# Suggestions needed for an external harddrive for Mac



## Idelette (May 13, 2009)

Does anyone have any suggestions for what type of an external hard drive to get for Mac? I'm not sure which to get, and how much space is necessary? Is double the amount of space good enough? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!


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## Jen (May 13, 2009)

In His Grip said:


> Does anyone have any suggestions for what type of an external harddrive to get for Mac? I'm not sure which to get, and how much space is necessary? Is double the amount of space good enough? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!



Are you looking for a hard drive to use as a backup with Time Machine? Or are you just looking for another drive for extra space? And how big is your current drive?

ETA: For Time Machine, I found this discussion:



> > Has anyone figured out the ideal ratio for a Time Machine backup disk?
> > I mean, if you have say a 500GB HD what would be a good size TM backup
> > disk? 1TB? Of course, the drive should be in use for a good number of
> > years.
> ...



That does sound about right.


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## OPC'n (May 13, 2009)

This one is compatible with mac and pc

Amazon.com: Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34270: Electronics


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## Jen (May 13, 2009)

TranZ4MR said:


> This one is compatible with mac and pc
> 
> Amazon.com: Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34270: Electronics



USB 2.0 is sloooww... It drives me insane that the iPods have been switched to USB.

Depending on how one is using the drive (that's why I asked about Time Machine -- if you're just backing up in the background, then it doesn't matter), and if one has a FW800-equipped Mac, FW800 is the preferred option, for sure.

ETA: If I recall correctly, Iomega's drives don't have a good reputation for reliability, though... All that's really relevant to this is making sure you get a good, reliable brand, because having a cheap drive as your backup is a bad idea -- backups do you no good if they fail.


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## Idelette (May 13, 2009)

Jen said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone have any suggestions for what type of an external harddrive to get for Mac? I'm not sure which to get, and how much space is necessary? Is double the amount of space good enough? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
> ...



Currently I don't have Time Machine on my macbook, and I'm not sure if I will use it in the future. My current drive is only 160 gb. I heard that a 250-320 drive would be adequate enough....but I'm not sure?? Any suggestions? And which brand would you suggest?


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## Jen (May 13, 2009)

In His Grip said:


> Currently I don't have Time Machine on my macbook, and I'm not sure if I will use it in the future. My current drive is only 160 gb. I heard that a 250-320 drive would be adequate enough....but I'm not sure?? Any suggestions?



Well, it all depends on what you're doing with it. Are you editing movies? Dropping your DVDs in favour of keeping ripped copies on your harddrive (which totally falls under Fair Use, BTW, despite what the MPAA tries to tell you)? Pictures? I'm guessing you're not installing rather large games on it. 

ETA: For movies, bigger is always better, otherwise, the range you list is pretty much adequate for the average user. I am perpetually running low on harddrive space and would opt for a 320 (my stock drive is 160).

Do you have any type of backup at the moment? If not, definitely go bigger and partition the drive so that at least you have something you can use for backups. If you can get something big enough to be able to mirror the drive and then boot up from the backup, so much the better (you can't boot from Time Machine backups, sadly).

ETA2: Both major Mac magazines do hardware reviews: MacWorld and MacLife. Check them for the general reliability of any brand you look at.

My dad works out of our house, and our business is basically backed up to several terabytes of harddrive space in our living room. After years of experimenting (and tons and tons of failed drives), Dad's basically settled on LaCie for the regular stuff.


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## Idelette (May 13, 2009)

Jen said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > Currently I don't have Time Machine on my macbook, and I'm not sure if I will use it in the future. My current drive is only 160 gb. I heard that a 250-320 drive would be adequate enough....but I'm not sure?? Any suggestions?
> ...



LOL!  No, I'm not installing any games on it....and I don't do any movie editing either. I haven't ripped any DVD's yet....I actually didn't know that I could do that!  I mainly use it to store music, photographs, and sermons. I do some photography editing though, but nothing major.


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## OPC'n (May 13, 2009)

Jen said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > Currently I don't have Time Machine on my macbook, and I'm not sure if I will use it in the future. My current drive is only 160 gb. I heard that a 250-320 drive would be adequate enough....but I'm not sure?? Any suggestions?
> ...



How do you rip a movie??? I want to put my Planet Earth dvd's on my ipod!


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## Jen (May 13, 2009)

In His Grip said:


> LOL!  No, I'm not installing any games on it....and I don't do any movie editing either. I haven't ripped any DVD's yet....I actually didn't know that I could do that!  I mainly use it to store music, photographs, and sermons. I do some photography editing though, but nothing major.



As for ripping DVDs, HandBrake, ahem, rocketh. I've ripped a bunch of my DVDs to put the files onto my iPod.

And my instinct is still bigger is better when it comes to HD space.  If you're gonna move large files on a regular basis, do spring for a FireWire 800-equipped harddrive (provided your MacBook supports it -- I really can't remember how Apple did that with the MacBooks; I know the first generation of MacBook Pros didn't have it, and my iMac doesn't have it, so they might not've ever bothered with the MacBooks). Otherwise, USB 2.0 will get the job done; it's just slow.

With all those photos and sermons, you definitely will want a backup of some sort, so when all is said and done, you _might_ want to go as high as a 500 gig drive -- depending on how you've got things set up.


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## Idelette (May 13, 2009)

Jen said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > LOL!  No, I'm not installing any games on it....and I don't do any movie editing either. I haven't ripped any DVD's yet....I actually didn't know that I could do that!  I mainly use it to store music, photographs, and sermons. I do some photography editing though, but nothing major.
> ...



Yes, I'm pretty sure that my Macbook does support Firewire....so I'll have to look into that!

Thanks for your help guys! I really do appreciate it!


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## jfschultz (May 13, 2009)

In His Grip said:


> Yes, I'm pretty sure that my Macbook does support Firewire....so I'll have to look into that!
> 
> Thanks for your help guys! I really do appreciate it!



Which version of MacBook do you have? The older white and black ones do have FW400. The new aluminum ones do not have firewire.

I am using a 500 Gig TimeCapsule for WiFi and TimeMachine backups for a MacBook with a 80 Gig drive and a MacBook Pro with a 320 Gig drive (and less than 100 Gig of files). I did the initial TimeMachine backup with the laptop hardwired to the TimeCapsule for max speed. After that, the incremental backup happens over the WiFi link and do not interfere with using the MacBook. If you shutdown the MacBook during a backup, it will restart the next time the MacBook is running.

I don't remember the schedule, which Apple does document. As the backups age, the hourly backups get collapsed into daily, weekly and then monthly backups.


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## EricP (May 13, 2009)

For what it's worth (my wife has an IMac, and I have an old white MacBook and a new MacBook pro (aluminum), Western Digital has been good--I went 1 TB and use it over an apple network for all of our back-ups. I'd have to agree that USB2 is slow, but since we background back-up everything, it works ok. Another solution, if you just want an external drive, is upgrade your harddrive (perhaps 250-500 MB), and then use your old (current) HD in a portable enclosure for backup and transportation (and go Firewire for this). I did this with my old MacBook (along with adding as much RAM as I could) and it gave me another year or two of good use before I decided to go with the bigger display of the MacBook pro.


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## Idelette (May 13, 2009)

jfschultz said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > Yes, I'm pretty sure that my Macbook does support Firewire....so I'll have to look into that!
> ...



Yes, I have the white 13 inch macbook. Are they equipped for FW400 or FW800? I don't use TimeMachine....its a great feature....but since I mainly use my laptop for storage its not really necessary for me. So you would suggest getting the TimeCapsule then?

-----Added 5/13/2009 at 03:33:10 EST-----



EricP said:


> For what it's worth (my wife has an IMac, and I have an old white MacBook and a new MacBook pro (aluminum), Western Digital has been good--I went 1 TB and use it over an apple network for all of our back-ups. I'd have to agree that USB2 is slow, but since we background back-up everything, it works ok. Another solution, if you just want an external drive, is upgrade your harddrive (perhaps 250-500 MB), and then use your old (current) HD in a portable enclosure for backup and transportation (and go Firewire for this). I did this with my old MacBook (along with adding as much RAM as I could) and it gave me another year or two of good use before I decided to go with the bigger display of the MacBook pro.



That's a good option, I never considered that before! I'll have to think about that, thank you. And btw, I LOVE the MacBook Pro! I almost wish that I had shelled out more money and gotten that one instead!


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## jfschultz (May 14, 2009)

In His Grip said:


> jfschultz said:
> 
> 
> > In His Grip said:
> ...



The white and black MacBooks have FW400.

If you are comfortable with connecting an external drive to do backups, that should be fine. I would recommend getting a drive that is powered off of the firewire connection. It is less hassle and more likely to get done (speaking from sad experience).

The advantage with TimeMachine is that it preserves a history of the files. So if you found that you deleted a file you need, you can go back "in time" and find it. Other backup systems might not preserve such a history, so if you did a backup between deleting the file and finding you need it, it is gone.

As I recall, TimeCapsule, is the only "official" way to use TimeMachine over a WiFi connection.


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## Idelette (May 15, 2009)

jfschultz said:


> In His Grip said:
> 
> 
> > jfschultz said:
> ...



Thank you so much for all your help!


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