Is is better to buy an external Hard drive or an external CD RW Burner?

I am shopping to buy an external hard drive, too, to back up all my important data.....but could I buy a external CD RW Burner to burn back-up disc and it will do the same job. Or is is better to buy an external Hard drive to save the data? Will I be able to burn CD Back-ups from my external hard drive?
In other words, I am a little confused on whether to buy an external hard drive or external CD RW Burner? What is the best route?
Thanks for any body that can help with this issue.

Hi,
Welcome to Apple Discussions
I suggest getting a external hard drive over getting an external CD-RW or DVD-RW. One of the major reason is that its great for backing up your internal hard drive; you can do it all in one place. One should always backup their hard drive just incase anything happens to your computer. One can't predict the day when a friend trips over their own feet; knocking your iBook on the floor with a huge crash. The most annoying thing to carry around when traveling is the Mac OS X install discs. I hate bringing them with me because I am in constant fear that I will loose them. The reason I bring them with me is because if something happens while I am away, I can troubleshoot my problem. I can startup from the install disc and then run Disk Utility, Archive and Install, Erase, and partition my hard drive. Once someone has a problem on the road; they will never leave their house without the discs. Instead of carrying around those discs, I partitioned one of my external hard drives into three sections, one for backup (140Gb), one for Mac OS X Tiger (10Gb), and the last one is for Panther (10Gb. I gave my girlfriend an iBook and she has Panther on it). This means I am equipped to startup my computer without using my internal drive.
Have you ever lost your iTunes library or your TurboTax data? Well, by backing up your hard drive (internal to external), you can save all your vital data incase something happens. You will find it a life saver if anything ever happens.
If you are looking into external hard drives, I suggest anything from LaCie, SmartDisk, or Western Digital
I recommend the LaCie D2 Hard Drive Extreme w/ Triple Interface, SmartDisk CrossFire, or the WD Dual Option.
I use a SmartDisk CrossFire for both my iTunes library as well as my iPhoto library. If you need help moving your iTunes library you might want to look at Knowledge Base Document #301748 explains How to Move Your iTunes Library.
I don't think you want an external burner of any kind for backing files because it will cost you a lot more in the end. You will have to use multiple discs for one big folder like iTunes. It is a pain and is also expensive. You can easily loose a disc or scratch it up.
Jon
PS Duane brings up the a really good point.
Macbook 2.0 White (100Gb HD 2Gb RAM) Mac Mini 1.42Ghz, iPod (All), Airport (Graphite & Express), G4 1.33Ghz iBook, G4 iMac 1Ghz, G3 500Mhz, iBook iMac 233Mhz, eMate, Power Mac 5400 LC, PowerBook 540c, Macintosh 128K, Apple //e, Apple //, and some more... Mac OS X (10.4.7) Moto Razr, iLife '06, SmartDisk 160Gb, Apple BT Mouse, Sight, Minolta 5D...

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i have an external hard drive which i store all my drum samples and sound library on and files are contantly changing, adding new sounds, deleting old ones etc ..
So my method of back up as of now is to just copy all the edited files and click and drag to the back up disk.
Now, my question is, how do i back up my external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ? I read somewhere that you can do this, i cant find the post however. It would be nice to automate the back up process rather than manually finding the files to copy over.
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The question you pose is conditional, in that you should have more than an exact
capacity replacement for a clone, if the drive you are going from (or one going to)
has insufficient free space and that has a bootable clone on the drive; any space
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Is is better to buy an external Hard drive or an external CD RW Burner?

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