Recommendations needed for portable hard drives

Looking for a recommendation for portable hard drives -
1. I'm buying a new 2TB portable hard drive to use with my iMac for my Time Machine backups.
2. Additionally, I am buying a second 2TB portable HD for the iMac for SuperDuper back ups (I'm adding a second layer of back up and bootable clone protection to my life).
3. Finally, I need to also purchase a 1TB portable HD for SuperDuper back ups for my MacBook Air.
I'd just as soon keep life simple and buy the same brand for all 3 drives. I want things easy.
(I have Mavericks on both computers and don't want to worry about Western Digital software inadvertently being installed without my knowing it, possible causing me to lose data on my computers. So maybe it would be simplest all around to avoid WD?)
Simple and easy and reliable - that's all I ask.

Information.
Best external hard drive?

Similar Messages

Firewire power for portable hard drive

I just replaced my hard drive on my Macbook Pro, and I bought a Tango Pro external enclosure (portable) from Acomdata to house the old drive. I want to use it as a backup drive for my iMac 800 G4 flat panel running 10.4. My Macbook Pro recognizes the external portable, but my iMac does not seem to have the power necessary through the firewire port (or the USB port, but I would like to use the firewire) to spin the portable. Is there a power issue for the iMac G4 flat panel with portable hard drives?

While an older Mac (PPC) can see and use an Apple Partition Map
(APM) and Journaled HFS+ formatting for a boot system, generally.
A newer Mac can see and use, to a degree, both kinds of partition
map schemes, especially on an external drive that may support a
clone or files to be (perhaps, if capable) used by more than one
Mac. So, by default, the newer Intel-based Mac would tend to put
its favored GUID partition mapping on at attached hard disk drive
in the process of setting it up for use; however it can also use the
older standard APM on an external drive.
Also, it is best when two computer systems are expected to use
a single external hard disk drive device, that the internal drive in
that unit be set up to contain more than one partition, and the
Disk Utility can be used to set that up, too. And when using two
sets of software to create projects that may not be compatible
under both different OS X versions, you can keep those apart
from each other in the external drive in their own place.
Not saying the total and full answer is to just use the best possible
partition map for the correct vintage OS X version, but to use one
that is compatible for both the newer & older, on the external HD.
And to change that mapping scheme would erase the drive.
And I am always open to someone who is more current and has
a great deal more recent experience in these matters, to reply
and set the course straight with a short, quick, workable answer.
Now, I have to go and see about helping someone get a pile of
old firewood from the backyard they were given two years ago.
Good luck & happy computing!

Lenovo 120GB portable hard drive won't disconnect (not sure where to put this!)

I didn't see any specific forums/areas for portable hard drives, so I thought I'd try here-- if it's in the wrong place, please let me know!
I got a 120gb lenovo portable hard drive over the holidays, and just today tried plugging it in; the only thing I did was check how much space it had free on it (111gb, but I did find out why that is!), but now I can't remove it. That is, when I try to use the 'safely remove hardware' thing, I get a message saying that the device is still being used by a program. However... there shouldn't be any program using it! I was told that normally it's not a problem to just straight-up unplug the usb cords from the computer, but I'd rather not have to do that every single time I use the portable hard drive.

Welcome to the forum,
In order that members can help you trouble shoot this you may want to post some more details. Most importantly which OS you are running.
Did you have something like Windows Media Player running when you tried to disconnect the drive? I've experienced the same with WMP running; it links to the drive looking for files it can play / add to it's playlists and therefore Windows thinks it is still in use.
Message Edited by andyP on 01-28-2009 07:54 AM
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What specific type of portable hard drive do I need to purchase for my iMac 10.5.8?

I have an older iMac 10.5.8 and want to purchase a portable hard drive. I know I need a specific one for such an older computer.
Can you tell me what to ask for when I purchase one?

Generally, any USB or FireWire drive will work, but you should avoid USB drives if your computer's ports are only USB 1.1.
(104576)

My hard drive needed to be replaced for my iMac. When I move the photos from my portable hard drive back into iPhoto, the pictures show up small and I can't adjust them. How do I fix the pictures so they are full size again?

My hard drive needed to be replaced on my iMac. When I try to move the photos from my portable hard drive back onto the Mac, they are small and can't be edited or made any larger. How can I fix them?

YOu restore your phone from your icloud backup.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

Portable Hard Drive Needed

I seem to be out of the office more and more and I need to have my files with me. I have a Mac G4 and have been researching portable hard drives, the only thing is, not many of the reviewers consider the older macs.
PC Magazine did recommend a portable drive for "older mac users" but I thought that I would ask the experts before I make a purchase.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2349221,00.asp - Iomega
* Reviewer mentions that it works with older macs. * Firewire cable.
Click free portable back up drive (no firewire cable- excellent reviews)dual prong usb cable
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-hard-drives/clickfree-portable-backup-drive/4505- 9997_7-33497721.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Lacie Little Disk
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-hard-drives/clickfree-portable-backup-drive/4505- 9997_7-33497721.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody
If any of you have experience with a portable drive with a powerbook, I would greatly appreciate your advice. I'm getting a headache.
Thank you in advance for your help.
My Mac
Mac OSX 10.4.11
Memory: 2GB DDR SDRAM
Machine Name: PowerBook G4 17"
Machine Model: PowerBook5,7
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.67 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.9.1f1
Serial Number: W8507*RJ3
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Version: 1.0

Is this the one that your son has? It looks like it gets good reviews and the fact that the company stands by their products is a big plus.
The OWC drive I pointed to is the same one my son uses. He's had it about a year with no issues. I like the fact that it's got a 3 year warranty, while others are sometimes 1 year. I have several desktop external drives that use the Oxford chipsets, and others would agree they interface very well to our macs.
The other benefit to firewire is if you either copy your system to the hard drive, to make a backup of your internal drive, or just install an operating system on it, you have the capability to boot and use your system if there is any problem with the internal hard drive. You can even partition the external drive into one partition with an operating system/backup and the second partition with business data. If you think this approach would be one you might use, take that into account when you decide what size external drive to get, ie, get a larger one than you might normally go with just for data.
Also, on an external hard drive whose purpose is primarily data storage, I probably wouldn't spend the extra on a 7200rpm drive, instead going with a 5400rpm drive (which is probably the speed of what's in your Powerbook). So ... if you have an 80GB internal hard drive today, round it to 100GB for backup, then add 300GB? for business data ... maybe a 400GB or even 500GB external hard drive would work for you. It would be a backup for your internal drive as well as hold your business data. Just a thought ....

Does anyone know how to format a Toshiba 1.5 TB canvio portable hard drive for macOS10

Hi
I have just bought a Toshiba 1.5TB Canvio portable hard drive. It needs sto be formatted for Mac (OS10.5). I was told to go to disk utility, format using FAT32.
In disk utility - erase there is an option MS_DOS(FAT). Is this what I use?
Thanks

pamelarandwick wrote:
... It needs sto be formatted for Mac ...
Usually if you are Only intend to use it with a Mac it should be Formatted Mac OS Extended (journaled)
More Info here on Formats > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU8.html
To Format the Drive using Disc Utility... See Here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU1.html
From Pondinis Excellent Information here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

I have moved all of my music from my laptop to a portable hard drive...need help :( cant play music

Hi all,
I moved all my music from my laptop to a portable hard drive, my hope was that i could just plug and play into my mabook air not the case...
I was wondering if anyone could help with the following, in a perfect world i would love to be able to keep the music on my drive (there is about 500 gb worth) and then when i want to play through mac to apple tv be able to just plug into mac and then be good to go, or if poss for itunes to be able to recognise the music on my portable drive...and for me then to play through itunes without adding it (as there wouldnt be enough space)...and to also have the capability to plug the drive into my windows comp and be able to also still play from there.
I dont know if any of this is poss...it all seems really complicated to me...and i am new to mac.
If anyone thinks they could help please get in touch!
my main goal is to be able to play my music through apple tv to the surround system in the house, and to be able to play music through my mac if poss, doesnt have to be itunes so long as i can air play or even better select through apple tv.
thanks so much in advance to anyone who can help me out
p.s. i tried this...didnt work, unless i am doing it wrong
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449

iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music [library] to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 - a somewhat bewildering and not always easily understandable set of options.
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the iTunes Library.itl file in the moved iTunes folder.
For the record there's this reference for iTunes 11 but it really doesn't strike me as having the specifics you need. iTunes 11 for Mac: Move your library to another computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12168
Windows users see tip at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18879381
If you put it in the default location of Macintosh HD > Users > *User Name* > Music then you don't even need to start with the option key held down, iTunes will automatically look for it there. (Make sure there isn't anything already in the iTunes folder there that you want to keep since you will be replacing it with the one you are moving.)
Do not confuse (as you did) moving your whole folder and library with moving just media files as in
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

Need help - downloading photos to portable hard drive

I've imported about 2000 photos from my iPhone to my Macbook Air. I want to export them now to a portable hard drive but it's saying I don't have enough memory. I was planning on deleting the photos on the MacAir afterwards anyway.
Two questions:
1.) How do I move these photos to my portable hard drive, so I can then delete them on the hard drive?
2.) How do I bypass downloading to the MacAir next time, and move photos right from iPhone to portable hard drive?
I'm tech savvy on all things Windows, and have had Macs in the past, so I'm ready to pull my hair out over these novice questions.
Help!

Have your recipients given you any more info than you've given us? The simplest thing for you to do is to capture your footage, get it in a timeline, then export as a QuickTime movie, which should be around 9 or 10 GB in size. Your PC friend would need to download QuickTime in order to view it.
There are tools available to convert to Windows Media or other formats. One of the best is MPEG Streamclip, which you can download here:
http://www.squared5.com/
You'll need to be certain to format the hard drives properly (do this in Disk Utility): Mac OS Extended for your Mac friend, MS-DOS for your PC friend. There are issues with some PC drives and files over 2GB, so you may need to break your QuickTime movie into 9-minute segments.

7200 or 5400 portable hard drive for scratch drive?

I am trying to decide whether to buy a f7200rpm or 5400rpm portable hard drive to store some of my video footage on but seem to have conflicting answers on the topic. Basically, I need to offload some of my unedited footage from my MBP as it is taking up lots of room but I need also to have this with me when travelling so that I can continue working on it, therefore the need for a small portable hard drive. I have pretty much decided to get one of the G-tech mini drives, but should I get a faster 7200rpm for video, or will this make no difference, in which case a 5400rpm will have more capacity for the same price. I emailed G-Tech and their reply was a bit vague, basically saying that with firewire 800 there "might be a slight increase in performance", but I am still not sure what this means in real terms when working with video.
I thought the best place to ask was here, so if anyone can advise I would be grateful, thanks.

I have a single G-Tech mini fw400 case with a 5400 rpm drive that is perfectly useful for capturing and editing simple DV. But, I purchased it for simply capturing video while I was out of the studio. I would not use it for serious multi layer editing. If pressed, I would guess the limits have more to do with it being fw400 than the rotational speed.
What a faster rotational speed often does is give you faster seek times.
Still, if I were in the market today, I'd go with something like a two drive miniRAID system (eg Caldigit VRmini) that can connect via FW400, 800 or eSATA.
x

Disk utility and reformatting for an external portable hard drive

I bought a brand-new iomega ego portable hard drive (USB compatible). When attempting to format it, I went to 'disk utility' to erase the drive. The drive appears, with the following information listed: Mount Point : /Volumes/Iomega HDD Capacity : 465.8 GB (500,105,217,024 Bytes)
Format : Winows NT Filesystem Available : 465.7 GB (500,022,378,496 Bytes)
Permissions Enabled : Yes Used : 79.0 MB (82,838,016 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 0 Number of Files : 32
Obviously, it needs to be reformatted. But when I click the erase tab, it will not allow me to pick the volume format or name (it just has it listed but unselectable).
Any suggestions on using disk utility or reformatting the drive so I can use it will be useful!

The drive has been pre-formatted for NTFS. You need to do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to APM then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

How to use a iomega prestige portable hard drive (mac edition) to resolve a start up space problem i.e. have 1.07gb need 4.85gb to upgrade tp itunes 7

How to use an iomega prestige portable hard drive (mac edition) to resolve a startup space problem. I need 4.85gb to up grade to itunes 7. I have 1.07gb free

com.apple.NVDAResman appears to be the culprit, indicating a problem with the graphics card. Run the Apple Hardware Test program, extended tests.
See
What is a kernel panic,
Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics,
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ,
Resolving Kernel Panics, and
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics for more details.

Use portable hard drive for Time Machine & other things

I recently purchased a 1 TB portable hard drive. I'd like to use it for my Time Machine backups, as well as moving my iTunes library there. Is this an easy change? I'm not super familiar with hard drive set ups. Will I have to create any partitions on the drive?
Thanks!

You're welcome. Make sure your drive is formated as Mac OS Extended (journaled), GUID partition table.
Here's a nice link to use for Time Machine information.
You can partition the drive if you want to organize your various backups. For example you might create a Time Machine partition and Other Files partition. When Time Machine is working, it creates a folder (Backups.backupdb) and places the Time Machine backups in that folder. The rest of the partition is open to add whatever you want. I have multiple partitions on my USB external drive with Time Machine backups separated from other backups.

Portable Hard drive formating for use with windows and mac operating system

Just bought a verbatim sure fire 500g 800 firewire portable hard drive for my new macbook pro. I have not did bootcamp yet because I am deciding on wether to use Vista or the new windows 7 that will be coming out soon. The drive is already formated HFS+, how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it. Help!!!

how do I format the drive so I can write both windows and mac files to it.
Either format it to MS-DOS from the DIsk Utility, or install a tool such as MacDrive into Windows and keep the drive in its current format, or install the NTFS-3G driver into Mac OS X and format the drive to NTFS in Windows.
(45687)

Need a new hard drive for my White Macbook (2008)

my hard drive crashed and now it runs on the start up disk, i use to have 120 gb available now its down to 3 GB... and i get hard drive errors sometimes, and my macbook takes ages to load up (15 minutes), so i never restart it anymore, I need a link to the proper hard drive. that is all, thanks a lot.

For a new hard drive try Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Dr ives&Order=PRICE
Or OWC for regular hard drives and SSDs http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Here are instructions on replacing the hard drive in a MacBook with a removable battery. http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=45088
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the Aluminum Unibody
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_13_unibody/
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the White Unibody http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_13_09_unibody_hd/
To transfer your current hard drive I like the free application SuperDuper. It makes a bootable copy of everything on your hard drive http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html You'll need a cheap SATA external hard drive case. Put the new drive in the case then format and partition the new drive and clone your old drive to the new one. Check that it's set up right by booting up from the external drive. Then replace your old hard drive with the new one and put your old one in the external case.
Here's a cheap SATA external hard drive case on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B002JQNXZC/r ef=pd_cp_pc_0
If you don’t have the tools to open up the MacBook OWC has a set for $5
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMHD/

Recommendations needed for portable hard drives

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