Time to buy an external HD

I need to invest in an external HD for my MacBook (which has a 100Gb drive). The main purpose at this point is for backups (i.e. I want to have a bootable backup drive). At this time I don't have a digital video camera, or a large music collection, or any of the typical things that tend to consume hard drive space.

This drive (a 120Gb Seagate, price $62.99 plus shipping) looks like a winner for my purposes. My primary concern is this: Should I be looking for a larger capacity drive (e.g. this model, a 320Gb drive)?

P.S. Probably going to pair it with this enclosure (the MacAlly FW400+USB combo). If you have an opinion about that choice, I'd like to hear it as well.

yellow said:

Personally, I'd gamble on the future and shoot for a larger hard drive, myself...

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Yes, I'm debating that as well.

Question: If I were to buy a larger external drive, and partition it appropriately, am I correct that I could clone my internal hard drive into a 100Gb-sized partition, and then have the remaining space on the external drive for, you know, whatever?

yellow said:

But I can't seem to find anything solidly supporting that the enclosure works with large hard drives other than this statement on the manufacturer's website: "Designed to be used with all 3.5" IDE hard disks". Does "all" mean "all"?

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On this page from the manufacturer's web site, they say "Supports any capacity 3.5" ATA Hard Drives." So I think that's a yes.

yellow said:

But this confirms that you should get a larger hard drive.

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Sounds good! Thanks for the advice.

Stridder44 said:

You could also try getting an external HD usb/firewire enclosure- where you put in your own internal HD into the external case.

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Well, that's what I thought I was doing.

The Seagate drive is a 3.5" internal drive (I ended up ordering a 200Gb model, by the way) that I will install into the MacAlly enclosure that I mentioned.

Like you mentioned, if I do end up "outgrowing" the 200Gb drive, I can always just upgrade that piece and re-use the existing enclosure.

Sesshi said:

Eh? Why is USB no good for backup? He's got a Macbook (USB2.0).

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I want to be able to boot up from an external drive, if need be. It is my understanding that that option's only available for Firewire drives.

If I was merely using the external drive for backup copies of files, or extra storage, then yes, USB would work.

Success!

The hard drive (a 200Gb Seagate drive) and enclosure (from MacAlly) arrived today. The hard drive was an OEM part, so it didn't come with cables, or documentation, or anything -- just the bare drive. That was a little disconcerting, but it turned out to be no big deal. The MacAlly enclosure, in contrast, was a full "retail kit", which came in a box with Firewire and USB cables, etc. -- everything you'd need.

From the time I got all the parts out of their boxes, it took me maybe ten minutes before I'd installed the hard drive in the enclosure and was up and running. Not difficult at all.

I plugged in the new drive and used the Mac OS X Disk Utility to partition it into two partitions: an 80Gb partition for the backup, and the remainder as "data". Formatted both partitions.

Next, I downloaded Super Duper! (based on numerous recommendations) and used that to do a full backup. It took a little over an hour. (I will probably purchase a license for Super Duper so that I don't have to do a full backup each time.) Once it was done, I rebooted to make sure that I could indeed boot from the external drive (which was the whole point). It worked fine, although it is noticeably slower to boot from the external drive.

So, I now have a backup solution and I can sleep soundly at night. The total expense was about $135, including shipping. I don't know that I really saved any money doing it this way, but it was a fun little project.

flyfish29 said:

Did you ever think if you God forbid had a fire and lost your mac and hard drive? Do you have copies of your important docs, pics, etc. stored off-site?

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Most (but perhaps not all) of the important files are backed up on a drive at work as well. They're just copies, not a bootable backup like the drive I just bought, but it offers some additional protection. But you make a good point.

By the way, I did my second backup tonight, this time using SuperDuper's "Smart Update" option, and it only took about 15 minutes (as opposed to the full backup last week which took a little over one hour).