Hard drive for backups

trainguy77 said:

I am looking into buying a hard drive for backups, because DVDs are too slow!
I have a 80 GB hard drive. I was looking at this drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/ME2FW7080GB/

What do you think? Should i go for a bigger drive? I only have firewire 400 so that is not a problem. Is it fast enough?

Thanks

Click to expand...

If it's for backups, go as BIG as you can afford. Drive speed is not the issue with a backup drivbe, so even a 5400 RPM 3.5" Firewire would be fine if you can get a good deal on a large one.

Your other option is to get a case like the MacAlly aluminum Firewire case, http://www.macally.com/spec/firewire/storage/phr_100af.html , and put in the IDE drive of your choice. You may be able to get a longer warranty that way, such as the Seagate Barracudas with a 5 year warranty.

trainguy77 said:

Should i stay away from used drives? Also just wondering why go big?

Click to expand...

Used drives have no warranty, and you don't know if you are inheriting a problem.

Why big? Because you ALWAYS have more junk to store than you originally planned. If you have a big enough drive, make a partition the size of your current hard drivem and Carbon Copy Clone your whole drive onto it as a bootable clone.

I have been looking for an external drive (USB as it's cheaper) too. I want to backup my OS9 G4 imac and my PC laptop. The OS9 is specialist app related so OSX is not an option as I can't afford to upgrade the sofware.

Creative make a very cheap portable drive (20-80gig) but make no mention of mac compatability. http://www.tastech.co.nz/hdd.htm (Prices are NZD which is about 60US cents right now or 35 UK pence)

USB compatability should be fine so the only issue would be formatting right? Does anyone know the level to which you can reformat a drive?

I basically want small scale backup (under 20gig) in place of a USB flashdrive which are similarly priced.

If i can't sort this out I will buy a USB housing and get an 80gig HD for about $100US on link above too.

What is the best way to format a HD if you are moving between OS9 and XP?

MacTubby said:

I have been looking for an external drive (USB as it's cheaper) too. I want to backup my OS9 G4 imac and my PC laptop. The OS9 is specialist app related so OSX is not an option as I can't afford to upgrade the sofware.

Creative make a very cheap portable drive (20-80gig) but make no mention of mac compatability. http://www.tastech.co.nz/hdd.htm (Prices are NZD which is about 60US cents right now or 35 UK pence)

Click to expand...

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I do not see any issues about compatibility if you're going to go for a small external drive.

MacTubby said:

USB compatability should be fine so the only issue would be formatting right? Does anyone know the level to which you can reformat a drive?

Click to expand...

Yes, formatting might be an issue. By level if you're talking about "low level" and "high level", those days are long gone. The only kind of formatting one can do on hard disks these days is high level formatting where the file system is created by the OS.

MacTubby said:

I basically want small scale backup (under 20gig) in place of a USB flashdrive which are similarly priced.

If i can't sort this out I will buy a USB housing and get an 80gig HD for about $100US on link above too.

What is the best way to format a HD if you are moving between OS9 and XP?

Click to expand...

If you need to move data back and forth between OS9 and XP, I presume the best file system format would be FAT. XP supports only NTFS and FAT (and since NTFS is not an entirely openly system, writing to NTFS from non-Windows operating systems is risky). I would suggest checking the OS 9 documentation to see if it supports FAT. FAT is a simple file system that's supported on non-Windows operating systems.

Thanks heaps for the answer wiseguy. Using google and the formats you mentioned I found this link; https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-59099.html

It confirms what you said. Cool. Thanks.

I still can't find anyone who has tried to reformat a creative drive for mac. I figure there's technically nothing wrong with the concept, but if my 'theor' is wrong then I would be sad.

I will post with my experience if I get one but I may wimp out and just get a seagate and generic enclosure.

USB 2.0 is slow for a hard drive. USB 1.1 is dead slow.

Dead donkey slow.

Dead donkey in the middle of the road at rush hour slow.


A USB 2.0 drive on an OS9 Mac will run at USB 1.1 speeds because OS9 does not support USB 2.0 nohow.
Did I mention thay it's going to be slow?

Get Firewire or Dual Firewire/USB2 if at all possible in your scenario.