Recommendations? On External Hard Drive w/ firewire

Can anybody recommend a good External HD using firewire?

I would also be one to recommend LaCie Hard drives. I have three LaCie's hooked up to my eMac now (120GB,250GB,and 350GB). The 120GB LaCie hard drive has been running almost everyday (14 hours a day), for almost four years now ... with no problems outside of a loose firewire outlet on the drive that just needed to be re-soldered back in place.
Sometimes you can find great deals on LaCie hard drives on eBay!

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Recommend an external hard drive for a backup for me?

For the first time since I've owned any computer PC or Mac, I need to purchase a external hard drive so I can back up my computer. Over the years I have never backed anything up and have lost some things which at the time wasn't too important. But now with this computer I have lots of music and some very important pictures to me and videos of my grandson I do not want to lose, internet bookmarks etc. etc. I have a program called Time Machine on this computer which I assume is to back up my computer contents. I know nothing about external drives for the purpose of backups. Can someone recommend a reasonably priced one for a beginner and where do I purchase it? Online? Through Apple?
Thanks

I have two LaCie drives - you can check them out here:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10033
Depending on which brand you decide to purchase, you may have to format them for a Mac, which is very easily accomplished by using Disk Utility (Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility). At that same time, you may also want to partition it which will create 2 or more partitions on the same drive - each one will act as though it is a separate hard drive. I have mine partitioned and use one just to drag and drop (copy) an extra copy of important pictures or files on it. I use another partition to create a bootable clone using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner (simple version is free). A bootable clone means that if there is a major problem with your internal hard drive and you can't start up with it, you can start up with the bootable clone because it is an exact and complete copy of your entire system. Then there is the option to use Time Machine; personally I don't use it, so someone else will need to chime in with it. It copies a lot of things and does it automatically every hour or so I believe, but you cannot boot up your computer with it (that is why I've decided not to use it).
Again, depending on the brand you buy, you should not have to install any software that comes with it. An external hard drive should simply show up as an icon on your desktop once you attach it; after that, open up Disk Utility and make sure it is formatted correctly and partition it if desired.
Also, as far as speed is concerned, an external hard drive with Firewire is faster than with USB connections, so keep that in mind. Mine is both Firewire 400 and 800 as well as USB, so I am covered no matter how/where it want to plug it in.

External Hard Drive w/ Firewire

Hello all,
I am quickly running out of space on my laptop (due in large part to all of my music) so I am looking for suggestions regarding an external hard drive-- one with Firewire, preferably-- onto which I can move much of my collection. 15 of my total 20 GB of storage space is just music, most of which I don't listen to on a regular basis. Moving some of that off my laptop would allow me to FINALLY install the copy of OSX Tiger I purchased last June!
I have another question: is there a difference between "desktop" external hard drives versus "mobile/portable" external hard drives (other than that the latter does not require AC power)? In specific, is there some reason why I could not use a "desktop" one (i.e. things need to be wired in somehow or something else that prevents me from doing so)? See, since I have an iBook, I have a slight impetus to purchase a portable drive that I can travel wtih easily so I can always have access to my various files and whatnot, though usually my laptop remains on my desk and I don't have to have access to everything all at once if that means I can get more storage for less money. Based on what research I've done, "portable" drives only go up to about 100 GB and those are comparable in price to "desktop" ones at 250 GB.
At the bare minimum, I'm looking for a 40 GB external hard drive with Firewire, though an upper limit would probably be 250 GB, so I don't totally break the bank. I'm looking for something that will last me awhile, space-wise, and I've ripped all of the CDs I currently own so essentially I won't be coming into piles and piles of music files all at once ever again.
Thanks for any suggestions or help you can offer!

Shawn
desktop computers use 3.5" hard drives
laptop computers use 2.5" hard drives
if you have an iBook, then you can bus power a 2.5" drive enclosure from your computer and do not need a separate power source for the enclosure, but you should keep your iBook plugged in so you do not run the battery down on the computer
the largest 2.5" drive is 120GB and 2.5" drives are more expensive than 3.5" drives
so now with all of that out of the way, there are lots of enclosures and drives you can use - here is a large selection of 2.5" and 3.5" drive enclosures:
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php/cPath/1_22
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php/cPath/1_4

Can you recommend an external hard drive for me?

I have a white macbook- nothing special. the cd burner is broken for the zillionth time so apple will be mailing it away for repairs. they suggested i back everything up before turning it over to them. there isnt much on it except my itunes library, some pictures, and a few word/excel docs. here are my questions:
1- what size external hard drive do i need?
2- is there a cheaper/easier way to do this?
3- is there a recommended brand for macs? i heard western digital was good, but several mac users gave it terrible reviews.
thanks so much!!

If you aren't sure how big your computer's drive is, select the hard drive icon on the desktop and Get Info from the File menu. At the top of the Get Info window you'll see the icon and below that some disclosure triangles - the second one pointing to General. If the triangle isn't pointing down, click on it and you'll see information about your drive. Look for Capacity and that is the formatted capacity.
You'll want a drive that is at least as big as your computer's drive so you can back up everything. Some people only back up their data but that, in my opinion, is silly. Look for a drive that is slightly larger that your drive's capacity. For example, you might see your capacity is 78.7 GB so get at least an 80GB drive. I say at least since you might want to consider using this new external drive with TimeMachine so you can always have an up to date backup. With TimeMachine you should get a drive that is at least twice as large as the data you are backing up.
The cheapest way to do it is to run down to your local discount store and pick up whatever they are selling. That's the cheapest but not necessarily the best. I strongly recommend that you buy a drive that includes FireWire - getting one with FireWire and USB ports will provide a good deal of flexibility. I also strongly recommend that you buy a drive with an external power supply. I recommend drives that derive their power from the computer only when the drive needs to be portable too. A backup drive isn't usually portable.
Name brands such as Seagate, Iomega, and Western Digital are all easy to find and okay. I think everyone has been burned by one brand or another so just about every manufacturer will get slammed with a particular horror story.

Help with external hard drive and firewire?

2 questions: 1) Does anyone know if there is a hub made for the firewire 800 to allow more than 1 device to be hooked up at 1 time? ex... capture deck and external hard drive.
2) I was cleaning up my external hard drive. I ejected it and now it won't come back on line when it is plugged in. Any Advice?

Most external FW enclosures have 2xFW800 ports that allow daisy-chaining multiple drives.
There are FW800 hubs available, but I don't recommend them if you intend to use with a camcorder or deck. Ditto regarding daisy-chaining a camcorder or deck with a FW drive ... the camcorder/deck usually locks up the FW bus if you have daisy-chained it with a FW drive.

Any recommendations on external hard drives for Air?

The couple of external hard drives I used for time machine etc. are firewire based. (The alternatives for making them usb friendly do not work with the Air.) Any recommendations on a good, self powered external, about 500gb? Thanks.

I only buy 2.5" internal drives and place them in Macally enclosures. I've had store bought all-in-one externals and they have not been reliable, and many are installing all kinds of software on them, via firmware, and you can't do much about it. I've never had one problem over the years going this route, and drives are so cheap now, you can get the enclosure plus a 500GB drive for just over $100.00 at macsales.com
The Macally's have FW/USB interfaces. I have the new MBA, and use USB.
Bryan

Very slow transfer speeds with external hard drives through Firewire and US

Hi All,
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little. Apple support suggested I post my issue here. Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
Thanks in advance.

Hi Kappy, thanks for the information.
So I rejigged my setup a tad. My RAID 0 is still FW800, the second drive is back on FW400 on the back port, and the third is USB 2.0 on the back as well.
It's interesting to note that I saw the FW800 taking a bandwidth hit if the FW400 drives was being read/written to. For example, if I was averaging 50-60MB/sec on the FW800 drives and copy something large to the FW400 drive, each drive averages out to about 30/MB second, roughly half the FW800 speed I was getting. The USB while the slowest didn't cause any slowness on the FW drives.
Here are my Xbench results. These results are from each drive being benchmarked individually with no other drives being tested at the same time.
*MyBook 2TB in a RAID 0 configuration: Firewire 800*
Results 75.42
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 75.42
Sequential 80.92
Uncached Write 69.16 42.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.79 62.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 53.66 15.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.76 68.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.62
Uncached Write 36.38 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.55 45.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.26 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.38 16.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 1TB on Firewire 400*
Results 47.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 47.73
Sequential 52.47
Uncached Write 48.45 29.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.76 30.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.69 12.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.91 35.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.78
Uncached Write 17.29 1.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 98.83 31.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.33 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.01 18.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 500GB on USB 2.0*
Results 40.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD 5000AA External
Disk Test 40.60
Sequential 35.99
Uncached Write 37.31 22.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.22 21.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 26.62 7.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.27 25.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 46.55
Uncached Write 20.37 2.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.44 21.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.55 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.71 16.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So Kappy are you saying that those speeds look normal?
Thanks

Can anyone recommend an external hard drive?

I am very new to Mac but I am quickly learning why everyone has an external hard drive. With so much movies, music, and more I guess it's a must for Mac owners. Can anyone recomend a good one. Thank you in advance. I have a Macbook 2.26 Ghx Intel Core 2 Duo ,

Advice, yes. Don't get just one drive. So many people have hundreds if not thousands of dollars of media on one drive. The one sure thing about a drive is it will fail, and along with it all the files for which you have to pay for each download. Everything should be on two drives. Don't keep the drives in the same place. A thief or fire will take both.
After that it's up to you. Firewire is better for high demand such as video editing. Otherwise USB is cheaper. Many like the new 1TB or larger drives but in reading reviews on them I recently decided to stick with a pair of 640GB drives that received a solid 5/5 stars. If you're doing portable you want a smaller drive. Many of those get their power from the computer but I'd opt for one with external power source.

Recommendations for External Hard Drive?

Would appreciate hearing people's suggestions for an external hard drive to use with my current Mac. I see that some brands have longer warranty than others, and some may have bundled software for Mac use, while others don't. Reliability is essential.
I'll be using the the drive to back-up files for safety, documents and especially photos. I think a drive 500GB or greater is probably appropriate.
Eventually I'll upgrade to a newer, faster machine, so buying a drive that works with what I have now as well as the computer I move to in the future would be nice.
Please let me know if I need to provide you with any other information to help you make your suggestions.
Thanks!

dflow:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Excellent move. Regular backups is the best thing you can do for your valuable data. A 500 GB HDD will give you plenty of space for quite a while. You want to be sure to get a drive with an Oxford chipset. The firewire bridge is usually the first thing to fail in a firewire HDD, and the Oxford chipsets are the most reliable available. The previous poster mentioned OWC. I agree. The Nepune is their economy version, but a very reliable drive. The better quality Mercury Drives offer a wider range of options and the same rock solid reliability. You can choose Firewire or Firewire/USB, as well at Firewire 400/800 depending on your computer.
Once you have the HDD you will need to format and partition it, but more of that later. Look through the offerings above and post back with questions.
cornelius

Recommendations for External Hard Drives?

This is the first time I am buying an external Hard Drive. I am looking for a 200GB-300GB
What would be considered the best of the best? good? fair?

I use and recommend the Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC found HERE. They do ship internationally, but if you do not want the customs hassle, look for a drive that features the Oxford 911 chipset and avoid at all costs the cheaper and more common Prolific chipset that has shown itself to be unstable with Macs and PCs alike.

Any recommendations on external hard drive for making bootable backup?

Hello,
I wish to make a bootable backup of my MBP before upgrading to Mavericks.
Are there any external hard drives that are better suited for making bootable backups? I use a WD for making Time Machine backups but I have read that WD is not ideal for making a bootable back up - is this correct...?
Thanks,
pinkguava

your WD will of course,..work fine as a boot clone
Quality 1TB drives are $50 per TB on 3.5" or $65 per TB on 2.5"
1TB for $68
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B005J7YA3W/ref=sr_1_ 1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379452568&sr=8-1&keywords=1tb+toshiba
best for cost:
2.5" USB portable High quality BEST FOR THE COST, Toshiba "tiny giant" 2TB drive (have several of them, LOT of storage in a SMALL package) $100
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1379182740&sr=1-4&keywords=2tb+toshiba
*This one is the BEST portable external HD available that money can buy:
HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Mobile-Portable-External-0S03559/dp/B009GE6JI8/ref=sr _1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383238934&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+Touro+Mobile+Pro+1TB+USB+3.0+7 2 00+RPM

Need recommendation on external hard drive

I just purchased a Western Digital external hard drive 500 GB that is Mac compatible. The directions make it look like you just plug it in and go. Nope. I've been on hold with their technical support for 15 minutes now and I'm fed up. A previous person suggested "SuperDuper" and I have no idea if that's an actual external hard drive or another method of backing things up via the internet. I want something Mac friendly and "easy" to set up.
Thanks!

What do you actually want to do with the hard drive?
SuperDuper is a backup program.

Recommendations please: external hard drive to use as Aiport Disc

I recently have been having performance problems with my mid-2009 13" Macbook Pro. I traced this to two things. One is running low on RAM (little free, lots of page outs and swaps) and that my 350GB harddrive only has about 10GB of free space. Most of the current HD is taken up by my itunes library (music and video) that I access very infrequently these days. So I want to move that over to an external HD attached to my Time Capsule to free up that space on my MBP.
I was hoping to get some recommendations about what sort of HD works best for this. In my research I have come to understand that AC powered vs BUS powered is a better way to go. What about other specs or brands? Any thing else I need to look for? I am probably looking for a 500GB drive in case that is useful information to know.
Thanks in advance.

I'm a bit confused - is this a drive to actually record to, or a drive you'll give to your client containing the show files, just as a delivery medium?
Why not record to a big, fast, reliable HD (perhaps even an eSATA external) and just copy the completed project over to a cheap, slow USB HD like a Memorex like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822150007

External Hard Drive via firewire - files not showing up

I have a new external harddrive formatted for mac and keep having the following issue:
when clicking into the harddrive I see folder but when I go to a folder to see the files they are all gone. If I use spotlight to search then I can open the file. I can re-boot and the the files appear.
Anyone have a clue on what this might be. I hate to keep rebooting it is making think I went back to windows
the external harddrive is a seagate

Hi Will
Never seen the problem myself with either of my FireWire Drives, but open Disk Utility in your Utilities Folder select First Aid, then the External HD's icon and run Repair Disk.
Dennis

Recommendations for external hard drive for excite pro please

As above please folk,I'm in the uk

You may want to contact Toshiba UK. This is the forums for Toshiba USA. You could check the Toshiba Europe forums.
- Peter

Recommendations? On External Hard Drive w/ firewire

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