Suggestion on a good external drive for imac

I just got to the point of having no memory space. I am looking for the best approach to picking a solid, cost efficient external hard drive. Any suggestion on where to get or possible prices.
TX-Nobya

Robert and BDAqua gave some links to OtherWorldComputing (OWC) a reputable vendor of Mac-compatible accessories and upgrades. I don't represent them, just another satisfied customer over the years.
I think FW drives are in general better performance than USB drives, but there are many variables like how many other devices you have connected, etc... I think most folks would recommend FW drives over USB.
Your model info still doesn't quite narrow down the potential list enough to know if you have FW 400 or FW 800 ports, I think it depends on the display size, only the 24" had the FW800, I'm not really sure.
In your Apple Menu Bar, select the About This Mac, then in the little window that pops up, click the More info button. This will launch System Profiler. You will see a window with lots of info about your computer hardware, click on the FireWire triangle and see the info displayed about the Maximum Speed of the channel.
So for example if you have FW 400, this means the max theoretical speed is 400Mb/sec, if you have FW 800 then your max speed is 800Mb/sec. Neither of which you will probably ever attain this quoted Max speed, but why spend more on a FW800 drive if you only have FW400 ports on that iMac, unless maybe you plan to use it with a future machine.
You definitely need to free up space on your primary internal disk, free space is needed for temporary files and virtual memory as you use your computer, it can lock up if you lack sufficient free space.
http://www.otherworldcomputing.com/
FW 400 Neptune drives
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/Neptune
FW 800 drives
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/FW800
Striped RAID-0 dual drives, enclosures
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/RAID+0
Basically, if you have questions, call Other World Computing, they are also very helpful in making your selection if you aren't totally sure the best fit to your needs.

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Hi,
I just purchased a 500mb My Book Pro external drive
for use with my imac duo which runs Windows XP via
bootcamp. This computer is shared by three family
with very different skills and needs. My dilemma. I
want to format the drive so that the imac can be
backed up easily three users. It is formated Fat32
and is supplied with Restrospect Express 7.5 backup
software. It would be nice to backup the modestly
used windows sector, but that's a secondary
consideration. My problem is that one user has a lot
of larger than 4 gb video files which are too large
the Fat 32 format. My notion is to segment the backup
drive so that I leave 300 mb in fat 32 to facilitate
backup with supplied software, and segment a second
200 gb drive using mac os extended so that the user
can manually move her video files for storage/backup
on the backup drive. Is there a simpler solution? For
example, if I formatted the entire 500gb as mac os
extended, could I still run the retrospect backup
software? If not, is there a reasonably priced
alternative software? And finally, with either Fat32
or Mac OS extended, can I move files from the Windows
platform? Would I be better off just biting the
bullet and telling my daughter to make her own
arrangements to compress and backup her video files
or get her own hard drive, thus leaving the backup
drive to the simple factory supplied software
solution?
G-4 and iMac
core duo Mac OS X (10.4.9) use emacs
and imacs at work location
Hello,
You're indeed in a pickle. If you use Bootcamp and want the HD accessible via the Mac and WinXP, then you don't want to format it as Mac HFS because WInXP wouldn't be able to access it. If you go FAT32 then both WInXP and Mac OS can access it, but you face the dilemma of the 4GB threshold.
If you format as NTFS, then you eliminate the 4GB threshold but then Mac OS cannot access it.
I have a similar dilemma, which is why i use Parallels more than Bootcamp. I have 2 external FW HD's (160GB/250GB), both formatted to Mac HFS. The 160GB i have partitioned as 50GB and 100GB. I have a bootable backup of Mac OS residing on the 100GB partition (yay to SuperDuper!) and some other stuff on the remaining 50GB. The 250GB is exclusive for movies (cough..cough..bittorrent) and for streaming via Orb 2.0 to my Treo. I have WinXP running in Parallels, and Vista Ultimate via Bootcamp. In Parallels, i can access my external HD's via Parallel's Shared Folders but in Vista (Bootcamp) since the HD's are in a non-Windows recognised formatting, they're not accessible (which is a bummer, as i'm loving Win media center).
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Suggestion on a good external drive for imac

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