; 'Try running first aid on the disk and then retry mounting.' Which I have done, and this is what I recieve;
Verify and Repair volume “FRANK”
Checking file system** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters
28027 files, 424337248 KiB free (13260539 clusters)
Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
I have plugged the HD into an iMac in the house, and it mounts no problem and all the files are there and accessable.
When I first had this problem (2 weeks ago) I decided to back everything up on the iMac, and format the HD, just to see. And again same issue, even after formatting it, FAT 32 (MS-DOS) - For Playstation.
Any ideas on what I can do to be able to access Frank again, from the Macbook Pro?
Thanks for any help!

I had a similar issue with an Iomega hard drive after connecting it to a samsung led tv
the resolution for me was to boot into a windows partition, plug in the HDD let it do it's thing and then use the "safely disconnect device" feature in windows
afterwards it simply showed up again
the cause of this issue lies with connecting to DLNA-compliant devices (eg PS3/TV/xbox/...) and unsafely disconnecting them
Cipher

Need help setting up Macbook Pro and external hard drive(s)

I apologize for the vague title but I was limited to so many characters.
Here's my situation (sorry for being verbose, I just want to be thorough)
Right now I have a Macbook Pro and a 500 GB external hard drive (Western Digital using USB 2.0 connection). I've outgrown the external hard drive and am ready to upgrade my external memory.
Here's my issues right now:
My iTunes library and music reside on the external hard drive. Using iTunes is painfully, I mean brutally, slow for some reason. For example: if I were to just change the genre of an average album, it takes upwards of 4 or 5 minutes to change the data. Compared to the POS Dell computer I used to run iTunes with (using the same external hard drive), the same task would take 5 seconds at the most. Likewise, if I try to watch a video that resides on that external hard drive right now, it skips and eventually stops because (presumably) the data is transferring extremely slowly. I have no idea, and haven't gotten any real answers, as to why this is happening with the Macbook and/or if using a Firewire connection would improve the speed.
Taking that into consideration, here's what I would like to do (and ask). I see myself having one 1T external hard drive for all my music and one 1T external hard drive for all my movies and videos. Ideally I would like to be able to access these two hard drives wirelessly with my Macbook and have it transfer the data very quickly - as it should IMO. Certainly a lot faster than it is now.
I would love to just be able to hook my Macbook up to my main stereo and run iTunes through it without having to lug around and messily connect the external hard drive which contains all the music. As well as being able to hook my Macbook up to the stereo and LCD monitor and be able to watch a video, again without the hassle of having to connect the external hard drive - which as I said prior, appears to transfer the data way too slowly anyway.
Any suggestions on what external hard drives I should get and any other hardware/software I need to run them wirelessly would be gratefully welcomed.
Thanks in advance (and I apologize for the long winded post)
MM

Obviously, FireWire is a fast connection, but for changing metadata, USB is plenty fast. Why it takes so long is anyones guess. Is it a USB 2.0 drive? Using external drives can be tricky. My father uses them for his gigantic library of almost 80,000 songs. When you have it setup properly, it works fine, but if you say forgot to have the external drive mounted when you launch iTunes, iTunes defaults the library back to your Music folder, then when you start importing, it puts in on the internal drive, then you have to go back and reset it, etc. Problem, with iTunes alone, you can only set one library, so if you want to use two drives, you will have to have one set at any given time.
So you could set the music one first, add to the library, then set it for movies, then add those to the library. Then keep the library set to the one you use most frequently, so you don't have to always switch. Once you import all media, and iTunes "knows" where to find the files, you can play them with no problems with two drives.
For wireless, you have a couple choices. If you have two Macs, you could keep one connected to the two drives, then with the other computer, just connect to the network and share the iTunes library so your other computer has access. If you want the music stored on a drive accessible wireless, you'll probably have to look to NAS, or some form of wireless storage. If you do that, their may even be a better third party software solution other than iTunes for managing multiple libraries.
This is something iTunes really needs. As libraries grow, one drive just isn't enough often.
Bryan

My external Hard Drive won't transfer files to Mac HD and causes Finder to crash

My external Hard Drive (Western Digital 2TB hard drive in a ICYBOX 2-bay USB 2.0 HD Dock) won't transfer files to the Mac HD. The transfer box comes up but stays at the 'estimating time' stage and remains like that. No matter how big the file/group of files are (biggest I've tried was only 500-odd MB) it won't transfer and stays at the 'estimating time' stage. When I try and stop the transfer, the transfer box remains at the 'stopping' stage until I restart the iMac. I can access other programs during this 'stopping' stage, as long as it doesn't involve the External HD.
When I attempt to open files from the External HD in Photoshop CS4, both Photoshop and Finder stop responding and have I have to 'Force Quit'. However, upon force quitting finder, I loose all icons on the desktop until I restart the Mac via holding down the 'Power' button on the back.
Ive looked at a few forums already and done a couple things they suggested to similar topics.
- I excluded the Ext HD on the Spotlight>Privacy tab.
- I verified the Ext HD via System Utilities. Some errors came up but the Repair was successful and subsequent Verifications have returned as 'OK'.
- I tried the Mac Diagnostic tool as suggested by Apple, but when I press the 'D' key on start up nothing happens.
The annoying thing is that this problem came out of the blue, the Ext HD was working fine 3 days ago.
My system:
iMac 21.5inch, mid 2010
3.6GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
The Ext HD:
Western Digital 2TB
Mac OS Extended (Journalised)
1.91TB available on the HD
Shares a 2 Bay ICYBOX dock with another 2TB WD HD
Connected to the iMac via USB 2.0 to a 4-port USB 2.0 hub
Any help suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Tom

WD EHDs have an extremely high failure rate so don't be shocked if it is failing. However what you can do first is reset the SMC and PRAM first on the computer, do the SMC reset 2-3 times, sometimes the first try does not work. If this does not work then using another computer move the files to another EHD, this time buy a high quality HD, something like one of these

Is there any negative in changing an external hard drive from FAT32 to NFTS?

I have a 500 GB external hard drive,
Western Digital, that is formatted as FAT32. I have tried to save some movie files in Moviemak
er from the External file to a file in a second internal hard drive so I can then edit in Premier but it says there isn't enough
space. The new internal hard drive is a Terabyte and has lots of space. The C drive is almost full. I want to reformat the external drive to NTFS. Is there any downside to that?
My PC has XP pro, 4 G Ram. My problems come from trying to convert files because of missing codecs. Yet when I analyze them with Gspot- it says nothing is missing.
Thanks
Pam

Pam,
What you actually want to do is Convert. The term "format" is used, when referring to FAT-32 and NTSF, but the operations are different. Convert should NOT harm the drive, or losse any data. I have done this with dozens of externals, without any incident. However, I have to admit that most of these are brand new, with no real data - so I am less concerned. When I have Converted older drives, I have made a backup - just in case, but still have never had one issue, or even one lost, or damaged file.
This ARTICLE goes into more detail. Also, please check your particular OS version's Help Files. That article was done a few OS versions ago, and there could be small, but important changes, especially in the parameters.
Good luck,
Hunt

Time Machine says both of my external hard drives require reformatting to case insensitive. What do I do?

I have been successfuly using Time Machine to back my iMac to an external hard drive (via usb) and everything has been fine for the last year. I have been using TM to back up to a HD called Terra LaCie via usb.
A week ago, my iMac hard drive was full--so I spulrged and bought a 6 TB external hard drive (Western Digital My Book-Thunderbolt). I set up the new Thunderbold HD to use RAID 1 (mirror) and copied most of my iMac hard drive over to the Thunderbolt HD.
I kept my working photographs (most recent) on my iMac and felt good to know my older photographs are on my new Thunderbolt hard drive.
For a few days, Time Machine seemed to work fine (backing up my iMac to Terra LaCie HD. I haven't been concerned with backing up the Thunderbolt drive (as I feel that mirroring is same as backing up).
Yesterday, Time Machine indicated the lastest back-up failed (for the HD called Terra LaCie). Now, when I go into Time Machine, the dialog box indicates the following message:
"Are you sure you want to erase the backup disk “Terra Lacie”? Erasing will destroy all information on the disk and can’t be undone.
The disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because a disk you are backing up is case sensitive, but the backup disk is not."
When I open Time Machine to look at my external hard drives (I also have a third usb portable drive); two of the three drives indicate the following:
"reformat required; case insensitive disk".
The small, portable hard drive (that I'm also using) doesn't say it needs to be reformated (but my new Thunderbolt and my old usb HD both indicate the same message (above).
What should I do? I just spent days transferring my photographs from my iMac to my new Thunderbolt. Should I just not use Time Machine any longer and work from my Thunderbolt drive?
Am I to understand that my iMac suddenly become case sensitive? Sorry if this was too much information about my hard-ware set-up.
Any help someone can provide me would be greatly appreciated. I suppose I need to understand Time Machine and perhaps my Thunderbolt better.

Hi BDAqua,
Bravo, you helped me solve my problem.
The Case Sensitive Disk was the small portable hard drive that I was using termporarily.
I just disconnected it and I started TM machine and everything seems to be working just fine.
Thank you very much!!!!

How do I install and BOOT Windows 7 on External Hard Drive?

Please please please help! I've been browsing the net for 2 days straight and can't find a decent answer.
I've partitioned my external hard drive (Western Digital Passport) using Disk Utility.
I have 4 paritions in total; 2 intended for Mac and 2 intended for Windows.
I used a GUID partition table for all 4 as displayed on the below picture.
Although I should note that when my external hard disk is booted in Windows it says that it uses Master Boot Record, please see picture 2 below.
I formatted the Mac Partitions to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Windows Partitions to ExFat.
The Macs work beautifully; having successfully installed and booted Snow Leopard on them, and then backed up my 2 internal Mac Drives to them.
However, the Windows ones are a complete nightmare and I have no idea how to installl Windows 7 and then use them from there.
Can anyone offer a solution? I've heard so many conflicting ideas about this that it's made me dizzy just reading it all.
Thanks!

Yeah, I use Windows on bootcamp for both my Imac and my Macbook Pro.
In fact, seeing as my Mac partition on my external hard drive was successful i.e. I installed and can boot from them any time I like, couldn't I just use the external hard drive's partitions' bootcamp assistant and install/boot windows on there?

APPLE TV (GEN 2): How to view the movies on my external hard drive?

Hello,
I have a Macbook Pro, with Itunes. I already know how to set-up HOME SHARING with the APPLE TV that allows me to view my Itunes library from my TV.
But on my laptop, with the FRONT ROW feature, I set-up a ALIAS in the movie folder on my computer so that the files from my external hard drive were viewable from the movies folder in FRONT ROW. This great feature now allows me to view my content on my laptop (on Itunes) and the movies on my external hard drive, all on FRONT ROW on the Macbook Pro.
When I opened and set-up the Apple TV (Gen 2), I was surprised that it isn't like FRONT ROW. Instead, it only allows the content on my Itunes to be viewed.
This is a downside because I have only 35 GB free on my internal hard-drive, and all of 350+ GB of movies are on my EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE (Western Digital MY BOOK). Also, the movies files on my external hard drive are .AVI, .M4V, and .MP4
Another question I have is what is the USB port on the back of the APPLE TV for? Can it be used for the external hard drive or no?
Basically, I want to watch all the movies from my external hard drive on my TV.
Can I set this up to happen and how?
If not, what should I do to be able to watch the movies from my computer/external hard drive on my TV?
*Please share as much information as you all can because I need to view all my options (if any) in this situation and I value all the advice....THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!*
EQUIPMENT:
Laptop: MACBOOK PRO 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 1067 MHZ DDR3 MAC OS X 10.6.6
Apple TV: Gen 2
TV: Vizio 37" HDTV HMDI LCD
External Hard Drive: Western Digital MY BOOK (USB 2.0 + Firewire)

I followed exactly what you advised, and it all worked. I did convert the files first that were .AVI ---> .MP4 (the audio and video came out beautifully when viewed). I organized my files around a bit, and then I went into Itunes---> Preferences---> Advanced---> Changed where I want to grab my movies from. It keep all my previous music, tv, movies, podcasts files that I had in ITunes, and just "added" the new content without disrupting anything in my Itunes at all. I LOVED IT...so simple in the end.
The files did take a while to convert, but I only had to do the ones that I had that were labeled ".AVI". The program, HAND BRAKE, allowed me to set up a "batch" and I had them converting during the afternoon and into the evening.
All in all....THANK YOU/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstatic__ _/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/ migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-a vail.png/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstat ic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstatic___/migration-ima ges/migration-img-not-avail.png
Since whenever I open my Itunes, all the movies display well, and so my APPLE TV can now view all my "content" in Itunes. I thought I was going to have to return that APPLE TV since I couldn't figure a way around it, and all in all, it wasn't all that bad of a process to convert and then change file location in preferences.
MANY THANKS and HAVE A GREAT WEEK

My Time Machine external hard drive is not recognised anymore under 10.9.1

Hi,
I am running 10.9.1 on my MBP13" mid 2010.
I plugged in my external hard drive (Western Digital Elements 500GB portable drive) and it is no longer recognised.
This has been going on for a couple of weeks.
TM says its not connected.
Icon not on desktop
not seen in disk utilities.
I have tried it on another machine (iMac 2006 10.6) and it is not recognised either.
Tried rebooting with the drive plugged in and without.
attempted to install WD Quick Formatter and this saw the drive but was unable to reformat as it said that it was 'in use'
I thought that this might be TM so I disassociated it from TM - Still No Go.
Any Ideas appreciated.

katlandsf wrote:
I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.
You don't have to do anything.
When Time Machine is out of room, it will automatically delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones. If you have the +Notify after old backups are deleted+ box checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, you'll see the message in the blue box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If you do want to manually delete some backups, you can do that, but only via Time Machine. See #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

How to delete files off my external hard drive

Hi
I'm trying to clear up space on my external hard drive (Western Digital - My Passport), but it won't let me delete anything. In file, 'move to trash' is not highlighted, and when I click on get info, under 'sharing and permissions', it says 'you can only read'.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Is the drive formatted NTFS? Select the drive. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. In the Ownership and Sharing panel make a snapshot of what is displayed - COMMAND-SHIFT-4 then select area using crosshairs. The image will be saved on your Dekstop. Then use the camera icon in the forum composition window's toolbar to put the image into your message.
Here's what one of my panels looks like:

External Hard Drive Western digital or Seagate?

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