Types of external hard drives to buy.

Hi,
can anyone provide me with some advice on purchasing external hard drives. What I'm looking for is a high capacity drive around 1-2 TB that will allow two users to access the same files at once. In other words mount on two seperate computers at once. I believe the answer is found in RAID drives but I'm not that clued up on RAID drives and need a bit of help. The external hard drives I've looked at so far are ones from Western Digital and G-Raid.
If its not possible to obtain a drive that will allow me to mount it onto to seperate computers at once and read the same files then I would settle for a solid external drive that can:
- handle large HD files
- store data reliably
Thanks

USB 2.0 is the connection that is natively supported on the T400, no eSATA or Firewire port i think, you can get these ports by buying an expansion card for the card slot (i think it is the expresscard one) on the T400.
Regarding a 1TB drive, most of the large drive manufacturers have one out, but i suggest you unless you need the large capacity, i would stick with a smaller drives like 750 gig or 500 gig since the cost gigabyte is lower. Also i would stay away for storing all your important files solely in these drive, because if these things start to fail it would be on a moment's notice, you probably won't even have time to backup the files, before the harddrive gives up on you.

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Which types of external hard drives works with T400?

Hi Thank you for reading my post.
Can someone please let me know which types of external hard drives works with a T400?
eSata, USB or firewire?
Which model and brand you suggest for a 1TB drive?
Thanks

USB 2.0 is the connection that is natively supported on the T400, no eSATA or Firewire port i think, you can get these ports by buying an expansion card for the card slot (i think it is the expresscard one) on the T400.
Regarding a 1TB drive, most of the large drive manufacturers have one out, but i suggest you unless you need the large capacity, i would stick with a smaller drives like 750 gig or 500 gig since the cost gigabyte is lower. Also i would stay away for storing all your important files solely in these drive, because if these things start to fail it would be on a moment's notice, you probably won't even have time to backup the files, before the harddrive gives up on you.

I need to move the iTunes library to an External Hard Drive to free up space on iMac. Need suggestions on type of External Hard Drive to use. A Multimedia Hard Drive like LaCie LaCinema Classic HD Multimedia Hard Drive OR a Large Desktop Hard Drive?

I need to move an iTunes library to an External Hard Drive to free up space on iMac. I Need suggestions on type of External Hard Drive to use. Should you use a Multimedia Hard Drive like LaCie LaCinema Classic HD Multimedia Hard Drive OR a standard Large Desktop Hard Drive like Western Digital/Seagate/LaCie?

There is no benefit to the multi-media feature on the first drive you mentioned. If you are going to look at differences between certain drives, I'd look at the differences in reliability first.

Have old MacBook Pro running tiger 10.4 want to save date to external hard drive and buy newer MacBook and still use same drive. Any suggestions, most WD drives say nothing about os tiger 10.4.

Have old MacBook Pro running tiger 10.4 want to save date to external hard drive and buy newer MacBook and still use same drive. Any suggestions, most WD drives say nothing about os tiger 10.4. The OS compatibility is much newer on the data. Totally confused. Not a computer person.

I haven't checked reviews recently but there's a difference between bare drives and drives with enclosures. Western Digital made some of the most reliable drives last time I checked, though the enclosures weren't all that great. It is convenient to get both in one package but I usually buy a highly rated enclosure and then put a highly rated drive in it myself. OWC sells some good enclosures but if they put a so-so drive inside of it then the package is only as good as its weakest component. If you get a package from them, ask them what drive is inside (some vendors have no idea what's inside - went to an Apple Store recently and they couldn't tell me what was inside some of their Apple brand enclosures). My first thought if buying a new drive would be to buy a OWC enclosure with a WD drive, but chek around because I may be out of date.
10 years ago Seagate was one of the best drives. Now they rate poorly in reviews.

I recently purchased a Mac Book Air and wanted to know what would be the best external hard drive to buy as far as the brand and GB or TB are concerned? I will basically just be storing music, papers, and a lot of pictures.

I recently purchased a Mac Book Air and wanted to know what would be the best external hard drive to buy as far as the brand and GB or TB are concerned? I will basically just be storing music, papers, and a lot of pictures. Also, how should I go about charging my computer? Should I wait until it is close to dying and then charge it?

I have had good success with HGST and Seagate HDDs. I suggest a HDD that is powered by the MBA eliminating the need for an AC cord. They now come up to 1.5 TB in capacity. In my opinion, one cannot have too much storage. If necessary, let your bank account be your guide.
Ciao.

What type of external hard drive do I have to buy that I can use on my mac and windows computer as well

I want to buy an external hard drive that will work on my imac and windows computer

Most all off the shelf External Hard Drives are formatted so that they can be used with both platforms. Just stay away from discount and off name brands.
Buying guide: External desktop hard drives | Macworld

What External Hard Drive to Buy, any Suggestions.

Hi all, i need an external hard drive. Easily answered i hear you say, here's where it gets harder. I dont want to buy a case and a drive and then build it, i want to buy it off the shelf. I need....................
Firewire
Oxford chipset
300-500 GB
and most importantly not going to cause me grief as im going to be using it with ProTools LE
Thanks in advance guys.

I just bought my second Vantek NexStar 2 enclosure model NST-355UF. It is the firewire case my usual source recommends because they have been reliable. I am getting a Seagate 320G drive to go in the case. It's 7200 RPM with 16 MB of buffers. The extra buffers should help with smooth streaming. And right now it seems to be the best buy in capacity and speed per dollar.
I don't know if Vantek uses the Oxford chip set. Neither System Profiler nor Disk Utility appears to report the remote chip set and there is no mention in the manual. If you know any easy way to check, I'd like to find out.
I can say that it works well with Final Cut Express, using firewire passthrough to my camera for both video capture and display during editing. That's a fairly demanding use, so there's a good chance that it will be OK for audio.
Two advantages of the case: it has an efficient switching power supply, and an internal fan. The fan can be important with a 7200 rpm drive. The down side is that it tends to transmit vibration to the desk it is sitting on despite having rubber "vibration dampers". I ended up putting it on a piece of flat cardboard with a layer of foam underneath.

What type of external hard drive should I get?

First, I'm not sure were I should have posted this question but here goes....
I am officially 100% an Apple home environment now. I have an iMac, a Macbook Pro, and an Airport Extreme. I want to add an external hard drive and I need suggestions for what to get. I know the Time Machine router is available but I'm looking for a less-expensive option.
I want to add an external hard drive but I want to make it available to the entire home network so that both the iMac and Macbook Pro can write and access files on one shared external drive. I also want the ability to have both computers to be able to use Time Machine to back up to the external drive. External file access (i.e. via a cloud option/app) for accessing files from my iPhone or iPad is not necessary but would be appreciated.
Also, is it just as easy as hooking the external hard drive up to the network by USB cable to the USB port on the Airport Extreme?

There is no such thing as a Time Machine Router, however I think you are referring to a Time Capsule. Time Machine is an application for backing up. Time Capsule is something else entirely different.
If you want to hook up an external HD to an Airport Extreme that will work just fine as a network drive however DO NOT use it to back up using Time Machine, at best it's unreliable for using Time Machine.
Finally if you are looking for a good quality EHD I strongly recommend using OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series.
If you want to back up multiple Macs to a single EHD then you need the Time Capsule. You can get them refurbished from Apple. For example:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD032LL/A/refurbished-time-capsule-2-tb

Advise...what external hard drive to buy....ASAP!!

I have an iMac and I have over 15,000 pictures that I want to store on an external hard drive in case something happens to my Mac. I want a hard drive that is already formatted for a Mac (snow Leopard) but I can't spend a fortune. Any advise would be helpful. Thank you in advance!!

There are three I'd recommend:
OWC Mercury Elite Pro series
Lacie Quadra d2 series
G-Tech G-Drive series
All are great drives, personally I use the Lacie but wouldn't hesitate with the other 2. All have great build quality & feature set. For your needs I'd recommend getting a drive with Firewire 800 for it's speed.
Roger

Migration Assistant cant find external hard drive Best Buy backed up for me when laptop crashed.

My mac's hard drive somehow failed and I took it to Best Buy where i bought it from and they backed it up to an external I had to buy and now when I go to the migration assistant it cant find it. What can I do?

Migration assistant will only work with drives that are a) contain original Mac systems, b) are exact clones of such drives, or c) Time Machine destination drives. For example, with a clone, you would see an Applications folder, a Library folder, System and Users at the top of the hard drive. If Best Buy just copied files onto the external, you can't use it in Migration Assistant. However, once you complete setup of the new system (without migrating) you can manually copy user files (not most applications though) from wherever they are on the external to the proper places on your new drive.
Matt

What is the exact type of internal hard drive I buy?

Hi all, I want to upgrade my 160GB drive, can someone advise me on what exactly it is I have to buy. And also th ebest name brands. I have macbook 13". I know western digital are pretty good, any other ideas?
Tracy

Any 2.5" notebook SATA drive up to 320 GBs will work. The Samsung 500 GB drive will also work as it's the only one that is 9.5 mm high and will fit in a MacBook.
Notebook drives are available from many different manufacturers: Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Western Digital to name a few. You can find benchmarks, comparisons, and reviews at Bare Feats and Storage Review.

External Hard Drive Question...

I am looking to purchase an external hard drive to use with my Macbook and my PS3 in order to store my music and movies and share my media between the two. I am also purchasing a larger internal hard drive for my PS3 and it is the exact same 160GB SATA 5400rpm HDD that is in my Macbook so I am assuming since the internal hard drives for the two are compatible that an external hard drive that is compatible with my Macbook will also work with my PS3.
My question is what type of external hard drive will work with my Macbook? I was looking at a Hitachi 500GB SATA 7200rpm external hard drive but when reading a customer review it read something about not being compatible with a particular PC because it is 3.0GBs and the PC would only recognize an externall hard drive that is 1.5GBs.
I am unsure what the GBs feature is or what it means and which is compatible with the Macbook. Does anyone have any insight on this or even better does anyone have an external hard drive that is around 500GB that they know works with the Macbook?
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
1.83GHz Macbook C2D 1GB RAM 160GB HD Mac OS X (10.4.8) 5.5G 80GB White iPod/60 GB Playstation 3 w/ 32" LCD HDTV 720p-1080i

I am not sure I understand what you are asking. If you want to use a HD as an external drive, you have to buy an enclosure as the enclosure has the chipsets to convert the HD connections to USB or FireWire.
You need it.
I would suggest that you get an enclosure that uses both USB and FW as your PS3 has USB and your MB has both USB and FW. FW is faster so that would be nice to use on your MB.

IBook won't connect to USB External Hard Drives

I'm having a very strange issue with my ibook.
I have three external hard drives (two of the three can use usb and firewire). If I connect them with firewire they work fine. Same thing goes for usb flash drives and usb devices (mouse, keyboards, ect.), but if I connect a usb external hard drive it refuses to read it. It gets power but it will not appear on my mac .....
Now, I don't know if this has anything to do with it but a few years ago I was dj'ing with one of the hard drives that uses usb and firewire (it was connect using usb at the time). Something happened and the hard drive just stopped working. I thought it crashed at first. Its a western digital and every dj I know who has had a western digital has had it crash on them. I took it home and hooked it up to my pc just to make sure it was dead and it ran fine. Matter of fact I can still use it on my mac, firewire only though. Now no matter what type of external hard drive it is, if I am using usb it refuses to load on my mac.
Any ideas on why this would happen?
Also, the other two hard drives are both verbatim

The best idea I have is that the USB bus in your computer isn't supplying enough power to your devices. You could try picking up a powered USB hub and using that to see if that helps.
Alternatively, reset the PRAM, as outlined here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
and the PMU as outlined here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431
~Lyssa

My Iomega External Hard drive won't let me delete/copy files...

I haven't used my external hard drive since buying my Macbook Pro.
I have just tried to delete some files from it and then copy some Uni work from my Documents onto my hard drive.. but it won't work.
Is there anything I need to download?

Install software such as the NTFS-3G drivers.
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Help me choose an external hard drive

I'm clueless on what external hard drive to buy. All I need it for is my music and pictures. I need one with a reasonable price for the storage and something that will last long.

I am again going to cite my own *PERSONAL EXPERIENCE*. I have never had a Western Digital hard drive, internal or external, last more than about 12 months. Not a single one! They run hot, and almost all of them I have owned have been quite noisy.
I have had the best experiences with Seagate. I have only had one segate drive fail on me, and it was replaced by Seagate even though it was long out of warranty. I have Seagate drives that are in NAS boxes that run 24/7/365, and have been for several years.
I have had mixed results with Samsung drives. There smaller capacity drives seem to be very good, but their high capacity drives tend to die young.
I have also had very bad luck with Hitachi drives.
From years of my own personal experience, I would recommend Seagate above all other brands.
If you find my post useful or informative, please click the icon below with the plus sign and star to give kudos. Thank you!

Types of external hard drives to buy.

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