Alternatives to the Time Capsule

[cminshew]

I want to buy an external hard drive for photos and also use it as a backup for my Mac. Will any hard drive that connects with a USB or Firewire cable and is Mac compatible work?

 

[aethelbert]

Yes, but you'll need to partition it in order to use it for both photos and backups. Any drive will work, just choose an appropriate size in relation to your internal drive.

 

[imfrog2002]

Yes, but you'll need to partition it in order to use it for both photos and backups. Any drive will work, just choose an appropriate size in relation to your internal drive.

Why would you need to partition it? With mine, it allows files in addition to the back up... I've never heard of having to partition it differently.

 

[skorpien]

Why would you need to partition it? With mine, it allows files in addition to the back up... I've never heard of having to partition it differently.

I assume this is to keep the backup and data partitions distinct and separate. This way you can't go over your alloted data space and inadvertently rob yourself of the backup space, or vice versa.

 

[tsice19]

I want to buy an external hard drive for photos and also use it as a backup for my Mac. Will any hard drive that connects with a USB or Firewire cable and is Mac compatible work?

Yes, any external drive will work. However, just to be sure, head over to www.newegg.com and go to the Apple section and look at those drives. They are made specifically for Mac and they have some that match Apple products quite well.