Hey guys, I have finally received my snow leopard up-to-date disc. I was thinking about getting a backup HDD and I was hoping for some advice from you guys. This is the drive I'm thinking about ... THIS or THIS ... of my hard drive space, I still have 92GB remaining. I used my computer primarily only for school work. I have an older HP laptop that I used for watching movies I can't watch on my tv. It was a bigger screen anyways. So what one do you think is the better bang for the buck? I like those ones cuz they have the firewire connectivity, and I currently usually use both my usb ports and have no firewire devices. I probably wouldn't keep it connected to my computer constantly, but at least once a week if not every couple of days. I want a backup hdd that will last me for the next 3 years. I know a lot will point to external enclosures but I just don't have the time to fiddle with stuff like that, I just wanna get a drive, unbox, and plug it in. I'm mainly wondering if 500gb would be big enough, or if I should go with the 750gb to be safe? I'm guessing I'd use time machine, but to what extent I don't know. I'd say most of the space on my current hard drive is loseable to be honest. I only care about backing up my music, one game, and my school docs. All that together is maybe 15 or 20 gigs tops. But then hey, if I can back up everything then why not, right? So does anyone have any thoughts?
Also real quick, should I do the upgrade to snow leopard? I intend to do a clean install. That's in part why I want to get one of those (hopefully!) backup drives ASAP so I can back up my stuff and do clean install and then restore, although I don't know if time machine can do that or not. First mac here, and I've never used time machine. But is snow leopard stable and reliable enough? I don't want OS problems, I'm in law school and I don't want to have to worry about having to do another clean install or downgrade to leopard cuz snow leopard has "issues." Do you think I'd be ok to just do the upgrade after I get my backup HDD?
Finally, just an aside while typing this, is there any way to disable the mouse trackpad when I have a mouse plugged in? When typing, sometimes the palm of my hands touches it and it totally messes up my workflow. My old HP just had a physical button I could press to disable it, but none here. Anything in a setting I can do? Thanks.
Also real quick, should I do the upgrade to snow leopard? I intend to do a clean install. That's in part why I want to get one of those (hopefully!) backup drives ASAP so I can back up my stuff and do clean install and then restore, although I don't know if time machine can do that or not. First mac here, and I've never used time machine. But is snow leopard stable and reliable enough? I don't want OS problems, I'm in law school and I don't want to have to worry about having to do another clean install or downgrade to leopard cuz snow leopard has "issues." Do you think I'd be ok to just do the upgrade after I get my backup HDD?
Finally, just an aside while typing this, is there any way to disable the mouse trackpad when I have a mouse plugged in? When typing, sometimes the palm of my hands touches it and it totally messes up my workflow. My old HP just had a physical button I could press to disable it, but none here. Anything in a setting I can do? Thanks.