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A good but not expensive external hard drive?

Trumpy

Trumpy

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 16, 2009
48
20
Kansas City, MO
I'm buying my first MacBook Air after having a MacBook Pro for years, and now I need to have a reliable external hard drive. Sorry if there is a thread already about HDs, but is there one anybody can recommend? It would be used for storage of photos, music, portfolio art, etc.
 
Jessica Lares said:
I've had my Western Digital Passport since 2008, no problems whatsoever. Fits in my purse too, or even a coat pocket.
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WD Passports are good drives. If you need large amounts of space, like over a terabyte, check those out. If you can get by with smaller amounts, like 128gb, consider a flash drive or SD card.
 
Sorry, I should have stated how much space I needed! I think at least 500gb works for me. I have flash drives that I use for transporting files, I want something as storage/back-up.
 
I would recommend Western Digital Passport series as well. You can get a 500GB cheap at any electronics store. They are incredibly small as well.

If you are intending to use it as a backup only, there's no need to look for the Mac version. I got the standard WD Passport for Windows and converted the entire drive for Mac. The Mac version merely comes pre-formated for Mac and in silver to match your Macbook.

I've used Seagate external hard drives in the past as well, holds up equally well to WD but where I live they tend to be about 20/30 dollars more expensive than WD.
 
Trumpy said:
I'm buying my first MacBook Air after having a MacBook Pro for years, and now I need to have a reliable external hard drive. Sorry if there is a thread already about HDs, but is there one anybody can recommend? It would be used for storage of photos, music, portfolio art, etc.
Click to expand...

the general rule of thumb is to get a time machine drive that is twice as big as your boot drive and any other attached data drives combined. and i think bigger is always better..

i have a 320gig drive on my 2008 mbp and i have used a 1 terabyte WD drive ever since i got it as my backup device - no problems, no issues.
i did fill it up a time or two when i was using it to manually back up large files but in reality, the way TM works is as long as it's as least as big as what you want to back up, it will work.

i recently purchased a 2tb My Passport and i love it even more. this technology has really come a long way in a short amount of time. the 2 tb drive was 150 or so shipped.

it's about the size of an actual passport, about as thick as a pack of cigarettes, is powered by USB 3.0 and is WAY quieter than the older drive.

check amazon or newegg for reviews/prices.

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jt90 said:
The Mac version merely comes pre-formated for Mac and in silver to match your Macbook.
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not to mention costs more for no other reason
 
WD My Passport 1TB USB 3 for $80 at Amazon.

Bus powered by a single USB 3 port and fast. I don't know which 2.5" drive is inside, but I consistently show about 115MB/s, which is more like what I see from WD Black 3.5" 7200 RPM (also over USB 3). I've used the My Passport through both a Plugable 7-port powered hub or direct to rMBP.

I use it for an image backup of my rMBP 768 GB SSD on 1 partition (I use Disk Utility Restore to make bootable images), and misc backup in the remainder.
 
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gr8tfly said:
WD My Passport 1TB USB 3 for $80 at Amazon.

Bus powered by a single USB 3 port and fast. I don't know which 2.5" drive is inside, but I consistently show about 115MB/s, which is more like what I see from WD Black 3.5" 7200 RPM (also over USB 3). I've used the My Passport through both a Plugable 7-port powered hub or direct to rMBP.

I use it for an image backup of my rMBP 768 GB SSD on 1 partition (I use Disk Utility Restore to make bootable images), and misc backup in the remainder.
Click to expand...

yep - thanks for posting the link, that's the one i was talking about. although i got the black 2 tb model & i noticed that it's even cheaper now, $125 for two terabytes is unreal.
pick up the 5 dollar Amazon case for this and you can throw it in your bag or purse and literally do your backups in the field.
 
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HDD are commodity items, meaning there is very little performance difference within their own type. I just buy the cheapest per megabyte with a USB3, am done.

If ur really fussy about this, look see if vendors are selling that Apple Hybrid drive yet.
 
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